From "Summer Slowdown" to "We've Run Out of Heroics For The Day"

When I said the team needed more exciting things going on so I could blog about them, at no point did I consider the possibility that one could swing too far in the other direction. Namely, we've had plenty of work lately, but none of us have had any time to write any of it up. Ever since the Argent Coliseum opened up, we've pretty much had work lined up from when we punch in to well after we should've punched out for the day. We're all tired, but it's a good tired as opposed to the normal falling asleep in Dalaran while waiting for a group to show up.

About the time the Coliseum opened, I also found a new guild for Grunzford and Mordigg. So far they both seem to have nothing but good things to say about the new guild, and they certainly aren't wanting for people to do things. To put things in perspective as to how many heroics and raids Grunz has run in the last week, he's managed to pick up every piece of Emblem of Conquest gear except for the pants (he had tier 7.5 already) and still have enough left over to turn into Emblems of Valor for his shoulders. Mordigg made out about as many emblems as Grunz, but unfortunately he did them all before the switch to Conquest. That'll buy a lot of epic gems though, so it's not a total loss.

Speaking of the death knight, he's been a bit annoyed at the hits his survivability seems to have taken lately. Nothing too bad for what he's been doing, but the health and armor loss has been noticeable. In addition, he also mentioned a spec swap for his multi-target tanking build. Blood's still fine for single-target tanking, but the change to Unholy Blight eliminated the main reason to have that for a trash tanking build. I believe he found some Frost build last night, but it still needs a field test or two.

Grunz seemed to make out fairly well with the changes, and in the last few days, he's seen fights that even Solannis hadn't tanked:

While Grunz has seen most of our field time, Sol and I haven't been entirely left out of the fun. For the most part, we've been doing the new 5-man dungeon - Sol for the trinket, me for damn near all of the tanking stuff since I've got Naxx-10 and heroic gear. The new instance is fun, though I do have one question. The warrior champion they've got in there, Marshal Jacob Alerius, is already a bit weird since he's an Arms warrior using a shield, but I'll ignore that as normal PvP weirdness. What I want to know is: what day of warrior school did I sleep through when they taught that backflip throw garbage he does? It's certainly not in any of my talent trees, so what do I need to do to learn this trick? He won't talk regardless of how many times I Shield Slam his face, so I'm open to suggestions.

Summer Slowdown, BlizzCon, and Podcast Question

Gotta love the summer slump - makes it a pain for me to line up work for the guys, which in turn makes for slow blogging. Most of what I've been able to find has all been one-shot jobs a friend of mine has found. Some of those go quite smoothly and everyone gets what they want out of the run. Others end like... well, like Medeleth's last run. I think he still holds a grudge over that one. Unfortunately from the looks of the guild roster most evenings and the way some of them talk about being bored or disillusioned with the whole war against the Scourge, I don't see an end to our PuG adventures in the near future.

The obvious solution to this would be to look for a new guild to contract one or more of the guys out to (or me even - I could use a break from doing paperwork for the rest of the guys). It would give us a new source of work for at least one member of the team and we'd have an inside line for any jobs that come up that require the services of someone else on the team. The downside though would be that whoever got transferred have to leave behind the guild members that still show up and we're friends with; there's nothing physically preventing them from staying in touch, but anyone who's ever changed guilds knows that it's never quite the same as having that green text going back and forth.

If push comes to shove and I end up having to find new homes for some of the team, I do have a couple of leads. In the meantime though, doing the occasional PuG should keep the team in fighting shape, barring any more spectacular failures like Med's last adventure. Well, that and it should keep them from complaining to me about being bored (can't be bored when something is trying to kill you).

In other news, we received our confirmations for BlizzCon today, so everything is ready for the trip now. I'll be bringing a camera and a camcorder with me, so hopefully between the two of those, there'll be something worth posting. I'll also try posting some on Twitter while the show's going on, but any pictures I put up there will be restricted to the iPhone's camera and that really only works on things within Charge range.

Lastly I've got an idea for something for the blog, but right now it's just an idea. I was reading Rilgon's blog today and he posted a proof of concept podcast where he covered hunters and the various things affecting them at the moment. Awesome show by the way, so I recommend any hunters or those interested in hunters take a listen (it's about a half-hour, so it'll give you something to listen to while doing your dailies). Regardless, while listening to his podcast, I started thinking about how it sounded like a lot of fun and maybe I should try my hand at it. Med could round up whatever program I need to record this, we've got a fairly decent microphone that I picked up to discuss raiding strategy (read: yell at people in void zones, make fun of people not in Ventrilo), so all that leaves is the actual content.

There lies the question: what to talk about? Certainly can't talk about hunters like Rilgon. For one he's got that covered, but more importantly our hunter can't even come up with decent pet names, let alone figure out what raiding hunters should be doing. That leaves talking about tanking or posting audio versions of the arguments/discussions we've used in the other posts. Tanking would probably be best, but I'm open to suggestions. While we figure out what to talk about, I'll work with Med to try and figure out how to actually record something. Once we've managed to make something presentable, I'll post it here... well, once I figure out how in the Nether I'm supposed to post audio here.

Medeleth vs. Naxx: Not All Guild PuGs Are Equal

Ragar: Not much to report from the last few weeks. Guild's still on a bit of a hiatus for the summer, so most of us have been enjoying the time off. We have had a few jobs here and there through a buddy of mine - mostly Naxxramas runs, but with the occasional Vault of Archavon or Obsidian Sanctum trip. Admittedly not the most exciting work in the world, but it's still practice for those guys and they got some upgrades.

Medeleth: Not all of us got upgrades...

Ragar: Look, I said I was sorry.

Medeleth: You sent me off to die!

Ragar: Hey now, I didn't line up that job. My shaman friend found that group and asked for a DPS. If I recall, you said something like "I suppose I could take a break from my research to support the masses. They shall stand in awe and wonder at the sight of fel magic and engineering prowess when wielded by a true genius." What happened to all that bravado, Mr. "Creation and destruction are my playthings"?

Medeleth: That "bravado" as you call it was trampled under the boot of Instructor Razuvious as the group proceeded to fail and call retreat three times before calling the raid.

Ragar: Wait, you couldn't kill Razuvious? How in the Nether is that even possible?

Medeleth: Combination of bad Mind Control timing, failure to swap threat between understudies so Bone Barrier was always up, and lack of healing on the understudies. Basically the one tanking Razuvious would either die or the Mind Control would break, then he would immediately run over to myself and one of the mages and express his dissatisfaction at our setting him ablaze.

Ragar: Well you didn't get locked into the run, so that's a plus. Besides, it couldn't have taken that long if you couldn't kill one boss.

Medeleth: We were in there for over an hour. It just took them that long to get ready between pulls. To properly illustrate just how slow these people were, your shaman friend had enough time after a wipe to fly over, use his Ebonweave and Spellweave cooldowns, fly back, then get a drink before they finally remembered they were in a damn dungeon.

