Ok, so my group which is group 3 of blood for bloods naxx 10 mans ran on saturday. I intially didnt know what to expect since we were planning to two heal it up through 4 horsemen and patchwerk as well as bring along a guildy who is a prot warrior but still low on gear. It worked out really well though since the prot warrior got a lot of big gear upgrades since our MT and OT dont need any gear. We cleared everything with relative ease and a decent pace and finally came to the 4 horsemen where through experience we know we require a 3rd healer. Fortunately, a leet resto druid friend of the guild signed on who only runs 25 mans, and he popped into the group in the place of the prot warrior and on we went. We two shot 4 horsemen then one shot the rest of the construct quarter. This was mind blowing to me since we had at least one pug mage in the group who was learning the fights, though he had real strong dps. Somehow we just kept going and kept downing bosses without any major highups. We then ported up to sapphiron and one shot that ice dragon for our 3rd key to malygos. Onto Kael'thuzad who our group had never downed before, and i had only attempted once. Now conceptually, this is not the most difficult fight. Simply survive phase 1, then once KT strikes you engage him and have two very simple rules. Heal anyone who gets iceblocked immediately, and stay out of the red void zones. Thats all you have to do. If you can do those two things and have reasonable DPS, KT will eventually go down. The problem is that the margin for error in those two things is very small. The window to heal an iceblock person is 3 seconds so the healers really have to fire off some flash instant heals. The red stuff you need to get out of real fast or you will instantly die. This is a huge problem for our raid members who have some lag. Needless to say, getting up to the learning curve took 4 or 5 times, but we got him. I think i gave myself carpal tunnel clicking buttons so hard those last 10% of KTs health. I was freaking out.
The night turned out well for me on the gear front as well. I got the
Nerubian Conquerer as well as the
Wraith Spear. Now I for the longest time as a NE hunter have mostly refused to use guns. I always thought it was too much of a dwarf thing and that the loud concussive banging would bother me. But if you look at the gear in Naxx, there really arent any good bows or crossbows as weapons, but only guns. So i decided for the first time to level my gun skill and use a gun as a ranged weapon. I know I dont play on a RP server, but sometimes i like to dabble in it. A NE would never use a gun, but this time it will be an exception. My bow strings simply can not withstand the frigid cold of northrend, so I had to move to a gun.
Also, I am still on the hunt for spirit beast and rare spawns in Sholazar Basin, and I finally got one. I spotted King Krush (large green dino) and nuked his big green butt down. It was a bit harder since i had recently tamed a lvl 76 raptor so with him as my tank holding aggro was a tiny problem. I did manage to kill King Krush relatively easily still, and got myself the northern exposure achievement. Unfortunately, I had to log back on at 2am EST to see what would spawn next for rare spawns at the 6 hr repop timer. So i logged back on and was circling. For one second my targetting macro went off for Loque'nahak and I spun around spamming my macro, but it was gone. I dont know if someone beat me to the tame, whether it was a pet of someone already who didnt change the name and mounted up, or what. But i got that huge adrenaline rush only to have it gone instantly. Oh well, i will find it eventually. It took me weeks and weeks just to see Krush alive, so i think i am getting closer and the hard work is going to pay off soon.
I also did my first Strand of the Ancients BG which was interesting. I expect now in full PVE gear to get obliterated by PVP players in season 4-6 gear. I simply cant match their survivability normally. But it was sweet that I actually managed to one on one kill some people. Sure it was normally a lock who wasnt looking and i would drop an intimidate on them and nuke. But it was good to do some PVP again. For those that dont know, when i turned 70 and was still a solo leveling noob, i was told i was too weak for heroics, so in order to get stronger i just did BGs and PVPed for what seemed like months at a time. I had full S2 gear, when that was still good, and had really gotten pretty good at it. Maybe i will regain some glory eventually. LOL, i even joined a guild 5v5 team. Hunters are notoriously bad at arenas due to the whole moving around thing, but we'll see. I have never done an arena, and dont have any PVP gear other then something i got off of Archavon. It will be painful.
