More Ulduar Ownage

Ulduar again. Getting better at being in the "right place at the right time" to start DPS when everyone else does, and spend less time running around chasing kited adds, avoiding things that kill you and legging it to get in range of bosses when heroism pops. I've even started noticing when things are going on aside from my target. Flaming cyclones approaching from behind - I moved. Feral defender respawns, called, target switched and dps started. People standing in void zones - yelled at. My aggro-dump is hardly needed these days, but when it is, it's never on cooldown... I might even try for a Naxx undying run!

Things looked good from the start, downing Flame Leviathan, Razorscale, XT and Ignis without breaking a sweat. We even saved a construct and slapped Shattered on our scoresheets. Moving swiftly on to the Antechamber, Kologarn went down without a fight and we farmed Auriaya as usual. She dropped an Elemental Focus Stone, which, since the introduction of BoP trading in groups, I begged to equip for my Epic achievement. Didn't matter really, since I won it.

We decided not to skip the Iron Council this week, and give it a single try - just to see how the group handled it. We've been running for a few weeks with the same people, they all know the tactics and put out good DPS, fair threat from the tanks and great healing. What could go wrong?

Well, everything could. But nothing did. I Choose You, Stormcaller Brundir! finally flashing on my screen along with The Antechamber of Ulduar . Happy news.

Normally we'd head for Hodir and call it a night, but as we were ahead of schedule we decided we had the right composition to take on Thorim. 4x of us (tank, healer and 2x locks) took corridor duty so I gained I'll Take You All On when we defeated him. First time was a wipe because someone didn't follow instructions. We weren't ALL stacked on the Collossus' heels so someone got Charged... This caused the colossus to spin round to face the tank and, before I could move, his Smash hit through my cloth for around 40,000 damage. Goodnight!

Undeterred. we nailed it second time around with relative ease. Managed to avoid all the lightning blasts and put out fairly good DPS.

250 Dungeon & Raid Emblems was a nice surprise - Didn't realise I'd got so many tokens, although still a little miffed that the statistics for the old TBC heroic badges didn't start until AFTER I'd bought pretty much everything the sunwell vendors sold. I reckon I spent over 600 badges prior to Wrath but my actual statistics don't reflect that.

After Ulduar, we had a quick blast through a couple of heroics. For the last 20-30 Violet Hold Heroic runs, Lavanthor has been hiding. He turned up, and I finally achieved Lockdown!

Other interesting runs included Trial of the Champion (Heroic, of course) that had the last "mini boss" required for the achievement (I think it was the Orc Warrior).

Alt-wise, Settled has reached Level 80 and is starting to gear up (Colosseum normal) for DPS and Tanking. I'm going to drop the healing spec and take a protection stance, as we're always missing tanks for runs. The fact that I have enough mats for a Titansteel Shield Wall and three nice defence plate pieces dropped in the Colosseum have NOTHING to do with it. I've gemmed the DPS gear as best I can with a mixture of strength, +hit, crit (on the meta) and a +10 stats and will be looking more into which instances I need to farm to get some more decent gear.

Toc (normal) has 8x tanking pieces including plate armor, rings, necklaces and trinkets; 9 suitable for DPS; and 4x suitable for healing. Getting hold of them is only a matter of time, and finding a group willing to farm it for a couple of hours - which my guild have kindly fulfilled. I can see (again) the process of winning loot, gemming it, enchanting it, and replacing it on the first couple of naxx runs - so I'm NOT going to be putting expensive stuff on gear I think I'll be replacing soon. Obviously, if iLevel 226 stuff drops that's only going to be bettered by ulduar 25 and toc 10/25 stuff, I'll go to town on it, but I'm not falling into the same traps I did with Everwrath. (Bought and enchanted a Titansteel spellblade at a cost of almost a thousand gold an hour before getting the Grieving Spellblade off Faerlina...)