Ragar: Well, I think you've beat most of my bad pickup group stories with that one.

Medeleth: Ah, but I'm not finished yet. This was not a true pickup group in the strictest sense of the word. This was a guild run with something like 60-70% of this 25-man group from that guild. These were people who had worked with each other on a regular basis and had apparently set foot into Ulduar. The raid leader even tried using that as encouragement. He said at one point, "C'mon guys, we've taken down Ignis with five people up before. We can do this!" Maybe it's just me, but instead of being motivated by that, all I hear is that either half of his 10-man group or 80% of his 25-man group got themselves killed.

Ragar: Realism does tend to cut into the motivational power of a battle speech. So I take it you don't want any more jobs from them?

Medeleth: If I end up in a group with those people again, I can and will find a way to make you suffer. It may be the next day, it may be a year down the road, but I will have my revenge.

Grunzford vs. Ulduar: The First Few Bosses

Ragar: Sorry for the delay between posts. Bit of a hectic schedule, compounded by an exploding hard drive on one of our Macs.

Medeleth: Which wouldn't have been as big of an issue if you'd been backing up like I'd told you to do.

Ragar: Yeah, yeah, I know. No big deal though - all of the important stuff is backed up, so all it really did was do the spring cleaning I never got around to doing. Anyway, let's get the quick summary out of the way. Solannis, Mordigg, and I are pretty much doing dailies for the moment. The mage and the hunter are both slowly making their way through Northrend. The priest shows up just long enough to disenchant things, then disappears again. Right now most of our field time has been going to Grunzford.

In the past few weeks, he got to tank a 25-man Naxxramas instead of pretending to be kitty DPS and he's had the opportunity to off-tank a couple of 10-man Ulduar runs for our guild. How was your first experience as a raid tank, Grunz?

Grunzford: Far preferable to being DPS. I've got nothing against being a cat, but for doing damage, it just never clicked as well with me as being a boomkin did. Funny thing was I got to off-tank one of those Ulduar-10 runs before Naxx though.

Ragar: Oh? How did that go?

Grunzford: Pretty smoothly, though I did have a bit of hassle from one of the random people the guild had in the run. They were pushing for me to convince you, Sol, or Mordigg to come in instead of me.

Ragar: Was he concerned about your gear or something? You were an off-tank. The stuff the off-tank fights doesn't hit that hard and anything that does would take us down just as fast.

Grunzford: If it were just a concern about my equipment, I might've understood. However, I begin to question their motivations when their gear concern comes moments after saying, "Aw man, we've got two druids. There's competition now." If you're trying to make sure you don't have to roll against people for loot, at least try to hide it. That's just insulting.

Regardless, all of the fights we did went just fine. Razorscale and Ignis went down quickly. They'd already done Deconstructor that run, but I did get to tank Iron Council before we called it. This was the only fight I went down on the whole night.

Ragar: Fusion Punch?

Grunzford: Yeah, the first attempt I ate two ticks of the DoT after one of them. The next attempt had faster dispels, so we got them down that time. I didn't feel too bad about falling to the DoT though, since I'm pretty sure that would have taken any of you three down as well.

After that run wrapped up, I also had that Naxx-25 run with a couple of tanking upgrades and we've also got a 10-man group planning on working on the harder versions of the Ulduar fights in the next week or two.

Ragar: Looks like other than your helm, the rest of your gear's up to the task of doing hard modes, so that should be fine. There is the question of your second spec though, since some of those fights only require one tank.

Grunzford: Yeah, there lies a problem. Right now my second spec is resto, but I don't think we want me healing.

Ragar: Ah, feel inexperienced at healing?

Grunzford: Well, that and the 1100 spellpower. Pretty sure the combination of those two is not a recipe for success.

Ragar: Yeah, that's not so much gonna work. Guess it's time to start grabbing offspec gear.

Grunzford: You mean like all of that DPS gear and healing gear you and Sol keep passing on?

Ragar: Bite me, smartass.

10-Man Raids, Adventures in Powerleveling, and the Druid's First Trip to Naxx

This past week, the guild Solannis and I are in decided to put the 25-man runs on hiatus. Basically the recruits coming in weren't outpacing the people getting burned out from Ulduar, so we weren't making much headway. Well, that and they were apparently tired of repeatedly wiping to the adds on Freya because "don't kill the damn water spirit" is apparently a difficult concept. I think some of it's also just the time of year honestly, but regardless that does put us in the situation of being back to 10-man raiding only and that's just fine with me and Sol.

Now don't get me wrong: Sol, Grunzford, Med, myself, and the rest of the team do enjoy raiding in both 10- and 25-man forms. Tanking or DPSing (maybe one day healing) dragons, giants, and other assorted beings with treasure we want for ourselves is what we do best. I even enjoyed 40-man raiding, despite the general headaches I got from some of those runs, which brings me to my point. Finding nine other people you like can be somewhat difficult, but it's doable. Finding 24 other people you like is another matter altogether.

There's also the matter of raid coordination. In a 10-man run, Sol or I can reasonably know each person in the group and what to expect from them and, in the case of a second tank, we can usually do things like tank switches and cooldown usage with a quick call or sometimes without saying anything. In a 25-man run though, half the time we don't really know much about our fellow raiders other than "he's usually around 4k DPS" or "he'll die to the first void zone". It's also just quieter in 10-man runs, so the tanks don't have to shout over someone for tank switches and other pertinent "I will die if the healers don't hear this" situations. Sol says that last one's particularly annoying for Kologarn.

Alright, so with the 25-man raiding out of the way for the week, that left us with time for some low-level work. Our resident mage Malador made it to 65 today, so he's made a fair bit of progress since my post. He has been complaining though about feeling restricted in leveling to Frost. Something about Ice Barrier and the other trees not being time efficient. We've also taken to subcontracting our services to others to help their leveling progress. Well, not so much subcontracting as it is dragging a buddy of mine through dungeons to help him catch up. If nothing else, it's given Grunzford something to do and apparently it's quite efficient as a druid. To hear him describe it, all he does is bounce around and Swipe at things so they chase him, then Swipe everything down in a giant group and Improved Leader of the Pack keeps him topped off. It's so efficient really that Sol, Mordigg, and I never need to do it again, so we'll just add that to his list of duties. Purely out of business sense though - I would never do something like that out of spite, perish the thought...

Chain-running younger adventurers through dungeons isn't all Grunzford's been up to though. Yesterday he got to go on his first trip to Naxxramas. Unfortunately for him though, it was as a cat, so he didn't get any raid tanking experience. Still better than nothing though and he got a few upgrades to show for it. He says he wasn't real happy with his performance compared to some of the other people - it wasn't horrible, but it wasn't great (I think he said 9th or 10th overall for damage). Looking at his talents though, I think part of it comes from being built to be a bear instead of a cat and missing a couple of key talents, but most of it is probably lack of practice being a cat outside of doing dailies. I know that if I were asked to do damage instead of tank, I'd probably do just as badly if not worse and I'm pretty sure Sol keeps his two-handed maces skill around 370 just to get out of having to play retadin for some fights.

