Project Lore

A lot has been going on lately. There has been an influx of activity in game, and a lot of the focus on a couple of in game events, namely Hallow's End and the Scourge Invasion. With the increased interest in WoW, though, there has been a rebirth of raiding for our guild. The Totally Rad Guild has been working on downing Kael for a long, long time. Since Monday, in fact. With only one or two raid members having actually been involved in a Kael fight prior to Monday, we threw together a run to get a couple of attempts under our belt (and a few more Tier 5 shoulder tokens) before a serious attempt at killing the blood elf prince last night. After getting second on the DPS charts while wearing a my lucky hat, we headed to Kael'thas with a purpose. So, With each successive attempt, we made significant progress, spirits remained high for the most part, and there were only a couple of deaths during our successful kill. We finished the entire fight in about ten minutes, and killed Kael before he got off his second gravity lapse. Although I've never seen the fight before, I feel like either our raid gained significant skill in the past week since we first downed Vashj, or the nerfs to raid bosses were extremely harsh. I had serious doubts about our ability to execute the strategy, and I think the decreased health and melee damage along with a nearly universal increase of DPS helped our raiders learn the fights much faster than previously possible. Add in the fact that there are a million write ups on how to kill the guy, and it's no wonder we got him down on the second night of attempts. However, you'll notice that the screen shot above (click for detail) is not of a dead Kael. It's our favorite fire mage, Dannydarko, on his shiny new phoenix mount, with a few jealous guildies alongside.

That's right. The Ashes of Al'ar dropped on our very. first. Kael'thas kill.

Difficult to believe? Yes. Did trade chat explode when he arrived in Shatt? Yes. Is Danny going to get more tells than he thought possible? Yes. Has Nameless been farming Kael for months hoping for the drop? Yes. Is this the end of the question and answer portion of my post? Maybe. Now, you might notice the Firey Warhorse towards the bottom left. That's Callihan on the other shiny new mount from last night. After all of the excitement and screenshots, I wanted to head to Kara to get an Arcanite Ripper before Tenris left town, so we decided to do a full clear. One Kill, One Midnight Mount, which Callihan won. We blazed through the rest of Kara, our off tank got both the Plate Chest and the Shield from Nightbane, and the Ring of a Thousand Marks dropped off of Prince for our rogue, seen above on the Albino Drake. All in all, an unbeliveable night for loot. We tried going to SM with Danny for the Headless Horseman mount, but it appeared that his Mount Juju ran out with the Daily Quest reset.

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This may seem obvious to many of you, but I thought I would share a bit of insight that I learned the hard way. No matter how much you want to free up that extra bag slot, you should always think twice (or maybe 3 times) about destroying your hard earned pieces of loot. I know it is hard to see a use for those boots you got in Kara when you have a shiny new piece of tier 5 sitting in your bags, but chances are you will need it again. I learned this lesson the hard way when it came time for our guild to take on Hydross in SSC. This fight requires that the main tanks deck themselves out in full resist gear, while still remaining uncritable. I, of course, was elected to be the guilds frost tank, meaning I needed to have both 365 frost resist, and 490 defense. This is not an easy task, and I found myself having to get creative to keep my defense up. This meant regemming many of my lower level Kara items and blues to maximize defense. As I began this long process I came to realize that there were a few items that I had long ago disenchanted that would be perfect for this! There was the trinket from Shadow Labs, that belt from Moroes, and those boots from Chess that would have put me right where I needed to be with minimal effort. Of course I had stupidly decided that I would rather have a void crystal to sell than a “useless” piece of gear, so I went ahead and did what any good enchanter would do and sharded it all. Next thing I know, I need this gear again and I'm back in Kara rolling on loot! While getting this stuff is fun and exciting the first time around, the second time it turns into a real grind. There is nothing like keeping your fingers crossed that some loot will drop that you already won months ago! Lucky for me I have a great guild, that was very understanding in the matter, but still there was a lesson to be learned here. I think this may be a timely reminder with WotLK breathing down our necks. As we all hop on the first boats out to Northrend, I'm sure we will be seeing all sorts of new gear finding its way onto our toons. There is no doubt that we will eventually replace all we have, but take a second look before you get rid of anything for good. I know there are still vanilla WoW trinkets that are used in TBC end game, and I have no doubt there is a piece or two we have now that will have its situational use for a long time to come. Think twice about getting rid of your gear, particularly If you are a tank, but I imagine the same goes for others as well. You never know when the next fight, the next unexpected gear drop, or a creative application of an ability can change your whole set of priorities when it comes to important stats!

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