My weekend can be described as having been fun, but not very lucky. Mostly using Kyroc, and doing groups with my guild.
Saturday afternoon we went to Stratholme living, in a really strange and memorable excursion. We all had time on our hands, and so we decided to take it slow, and do all the side quests and events that this half of the dungeon has to offer. We started doing the quest for Smokey's Lighter, and found the keys for three post boxes in the same corner. This led us all over the dungeon, even into the undead side, to open the three post boxes. We got to know the dungeon a lot better than the usual "straight to the end" runs, but it took a lot of time. As you can now only do it in 5-man groups, and the number of mobs where we were had not been noticeably reduced, you don't have any margin of error any more. One add, one runner, or one stupid eye summoning gargoyles, and you wipe. Then our circuitous path and occasional wipes took us so long that we had respawns, which then took us even more time. By the time we had killed the Postmaster, Timmy the Cruel, the Archivist, and Balnazzar, the whole expedition had taken us 5 hours. Lots of fun, but as I said, not lucky, the Archivist didn't drop the Devout Gloves. Unless Blizzard changed the drop chance, it is only 1 in 6, and I might me going there for weeks to come to get them. What did drop a lot was Lightforge armor pieces, the tier 0 paladin set. That used to be totally useless for a Horde group, but now the first three parts are "bind on equip", and can be flogged to a paladin via the neutral auction houses. I'd recommend to paladins and shamans to check the neutral AH more often now.
Saturday evening we didn't have any guild event planned, so I asked around whether anyone was interested in doing the Crimson Courier and Scarlet Oracle quests in Eastern Plaguelands. Turned out that quite a lot of people either had to do these quests, or had nothing better planned, and we got a dozen or so guild mates together. The fights were a bit chaotic, as you can't do it in a raid group, you need to split into a group with the people having the quest and one or more support groups. But we managed both the courier and the oracle on the first try, without wiping, and all got our quests done. I got a very nice wand, Stormrager, for Kyroc as a quest reward.
On Sunday after lunch we tried the "new" UBRS with 10 people. Until Rend that wasn't a problem at all, and I got that part of the Onyxia key quest chain done. But the part after that is rather tough with only 10 people. We managed to kill the Beast, and I got some leggings for Kyroc. I had passed on the same leggings before, but their stats have been improved in the patch, and now they were slightly better than what I was wearing. Then we tried to fight our way towards General Drakkisath. There we noticed that some groups of mobs had been removed from his throne room, the only change we noticed to the mob density in the dungeon. But unfortunately while fighting one of the groups all our rezzers and the warlock died, our soulstones had been used before, and the shaman didn't have an ankh on him. So we had to run back, and there found that the dungeon had respawned, and we couldn't join the other half of the group. This forced us to abandon the dungeon, without having killed Drakkisath, which would have been rather tough anyway. I went to Orgrimmar to hand in Rend's head and get the Warchief's Blessing buff. But it seems that the buff is only given out ever so often, and I didn't get buffed.
So I rushed back to Blackrock Mountain unbuffed, where our guild's Molten Core raid was about to start. Although we had already killed Luci and Magmadar on Friday, due to the unscheduled MC reset on Friday night they were back, so we started all over again. We are getting better at this, we killed Luci, Magmadar, and Gehennas in 4 hours, last time it was still 5 hours. Gehennas dropped the gloves of prophecy, but my bad luck struck again, there were two other priests which also had a +50 bonus to their loot roll from our loot raid point system, and I only rolled a 13.
If you hear me bitching about the bad chances to get epic loot, this might be because I am especially unlucky in this area. I'm playing WoW since the US beta, started with my guild on this Euro server on the day the game was released over here, have been raiding with my guild since we reached level 60, and am now raiding at least twice a week. And how many epics did I get up to now? ZERO. Raslebol doesn't have a single purple item. Kyroc has two tailored purple items, the Truefaith Vestments and the Flarecore Gloves, but not a single raid drop epic. Waldin has an epic mace and shield in the bank, but those were bought in the AH with twink money. The only epic loot roll I ever won in this game in a year-and-a-half was that for the Blackskull Shield, a level 41 shield I found long ago, when Raslebol was in his mid-40s, but that has long since been replaced by some better blue shield. I tend to be sceptic of the corrupting influence of epics on people, so the epics don't like me either, and tend to avoid me. :)
Raslebol I didn't play that much this weekend, but his luck was better. I found Gloves of Valor for 60 gold on the auction house and bought them. Thus I had the bracers, belt, and gloves needed for the first steps to upgrade to tier 0.5 and could start that quest series. I already got the bracers upgraded, and am now at the step where you need to capture the essences from the ghosts. In other good news, Raslebol had since a long time two Deathbone items from Scholomance in his bank, as I always wanted to get a set together one day. Patch 1.10 made the Scholo set items all a lot better, so now the previously green Deathbone items are blue, and were better than what I was wearing, having acquired a defence bonus. So I'm wearing those two items now, and my defence is up to 373, which is already pretty solid. My health and armor could be better, but they are also sufficient for most purposes.
I might be playing Raslebol more often. We used to have lots of warriors in the guild, but most of them are playing a priest or mage now, some left, and those who remain usually are more interested in raiding. Getting a tank for a 5-man or 10-man group with the guild has become quite difficult. I'll just handle it flexible, and when there is another priest who wants to 5-man, but no tank, I can always use Raslebol.
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