Team Update: 6/4

It's been a fairly slow week for us, so nothing major to report. I think Sol's 25-man team only made it as far as Thorim attempts last week, so no progress there. This week's already behind since Tuesday's raid got canceled - bad combination of people with other commitments and some raider turnover. It's unfortunate, but you get periods like this in raiding guilds.

For me, it's been mostly tournament dailies. I did try to get into the Ulduar run this week before they called it, but apparently when they say to the contractors like us to send our mains for the job, there's fine print that says "everyone but Ragar". Bah, like I need their repair bills anyway.

Our new bear tank Grunzford has had a fair bit of action this last week. No raids, but a fair number of heroic runs. Only one piece dropped from any of the runs that he cared for, but it's still Emblems of Heroism towards other gear. It also gave him a bit more practice at tanking, so he'll be a bit better prepared for when I line him up with a Naxxramas job at some point.

Speaking of Naxxramas, our resident shadow priest, Matheion, paid that place a visit this past weekend. Some friends of mine from the guild were going with a pick-up group and said they needed a shadow priest, so I sent him along for the practice. To hear him describe it, it wasn't the worst PuG in the world, but they certainly tried for the title. Sounded like your typical PuG screw-ups to me: assigning people to kite on Gluth who aren't built for it and not giving them enough healing, half the raid dying to the dance on Heigan, only one person cleansing curses on Noth, etc. They ended up not finishing the run, but if nothing else he got some Emblems of Valor and a new pair of pants out of the run.

Most of the last week though has been dedicated to our team's mage. Right now he's 43 and slowly making his way towards Outland. Our team's hunter, Lokaja, asked if he could be next, but after buying epic flight training for the priest and the druid within a few weeks of each other, the team bank needs a breather and that means it's the lowbie's time to shine. Besides, I saw him trying to quest a little the other day and I think he and that wolf of his need a bit more training dummy time before they start questing again. I don't know hunter rotations all that well, but I'm pretty sure he's doing it wrong.

We've got a full house (of tanks)

A couple days ago our resident druid Grunzford finally hit 80. The last couple of days have been us trying to set him up with whatever crafted and AH gear we could acquire for him. Not the easiest task since apparently the only leather anyone sells these days has spell power on it, but we managed to pick him up enough gear for a starter tanking set.

He did get the opportunity to tank his first heroic yesterday though. A buddy of mine was looking for a quick heroic run and I volunteered the druid. In retrospect, it may have been a bit much to have his first real tanking experience be in Utgarde Pinnacle, but hey - no wipe, no foul. Besides that's how I learned how to tank in 40-mans ("You guys gonna take it easy on me?" "Hell no, get to work.")

It's a little too early to go making any concrete judgments from that small of a sample of experience, but from what he was telling me, it sounded pretty similar to warrior tanking in that it was a priority list. Mangle's sorta their version of our Shield Slam with Maul being the bear Heroic Strike, so it's "hit Mangle when it's up and use Maul when rage allows". After that it's keeping a stack of five Lacerates up (used only as often as necessary to keep the stack up), Feral Faerie Fire when it's up, and Swipe as their filler strike like Devastate is for us.

There are some slight differences, like how our filler strike is what keeps our five-stack up for us instead being a "use every 13.5 seconds" ability, but the main difference is that they don't have proc-related conditions for their priority list. For warriors, we're always watching out for a Sword and Board proc or for Revenge to come up, but bears appear to stick with their basic priority list. They technically have a proc in the form of Omen of Clarity, but that's just a free hit of any kind rather than a specific ability. Since they've got something to press every cooldown and they all take about the same amount of rage, it essentially just becomes a free Maul in the end.

I'm hoping that in the near future, I'll be able to line him up with some more heroic work or perhaps a raid or two to get some better info on how their abilities work. Most of the raid work that comes our way tends to have "send Solannis" in the notes, but we'll see. If I can find work for the lock, then I can find work for a tank.

Crusader Solannis, the team's newest 80, and some news

Some quick updates since the last couple of days were eventful and we actually remembered to take pictures for once.

First off, Solannis finally finished championing the last of the cities for the Argent Tournament and has earned his Crusader title.

Of course he couldn't resist being a smartass and timing everything out. Not that I'd be any better, but it's still a little silly. It'll be a while before I get those titles though - back when I was questing, they were a little stingier with the reputation.

Next up is our resident priest, Matheion. He finally hit 80 last night, so we celebrated by going to crafting him some gear, spending some Emblems of Valor on bracers, and hitting the auction house for bargains. He still has no idea how to heal though, so for the moment he's focusing on Shadow.

Math did say to pass along a message to anyone currently leveling: if you're 77 or higher and you're not doing the Argent Tournament dailies, drop whatever you're doing and go. Aside from the whole "collecting Champion's Seals" thing, each quest is apparently worth about 24,000 experience each, so it's as close to free experience as you're going to get.

On the raiding front, Sol says they downed Kologarn, Assembly of Iron, Auriaya, and Freya for the first time this week in the 25-man run. Not a bad week's work.

There was one other bit of news. Now what was it?... Oh yeah!
I managed to get some tickets for me and two friends to go to BlizzCon this year. I've been once before, but not as a blogger, so this time I'll have some gadgets to post anything interesting we may find. Of course, this means I'm gonna have to find another human costume for the show since it's apparently in Alliance territory. For some reason, they get all worked up when a Tauren shows up on their doorstep.

Mordigg's first Ulduar

Ragar: Last night the guild did another one of its 10-man Ulduar excursions. This time they requested Mordigg instead of Solannis. Well, technically it was "send whoever you want", but when I mentioned that I'd like to come, it's "anyone other than you". You can almost feel the love.

Mordigg: Yes, nothing to do with the fact that every other tank your guild has is a warrior. It's all out of spite.

Ragar: Yeah, yeah, you and your logic. I'm well aware that from a tactical perspective, it makes sense to mix up the tanking classes. I'd just like a break from doing paperwork. That's enough about me though. How was your first trip into Ulduar?

Mordigg: It went fairly well - cleared the first floor and Kologarn in under two hours. We wiped a few times on Assembly of Iron for some reason. The raid leader called it after that and we'll reconvene during the weekend to finish up. There was one other issue where I wanted to strangle -

Ragar: That's normal.

Mordigg: But I didn't even say who.

Ragar: You don't have to. There are people Sol, Med, and I tune out, but there's only one person for whom "strangle" comes to mind.

Mordigg: Okay, just making sure it's not just me. It's always a little bit of a concern when thoughts like that come up as a death knight.

Ragar: So out of curiosity, what'd the loudmouth do this time?

Mordigg: Well, first off he questioned whether I was crittable after the first Kologarn atttempt. That's just flat out insulting, especially from someone who thinks they know tanking because they know a guy that tanks Naxxramas once in a blue moon. Kologarn is a giant whose hands are taller than I am and who puts a stacking -25% armor debuff on the tank. I'm going to get hit really hard, especially if the other tank's busy with the Rubble and can't taunt off of me when I get a second stack.

