Patchwerk DPS:

Yesterday was another bountiful raiding night. First Rades went into Naxx to kill Patchwerk for the weekly, and after that joined a ToC25 that was just starting. Unfortunately, it didn't go well and we wiped on Northrend Beasts four times...all four on Icehowl because people couldn't move out of the crashes. Kind of sad, really.

On a personal level, it was a blast...topped damage meters on 3 of the 4 attempts (1 time was too close after he crashed someone and got one-shot by Icehowl), and was #1 overall. Was also proud when the raid leader remarked how impressive it was that a Beast Mastery hunter was #1 for damage. Another hunter in the raid churlishly remarked that I was the best-geared hunter, so I should be doing the most damage. However, I checked him out after, and his gear was actually better than mine. FAIL. Other stats included me with the least amount of damage taken overall (0.9%) which I found amusing, only two deaths (feign ftw!), and my 5 Icehowl rage dispels while the other two hunters had only one each - what were they doing?!

ToC25 DPS (overall, 4 attempts at Northrend Beasts)

After that I was puttering about on Mardak when the raid who I had done ICC10 and TotGC with last week messaged me to see if I wanted to go back into TotGC and try to knock it out. We picked up where we had left off, on Faction Champions. Definitely the most annoying fight out of the entire raid. We wiped twice (possibly three times), but got them down eventually. During our attempts I fine-tuned my druid methods and eventually settled on an old standby from the Black Knight phase 2...just run around the outskirts of the melee nonstop while tossing HoTs and dispels, throwing in an Entangling Roots or Cyclone here and there. Chaotic and messy, but it worked. Sunreaver Assassin's Gloves dropped which I rolled on, as we had no feral druid or rogue. Another druid rolling for offspec won though.

The Twin Val'kyr were surprisingly easy. We wiped once, mostly because of their new ability Touch of Light/Darkness which we were a little slow to react to. The second time we had it down great, with everyone switching colors as necessary smoothly and quickly. I even started switching colors as appropriate just to grab extra orbs floating around the room to prevent them from drifting into the fray.

Sadly, this was the only screenshot I took during the entire raid, after biting it in attempt #1 from Touch of Darkness.

The very nice Illumination dropped, and while it's not ideally statted for druids, it sure is nice. Me and a priest with the same main/offhands as myself rolled, and I won it! Three gem sockets = very sexy. I also received by default (the other druid had left) Vest of Shifting Shadows, another feral piece. My previous "tanking" set was a blue, so this is a significant upgrade. Time to start bearing?

We tried Anubarak a few times, but the limited ice and brutal adds/scarabs just ravaged us. We called it a night after about 3 tries, but I think we all want to go back in soon and finish it off. I know I certainly do.


I was going to head to bed after that, but got roped into a random heroic. Oddly enough, the tank we ended up with was the exact same tank who we had ran Pit of Saron with the previous night. What is remarkable is that it had been her first time tanking Pit. We walked her through everything, but it was iffy at times, like when she accidentally pulled the last mob prior to Ick and Ick at the same time, before I had explained Ick's various mechanics. Even worse was when we accidentally engaged both of the problem packs going up the hill after Ick, something which has always resulted in a wipe before. Miraculously, we all survived that pull - my HPS for the fight was 6k, which is absurd.

We wiped twice in the caves, once because she misunderstood and got to the Revenant and kept going, the other because I drew healing aggro. I was worried the other 2 strangers we were with would get pissy and start complaining, but they were perfect and stayed with nary a complaint. We one-shot Tyrannus with no tanking trouble - in fact, she tanked all 3 bosses flawlessly - and we finished the instance with exactly 1 minute left before server shutdown! We all exchanged high fives, /danced and celebrated for the remaining minute. So it was funny to see her the very next night. This time it was Nexus so there was no explanations necessary. ;)

After Nexus we headed to Wintergrasp to join a guildie who we'd been chatting with on vent during the run. Apparently there was about 5 minutes left and Horde was completely losing, but we figured we'd snipe a Wintergrasp mark. To our shock, we won, and then wound up in a VOA25 run. Nothing dropped for me (some Boomkin leather dropped but a feral druid rolled offspec on it, so I didn't bother), but my hunter friend got the ilvl 264 hunter gloves. /envy! We also knocked out a quick VOA10 afterwards, no loot, but good to get those out of the way early in the week.