Ragar: Yeah, -25% armor hurts, especially since high armor is kinda your thing along with druids.

Mordigg: The other major thing was during Assembly of Iron. When you're fighting Steelbreaker, the other tank has the two other guys off in a corner. Every now and then, the middle one, Runemaster Molgeim, will put a Rune of Power on the ground that bumps up the damage done by anyone standing on it by 50%. Great for us, bad when they're standing in it. Occasionally he'll put one underneath Steelbreaker so I'll have to move him. No big deal, right? First one shows up and loudmouth starts yelling, "MOVE HIM! MOVE HIM! MOVE HIM!" I'll admit I could've handled it a little more tactfully than yelling back, "I can $&*#ing see!"

Ragar: Alright, you've had your first taste of Ulduar and now Sol and I know you're still sorta normal based on the fact that you can still be angry. Any other notes?

Mordigg: Well, there was one point during an Assembly attempt where a feral druid pulled aggro off of me near the beginning. After talking to the other tank, he said, "Yeah, he's kind of a beast. I usually put Vigilance on him, but I forgot." How does Sol deal with that?

Ragar: Don't ask Sol about building threat. His survivability build is the same as his threat build. Infinite Divine Plea made his threat generation kinda ridiculous.

Mordigg: Yeah, well that's not the case for me. My Frost tanking build has decent enough survivability, but threat's always been the thing that it's been weak about. For trash pulls, it's fine - Howling Blast is awesome for stuff like that. For bosses, it's always been a little too dependant upon Rune Strike, which keeps me from using Frost Strike as much as I should. There's always the concern that I'll accidentally use the runic power before Rune Strike goes off and I'll lose a good chunk of threat from that. Not to mention the fact that the changes to Blade Barrier makes Rune Strike come up less already.

Ragar: Yeah, I can see that being an issue, what with your heavy threat attack being the weird love child of Heroic Strike and Revenge.

Mordigg: Regardless it should be less of an issue with the new spec, though I still need to field test it.

Ragar: Okay, walk me through the spec. What's the theory behind it?

Mordigg: Well, it's less runic power dependant than my Frost build, so there's less likelihood of clipping my Rune Strikes. As Unholy I'll be using Scourge Strike instead of Obliterate or Howling Blast for my double-rune attack. Since it's shadow damage, it'll ignore armor and in theory deal more damage than using Obliterate on bosses like I've been doing. The glyph also gives me the potential to refresh diseases on the target, which would let me get a few more Scourge Strikes in before having to refresh diseases.

I still need to see if it's got better or worse AoE threat than my Frost build. Frost has Howling Blast with the occasional one being free, whereas this build has Unholy Blight, Wandering Plague, and Corpse Explosion. Both have the Death & Decay glyph and reduced cooldown, so that's not a consideration.

Ragar: Corpse Explosion?

Mordigg: I had a spare point I needed to spend to go further into Unholy and the other choices weren't that appealing. Besides, I'd heard that it was a little better these days. We'll see when I get the chance to test it.

Ragar: How about survivability? I know this is mainly a threat build, but does it have any extra tricks?

Mordigg: Actually it does. It's got Bone Shield and Anti-Magic Zone along with a better Anti-Magic Shell, so it's really more of an anti-caster survivability build than the other. I'll admit I'm not fond of losing the extra 3% miss from Frigid Dreadplate, but hopefully the mitigation from the glyphed Bone Shield should balance out in the end. We'll find out when the group starts back up this weekend.

Ragar: Well, you have fun with that and try not to kill the loudmouth. I'm not sure our contract covers that.

Mordigg: I make no promises.

Team Update: 5/5

Not much on the raiding front this week - the guild Solannis and I run with took a break from 25-man raiding this week while they recruited some extra members. That left us with 10-man Ulduar and whatever else people came up with to fill the time. Still plenty to do for us though, so we made due.

First up was the Children's Week festivities. I'm still not entirely sure why the matrons think it's a good idea to send children off with strangers who fight dragons, undead, and various other unpleasant things for a living. I can think of some cynical reasons, but I'd hope they're not quite that desperate for the extra space in the orphanage. Regardless, me, Sol, and Medeleth participated and ran around orphans to various parts of Azeroth and Outland. Med complained a bit about it being a "waste of his genius" or something like that, but he's really a big softy. One that toys with demonic forces, but a softy nonetheless. None of us have finished all of the achievements for the title, but I don't see that happening any time soon. The Utgarde Pinnacle run is no problem, but I've got no desire to step foot into a battleground as is, let alone with a kid trailing behind me. Oh well, no big deal. I'm perfectly happy with Chef Ragar and I think Sol's got another title in mind. Med doesn't seem to care all that much, so he'll probably stick with his Silvermoon title.

Speaking of the lock, he actually got a little raid time in this week. The first time was an Ulduar-10 swap: we were going after Hodir and Mimiron, so there was no need for a second tank. After last week's "ta-daa!" incident, Sol and I talked to the raid leader and explained that we have better options available when DPS is required. Admittedly though, Sol could've been a bit more diplomatic than saying, "My Ret gear is garbage. I have no intention of making it anything other than garbage. Grab the lock." Regardless, it worked and Med got another shot at raiding. I don't think we saved the meters from the run, but from what I recall, it seemed like a acceptable showing for someone with 90% crafted or AH gear and below hit cap.

Later in the week he had another shot in a 10-man Naxxramas group; some new people in the guild needed gear, so I talked them into taking Med along for the ride. A couple hours later, Med came out with two new pieces of gear (one that he can't put on till he gets more hit rating though) and enough Emblems of Heroism for a third. All in all, a fairly productive week for the lock.

Not a whole lot of news for the rest of the team (shammy's gone Elemental for the moment, Mordigg's mostly been herb farming), but our priest has been making pretty good progress as of late. He's still got eight more levels to go till he's caught up with the rest of us, but that shouldn't take too much longer. He said something about using a Discipline spec to level in Northrend. Personally I don't understand using that over Shadow, but considering me and Sol leveled as Protection, we're not really in a position to judge anyone. He's still got no idea how to heal though, so that'll be a fun learning curve once he starts instancing.

Sol should probably fix that at some point

Story from Solannis' 10-man Ulduar run last night:

Solannis: Hmm... according to what I'm reading, the only reason we would need an off-tank on General Vezax is if we don't kill the Saronite Crystals to make vapors. Are we going for that achievement?

Main Tank: No, just normal the first time.

Solannis: I should probably flip to my Ret spec then.

Main Tank: Yeah. Next time we come I'll bring my Fury gear so I can dps instead. I don't know how good your Ret gear is though.

Solannis: Okay, you see the gear I have on now?

Main Tank: Yeah, your tanking stuff. What about it?

Solannis: *switches to Jawbone* Ta-daa!

Rest of raid: *facepalm*

Believe it or not, that wasn't a recipe for spectacular DPS. Admittedly though, a good chunk of that was from the fact that Sol's: a) not hit-capped, and b) his weapon skill was apparently something like 365. I guess I'll have to have him start spending Emblems of Valor on Ret gear and the rest of us can start looking for crafted items and pieces on the AH for him.

It does seem a bit odd to go to all that trouble for a set of gear that he won't use that often and doesn't even want to use (his attitude towards Ret is about the same as mine towards Arms and Fury), but until I can start convincing the raid leader that we have a perfectly good warlock ready to swap in off the bench, it's our obligation as contractors to provide what is requested. Sigh, and I was just starting to make back that money from the lock's epic flyer too.

Close but no cigar

Ragar: During the weekend, Solannis and some of the guys from the guild decided to try out 10-man Ulduar. They made it pretty far, but unfortunately couldn't down Mimiron before calling it last night. Regardless no one was expecting to make it that far in the first week, so it was still a victory. No loot for Sol, but for the most part Ulduar-10 gear is a sidegrade unless you're taking down bosses in Hard Mode, so no one was really there for loot. Any notes or comments going into this new week of raiding, Sol?

Solannis: Well, for Mimiron in particular, I believe we've got the mechanics down. It's just a matter of execution and everyone surviving. You can't afford to have anyone fall during the first three phases of the fight, but I believe we've got that down for the most part. The fourth phase is everything combined, so that's just going to require some additional practice since we only tried it three times before calling it a night.

Ragar: How's the new spec holding out?

Solannis: So far so good. I did have the opportunity to actually try out my new Divine Sacrifice spell on Mimiron; the MT was trying to plan out cooldowns for phase 1's Plasma Blasts and someone mentioned Hand of Sacrifice, which made me remember that I had that and the upgraded talent version. Nothing in Naxxramas hit particularly hard, so I'd honestly forgotten that I had those abilities. I have noticed something in particular about my current spec/glyphs and our buffs to Divine Plea.

Ragar: Such as?

Solannis: When I'm off-tanking, I have to be really careful to not pull aggro off the main tank. I found that out the other day on the trash leading up to the new Vault boss. The MT asked why I taunted off of him and I said I didn't, which brought about a bit of a tirade. Something about perfect rotations and using every cooldown. Regardless, it means that I have to be a little more cautious. For example: during phase 1 of Mimiron, I can't have Righteous Fury on or I will pull off the MT. For the rest of the fight though, it's fine.

Ragar: Remember to get any pictures this time?

Solannis: As a matter of fact I did, though just two. I forgot to take pictures during the bosses since I was more concerned with living, but I did get a couple good shots on the way to Mimiron.

Tonight's more 25-man work, so hopefully we'll make some progress there. It'll feel a little off though going from Mimiron practice to XT-002 Deconstructor, but hopefully our smaller scale operations will make the 25-man work go that much smoother.

First Impressions of Ulduar and other new stuff

Ragar: Yesterday the doors to Ulduar finally opened up for treasure-hunting adventurers like ourselves. Per the request of the guild Sol and I contract for, he was our representative in their first foray into Ulduar. It was a short trip since everyone got a late start that day, so they only made a little bit of progress. Sol, how was the trip?

Solannis: It took us three or four tries to get Flame Leviathan down, so it wasn't too bad. Nice change from Naxxramas though since it didn't feel like there was a lot of room for errors on our part. I'm not sure that first attempt really counts though since we sorta made a mistake.

Ragar: Oh? What was the mistake?

Solannis: Apparently there are these towers up in the courtyard of Ulduar that do things like send fiery/icy/nature-y/physical doom at you from the sky. We sorta neglected to destroy those towers. That was apparently a mistake. We rectified the problem and after a couple of attempts, the giant doom tank was destroyed and we moved along to Ignis the Furnace Master where we encountered another couple of problems.

First problem, the Flame Ragers in front of Ignis. We received reports today that those are apparently supposed to be attacked primarily from ranged DPS, with melee waiting for the tornados to go away before moving in to attack, then ducking out before the next tornado. Our group? Heavy melee. Let's just say it wasn't pretty.

Next was Ignis himself, and apparently there's some issue with the buff he was getting not going away when the Iron Constructs he summoned were heated, cooled, and shattered. It sounds like the issues been dealt with, but we'll have to wait and see on Thursday since we're not scheduled to go back until then.

Ragar: How was the Argent Tournament? I know you did everything available today and Medeleth's working on it, but I haven't had the chance to check it out yet.

Solannis: The mounted combat is a little strange, but after a bit you get the hang of it. Haven't dueled anyone yet though, so I can't vouch for that. As for the rest of the quests, they're fairly simple, but they require a bit of flying around, especially between Crystalsong and the tournament grounds. I'd imagine Medeleth isn't too happy about doing all of that on his flying machine.

Ragar: Hey, if he wants an epic flyer, then he can finish getting that last thousand gold himself. Most of the team's funds have gone into getting dual spec training and even that's not really enough. You, me, and Mordigg have enough, but the shaman's gonna have to wait or start doing dailies like the rest of us.

Solannis: Yeah, he could use the exercise anyway since he doesn't get a lot of instance work. Oh, and I did pick up that other thing we were waiting for. I couldn't get it until I finished today's daily and I'm still working on the rest of the achievements, but I at least have this.

Ragar: Excellent! We'll have to work on the achievements later, but that'll do. Folks, I'm sure we'll have more later this week like on what our specs are or more Ulduar impressions, but until then we'd like to close on this note:

Pretty sure the dragon was supposed to come after the heroics, not before

I finally managed to line Medeleth up with some Emblem of Heroism level work. The catch? It was Malygos, the guy you're supposed to work your way up to through heroic 5-man dungeons and 10-man Obsidian Sanctum and Naxxramas. Med, however, hasn't seen a heroic since Outland. All of the gear he's got is either stuff the team crafted, stuff we bought off the AH or with spare tokens, and a couple of quest drops. His rotation was based off of notes we pulled from a research site and mostly untested (hard to get into a rotation while doing dailies when everything dies in 3-5 hits). I'll admit it - I thought it was going to be a pretty ugly showing on Med's part, but my guildies wanted a ranged DPS and it was either him or I play hunter with my tanking gun.

I suppose I should've given the lock a bit more credit than I did. For someone with no heroic experience, third place isn't too shabby. Admittedly though, that number is inflated a bit by the fact that warlocks can cheat a bit at the fight by teleporting out of the vortexes, but considering that Med didn't have enough health to consistently survive those, I'll let that one slide. Shame there wasn't another warlock in that run though. It would've been helpful to have someone with an Affliction spec to compare Destruction against.

No lock loot from the run, though a resto shaman friend of ours finally got her healing mace, so that's a plus. Med did get his two achievements though and his first two Emblems of Heroism after being 80 for about a month. At this rate he should get his first piece of Emblem gear sometime this fall.

All that work for three little cards

For the last few months, Mordigg's been flying circles around Sholazar Basin to pick weeds. Months of milling herbs to make ink, swearing at the small amount of Icy Pigment that came out of those herbs, and swearing even more at all of the Chaos cards and Eight of Prisms that were made (they say it's random, but Mord's doubtful). Finally though, they're all finished and turned in.

For Medeleth and the shammy, there's Darkmoon Card: Illusion. Far from a best-in-slot for either of them, but considering that Daikaja's only been to two heroics and the lock's hasn't seen a heroic since Outland, it's better than quest rewards.

Mordigg though got the best of the lot - Darkmoon Card: Greatness. While primarily a DPS trinket, it's also a very nice threat-generation trinket for tanks. It's 180 attack power (more if he was Unholy but he's not), 0.46% parry from Forceful Deflection, and the proc will give another 300 Strength for 600 AP and 75 parry rating for 15 seconds. That parry rating will take a bit of a hit from diminishing returns, but this is primarily a threat trinket; the extra avoidance is a happy side-effect.

I'd still like to set Mord up with a heroic Azjol-Nerub run one of these days to get his Essence of Gossamer for an effective health trinket, but this trinket does a better job of filling in a gap he's reported from the field. While improvements in Strength, hit rating, and expertise in his other equipment have improved his threat output overall, Mord says that his primary weakness right now is opening threat. Due to the disease-reliant nature of his abilities, particularly Howling Blast's current dependence on targets having Frost Fever for maximum damage, it can take a full rotation to really grab onto AoE pulls. This problem is further compounded by missing with abilities, but that's another matter. The main issue is that there's no real burst threat from the beginning for Mordigg, so if someone gets trigger-happy before Death and Decay have had a chance to tick once or twice or before he's finished with Icy Touch/Pestilence/Howling Blast, targets can get pulled away in an AoE pull. There's also Rune Strike, but while it's a good chunk of burst threat, it's "on next swing" and doesn't go off if you switch targets so it's unreliable as an opening burst.

We've heard word that Howling Blast is going to start hitting harder regardless of the presence of Frost Fever (apparently it takes longer to recharge though), so that'll definitely help. In the meantime though, adding a bit more oomph to Mord's attacks with the card will have some effect on his threat generation. It doesn't quite deal with the "overzealous DPS that blows cooldowns on one or two targets" problem, but that's what taunts are for (that and letting them die if they keep it up).

Just tell me who I need to beat up

Another day, another list of notes about different things we'll see when the gates of Ulduar open up. Normally we'd just look at these notes and see if we need to change anyone's spec/rotation/etc., but today we've got something awesome:

Cooking

• Cooking with Style - Obtain a Chef's Hat.

I will have that hat. I don't care what I need to do or who I need to kill - that hat will be mine!

There's probably some other stuff in there I should pay attention to, but I don't think any of it is more important than a new hat. Well, unless they give me a frying pan shield or something like that. I certainly wouldn't say no to some actual cooking utensils. You'd be amazed how difficult it is to make a proper feast with nothing but a fire and a pouch of spices.

Team Update: 3/23

Sorry for the lack of posts; it's been somewhat of a slow week on the adventuring front, combined with me being busy with paperwork. Not everything about the "dungeoneer for hire" business is glamorous.

Mordigg went on the guild Naxxramas run again and picked up a couple of pieces along with some Emblems of Valor to go towards some additional equipment.

Solannis and I mostly did our dailies during the week to chip away towards the extra gold we need to buy Medeleth's epic flight training. We could pool our money together and buy it now, but I'm not fond of breaking the bank for that when he's done leveling. Besides, since he doesn't have any gathering skills, it's kind of a low priority despite how much he complains about the speed.

Speaking of the lock, we managed to snag a couple more pieces from crafters and the auction house for Med since I haven't been able to line up any heroic work for him yet. In the meantime I've had him out doing jobs for the Sons of Hodir since he doesn't have that nifty "I'm a scribe and don't have to grind that rep" shoulder enchant. Right now he says he's at 1780 spell power and 156 hit rating self-buffed. I have no idea how that compares to other casters since I'm a melee-type guy, but it's better than where we started.

I did work with our resident boomkin some during the slow periods. Another few slow nights and he'll be ready to do something in Borean Tundra other than sit by the mailbox and wait for alchemy supplies.

I think until we hear more from the scouts up in Storm Peaks about Ulduar and how to get inside, it'll be fairly quiet on the raiding front for the next few weeks. I'll comment when something comes to mind, but if anyone's got any requests, we'd be glad to hear them. All of the replies I've seen so far have been to stories where I tried to be funny or some of the posts where me and the guys argued amongst ourselves, but if there's anything in particular tank-wise that people are dying to hear about, I'm open to suggestions. If all people want is us talking and/or arguing, then I can work on that too (I've got a post idea about what we 80s do when we're not the ones out in the field, but I'm trying to figure out if it'd only be funny to me).

Oh, and I do have one request if anyone reading this can help me out. I've been looking for a destruction warlock blog for Med to read through. I've got a few Affliction blogs bookmarked that he read through when he was using those builds back in Outland, but I haven't been able to find anything like that for destruction. We've looked at the normal research sites out there to tweak his rotations and all, but it's quite different to read mathematical proofs versus the commentary and opinions of someone who uses the build on a daily basis. So if someone out there can make a suggestion, I'd appreciate it and I'm sure Med would to, even if he'd die before admitting that he needed assistance.

We could field half of a 10-man

Ragar: That is, if we weren't limited by contract to only have one agent out in the field at any given time. Anyways, we've got a new member of the team that just finished their training and are getting prepared to go out and do some real work for the team. Per his request, I've agreed to allow him to introduce himself, so I'll let him take over (I'm gonna regret this...)

Medeleth: Greetings and salutations. I am Medeleth, your friendly neighborhood genius. In addition to the field exercises that he keeps pressing upon me when I'm trying to do real work, I’ve been asked by Ragar to help contribute to this blog project of his and to provide some of my own writings to share with the world. I had to agree of course - as a genius, it is my civic duty to help enlighten my fellow man. It also provides me with a new venue to show off the more recent developments from my research.

“Research?” you ask. Yes, I am a researcher. The majority of my time is spent delving into the secrets of the universe. Through pain-staking work and experimentation, I have unlocked the keys to the myriad mysteries of our modern world. The man you see before you is a student of the one true path to knowledge, the powers of creation and destruction themselves!

What? No, not fel magic! Engineering! Why you people focus on such things as “classes”, I will never understand... While it is true that I am a practitioner of the fel arts, that’s merely a side job of sorts to support my real work. Yes, there’s some research involved in that field as well, but it is mere child’s play to a genius like myself. I’ve already mastered all of the spells the trainers have come up with and I’ve tamed their most “fearsome” demon, so there’s no challenge left to thrill me in that field. However, I will admit that the warlock training does have its uses.

While I would prefer to spend the majority of my time in my lab discovering the answers to all of life’s mysteries, there are obstacles to this goal. Particularly irksome is acquiring resources for my work. Nothing in this modern world of ours is free, especially not the exotic items I require for my ground-breaking discoveries. It would be ideal if I could simply craft something to satisfy the shopkeeper’s need for shiny baubles, but alas their primitive minds cannot fathom the brilliance of my work and, as such, they will only offer me a pittance in exchange. As one cannot make any headway economically by selling their creations for less than the component costs, I am left to fall back on my warlock abilities to generate the income required to support my research.

Now that I’ve made a suitable introduction, I believe I can provide you, the readers, with an idea of what you will see in my future columns. The focus of my writing here shall be on engineering: my current research, recent findings, etc. It is my fondest wish that by showing you the mechanical wonders my craft is capable of, some of you may be inspired to conduct your own research. Perhaps one day we could discuss our research as peers and together we can pave the way to a brighter tomorrow for Azeroth. Additionally (and primarily because Ragar doesn’t know anyone else willing to write about this) I will give my thoughts on my secondary profession, though I will admit right now that any warlock writings are going to be from the perspective of “how does this affect me as an engineer?” I may capture souls and have the powers of flame and shadow at my beck and call, but I am first and foremost a scientist. Until next time, I bid you all farewell. Back to you, sir.

Ragar: I'm shocked. You managed to keep it just short of a novel.

Medeleth: Brevity has its place, but to provide a truly accurate representation of myself in this introduction, now was not such an occasion. Besides, it's not like you're going to run out of space any time soon. Remember which one of us is your technical support for this writing venture.

Ragar: Yeah, yeah, I remember. Back to the matter at hand though. Now that you're 80, we will have to set you up with some decent starting gear before you can start dungeon diving. Sol gave you those bracers from the Emblem of Valor guy and our priest buddy gave you those gloves, so that's at least a couple of decent pieces to go with your goggles. Are you planning on changing specs any time soon? Just so I know what I need to start shopping around for.

Medeleth: No, I believe my current talent allocation will suffice for any further excursions into the field you may demand of me. I will admit that I do miss the rotation style of Affliction to some degree, but Destruction has its own charms now that it's no longer casting Shadow Bolt from here to eternity. There's also somewhat of a parallel between it and the goblin engineers with whom I have associated. It's not quite as structured as true engineering, but there is a similarity. Now if I could somehow combine the two, then it would be another matter altogether. I'm making some headway into that field, but "someone" keeps interrupting me with requests to play adventurer or assassin or whatever someone's paying for that particular day.

Ragar: You know the rules - you're on the team, you're gonna contribute. Besides, we're supplying all of your materials anyways, seeing as how you dropped mining a while back.

Medeleth: I'm aware, I'm simply voicing my opinion. I feel my efforts would be better suited in my laboratory or poring over my notes, but I suppose if someone has to represent the team as artillery, I can't really fault you for sending me out. So when are you planning on pushing me out into some zombie-infested sepulcher or something to that effect?

Ragar: We'll see. I'm guessing that the guild won't be looking for a DPS from us for a while, so it'll probably just be heroics for the near future. Not a bad idea anyways since your gear could still use some improvement. I'll admit I don't know casters all that well, but I know you're not at hit cap and I'm guessing that 1612 spell power isn't gonna cut it for long. I'll give you a heads up once I've got something lined up for you.

Medeleth: I'll be waiting with bated breath...

Mordigg vs. Naxxramas, Round 2

Ragar: Tuesday's the day when me and Solannis' guild has their 25-man Naxxramas run scheduled every week. Per their request, Sol has been our team representative on these dungeon runs. Today though was different - the raid leader asked if Sol had any upgrades he was still looking for out of Naxx. Since Sol's pretty much down to one or two specific pieces and some sidegrades out of there, we were given the option of subbing someone in from the bench. I was tempted to take the spot myself, but since I've already had the chance to do a couple 25-man runs of my own, I gave them Mordigg. So Mord, how was your first 25-man?

Mordigg: Similar for the most part to the trips I've made into the 10-man version of the necropolis, though with a few exceptions. Mostly it was just dealing with larger pulls and having to work around multiple tanks.

Ragar: Pick up anything shiny?

Mordigg: I won a handful of upgrades. Some new shoulders, a breastplate, and a cloak. All three of which replaced some blue-quality pieces from quests or heroics. I lost a few points of my defense buffer, but overall my avoidance went up. I think I calculated something like 50.8% unbuffed, 60.8% with Blade Barrier up.

Ragar: Any thoughts about the experience? Some things you want to watch out for the next time you go?

Mordigg: For the most part I'm satisfied with my performance, though I'm far from perfect. When it was me and the off-tank pulling while the main tank distributed loot, I noticed that some of the DPS could pull off of me if they front-loaded a lot of damage onto a single target. I might be able to clean this up a bit rotation-wise, but I think part of it is just something I need to learn to deal with as a death knight. The majority of my threat generation for groups is built upon damage over time effects (i.e. Death and Decay, disease-based abilities like Howling Blast and Obliterate), whereas my burst threat is from Rune Strike and large Obliterate/Howling Blast hits. Rune Strike is most of my burst, but unfortunately it has two limiting factors - single target only and it goes off on my next melee swing. As someone who wields two-handed weapons, this makes my task somewhat difficult since that "on next swing" means that once I use Rune Strike, it's going to be at least three seconds before I make contact and three seconds in Naxxramas feels like an eternity. I can use some other abilities in the meantime, but having that strike hit faster would certainly make things so much easier.

Ragar: Let's see if we can fix anything on your end. How do you begin the pull?

Mordigg: Depending on whether I run into the pack or pull them to me, it'll be Icy Touch, Plague Strike, Pestilence to spread the diseases, and Death and Decay either before that set (drop it on or in front of a group I'm running towards) or after (Death Grip pull and the group's heading towards me). After that it's usually Howling Blast and a Blood Boil or a Pestilence on a different target to buy another few seconds on diseases and getting Death and Decay up as soon as I can.

Ragar: So not a lot of single-target threat then.

Mordigg: Usually I'll try and focus on that after the initial set of runes. Since there's a 10-second cooldown on each rune, I have to lock in threat on the pack quickly. Part of the problem is that Naxxramas is so AoE-heavy: grab the group, AoE everything down while the tanks hold it all. If someone's going all out on a single target when I'm trying to hold onto everything against warlocks chain-casting Seed of Corruption and hunters using Volley on everything in sight, there's not a whole lot I can do other than use Dark Command when it's available.

Ragar: True enough. Looking at your equipment, I think there are a few spots we can clean up that might help some though. Your bracers can be replaced with the ones sold for Emblems of Valor (I think Sol's almost got enough for another pair) and that green trinket desperately needs replaced with the Essence of Gossamer, so I'll try and set you up with some Azjol-Nerub runs. Of course, if I can get you signed up for a 10-man Naxxramas run in the meantime or get you into next week's 25-man run, you might get something better.

Mordigg: There's also Darkmoon Card: Greatness. That would be a sizeable tanking upgrade as well.

Ragar: Yes, but knowing our luck, we'll end up finishing two Chaos decks by the time we get those last two Nobles cards and I can't afford to pay for what we're missing since the lock's a level from being able to fly in Northrend. 60% speed flight is far from efficient, so you, me, and Sol are gonna have to start making some gold to fix that soon.

Mordigg: Oh joy, more daily quests...

Ragar: It's that or I have to listen to the lock complain about spending all that time flying around and not doing engineering research. It's worth the money to preserve my sanity.

Team Update: 3/7

Not a whole lot to report for myself the last few weeks: cooking dailies, farming ore, the usual. Mordigg spent most of the last few weeks gathering herbs to mill as he tries to make his Darkmoon Card: Greatness trinket; right now we've got the Prisms Deck made so Daikaja can get the Darkmoon Card: Illusion as a healing trinket, but the other decks are all sitting at five or six out of eight cards. He's also run a few more heroics for emblems towards his tier pieces, but really I just need to get him assigned to a 10-man Naxx run again.

Solannis finally got to take down Malygos (well, the 10-man version at least), so now he's got that new tanking neck he'd been looking for. Guild's still working on the bigger version of the fight, but it's something. Funny thing was, he got the achievement, but didn't get the Champion of the Frozen Wastes title. I took a look at his achievements and found the problem. Apparently he's never gone to Oculus; I suppose I'll have to fix that at some point and schedule him for a run one of these days. Since Sol's become our main field agent for raiding these days, he needs a title and until he gets to work and gets Chef, he'll have to settle for Champion of the Frozen Wastes. That or I could make him get Challenger again, but I'm guessing that suggestion won't go over well.

Most of the team's effort the last few weeks though has gone into two of our cloth-wearing members. Our senior engineer, Medeleth, has been making fairly good progress into Northrend. Granted, getting him to step out of the lab was a pain, but once I got it into his head that he wouldn't be able to upgrade his goggles or learn the secrets of the motorcycle without some legwork, he started burning through those quests in Borean Tundra. Earlier today he hit 74, so it shouldn't be too much longer before he catches up to the rest of us and we can start working on some gear for him.

The other clothie who's made some great progress would be our resident priest, Matheion. Up till now, we've never had a priest pass the 20 mark. They'd always end up running for the hills or vanishing from the face of Azeroth or something like that. Regardless, we've finally got a priest that's made it past the Barrens and through the proper application of heirloom items, craftable pieces from other members of the team, and the occasional threat, he'll make it to Northrend or die trying.

7 Questions for me and Sol

Aureilie tagged me in this question thing that's been going around, so I'll play along. I even talked Sol into doing it as well. Let's go ahead and get started.

1. What is your name, and where did it come from?

Ragar: Name's Ragar and, well, my name came from my parents. I think it was the name of some warrior they knew way back when, but I'm not sure.

Solannis: Solannis is an old family name, dating back generations to a magus of some considerable power. Admittedly naming a paladin after a master of the arcane may seem like a bit of a stretch, but the path of the paladin is a relatively new option for my people. I remember having to read some introductory magic textbooks as a child, so I imagine that's where my parents were trying to push me towards before this came along.

2. How old are you, and what is your birthday?

Ragar: 55. Birthday's the 3rd of November. If you need a gift idea, I'm partial to rum.

Solannis: I'm 84 and my birthday would be in September. Ragar and I might seem a bit old, but in perspective, it's about the same as your typical human/dwarf/etc. adventurer. Right after we were considered adults and finished our training, we started out in the field. Adult to tauren and blood elves just happens to be a bit older. Honestly when I hear how old most humans are, it still seems strange to me that their 20s are considered an adult age.

3. Are you in love, and with whom?

Solannis: No, too busy working.

Ragar: Nope, have you seen who I'm surrounded by on a daily basis? All of my time is spent working or trying to keep them from blowing themselves or someone else up (well, unless we're getting paid for it).

4. What is your favorite mount and why?

Ragar: Midnight, my faithful steed from Attumen in Karazhan. He just looks awesome.

Solannis: And he's the first horse that could ever hold a Tauren without snapping like a twig?

Ragar: That too.

Solannis: I'd say my Bronze Drake would be my favorite mount. It was the first time I'd ever tried tanking heroic Stratholme and I won the roll. I know quite a few people have it now, but it still looks classy and it's a good memento of a milestone in my tanking career.

5. Do you prefer a certain type of Azerothonian meal, and where do you get it from?

Ragar: Dragonfin Filet with a couple mugs from my trusty Brewfest Pony Keg. It doesn't get any better than that. As for where it's from, I catch the fish myself and the pony keg's from hours of running back and forth on rams and barking for various breweries until my voice gave out.

Solannis: Dragonfin is indeed quite good, but I prefer the variety of flavors offered by a Fish Feast. For the beverage, I find Kungaloosh goes quite well with most seafood. These are usually prepared by Ragar (I'm still working on the Fish Feast recipe), though there are a few chefs in the raid typically who come prepared for hungry adventurers.

6. You know those giant mushrooms in Zangarmarsh? What is your theory on how they came to be, and why are they so huge?

Ragar: Plants and fungi aren't really my thing, but I'd guess it's probably got something to do with either those Sporeggar guys. That or just the fact that it's a giant alien swamp, so they'll probably have some giant alien plants and mushrooms.

Solannis: I've seen various items on top of the mushrooms as I've flown past, so I suppose it's possible that they might have been grown on purpose by ancient orcs or something like that to serve as elevated housing for protection against predators. It's not really my area of expertise though, so I can't say with any certainty.

7. If you saw the Lich King walking towards you, what would you do?

Ragar: Take a nap while he gives another long speech just to portal away. Man, that guy loves the sound of his own voice... Now if this was in Icecrown Citadel, that's another matter. I'd be getting ready to charge in and fight. We may be contractors, but we're big supporters of the Argent Crusade and if a mission comes up to go into the Lich King's house, you bet we'll be signing up for the job.

Solannis: Ragar pretty much summed up my feelings on the matter, though I admit I'm probably a bit more eager to take down Arthas, what with him decimating most of Quel'Thalas to resurrect Kel'Thuzad, destroying the Sunwell that fed our need for arcane magic, turning one of our champions into a banshee, and a few other minor issues my people might have with him. There's also the matter of atonement on our behalf, since we're not exactly innocent ourselves. I don't regret the actions my people took in mastering the Light in defense against our enemies, but considering the events that have taken place since the Dark Portal reopened, we do have some obligation to make amends, if only for pride's sake.

8. (Dav added this one) Be honest, how many times have you used the Grizzly Hills outhouse without any real reason?

Ragar: There's an outhouse out there? Huh, didn't know about that.

Solannis: Was unaware of that as well, though admittedly I didn't really make it my quest to find new and unexplored restroom facilities in the wilderness while I was running around doing quests.