One Night In Ulduar

One night in Ulduar makes a Shaman humble
Not much between despair and ecstasy
One night in Ulduar and the melee tumbles
Can't be too careful with your company
XT dropped a Gravity Bomb next to me

"Kate, wake up!"

"Mmph...g'way...Nesingwary Moon Laser...grmph."

"We're doing Ulduar and we need you to come DPS. Wake UP!"

"Gimme back my blankets!"

"No. Now get up and go get a drink while I log you in."

Grumble, grumble. "Fine. Hate you."

"Okay, the computer's ready. Just hop on vent and let them know you're logged in."

Stare blankly at screen.

"Guys, Tana's on, go ahead and invite her!"

Minutes pass.

"Tana, are you going to log on?"

"'m logged on 'ready."

"That's funny, I don't see you online..."

Mumble.

"What was that?"

MUMBLE.

"What do you mean you're not in the guild??"

Grumble. Accept guild invite. Accept raid invite. Accept summon.

"Okay, now the first boss is Flame Leviathan. Everyone knows this fight, so we're going to be trying it with four towers up. Demolishers tanks choppers cannon pyrite Leviathan BOOM!"

Confusion.

"Uh, guys, she hasn't done this fight before."

"Just have her get in your siege engine and shoot stuff."

Okay, shooting stuff I can handle.

"Autobots, transform and roll out!"

...

We're all gonna die.

-------------------------------

I should probably take this opportunity to confess: I consider myself a raider, if not especially hardcore, but until last night I had seen the inside of Ulduar once. It was on my Hunter, back before bombs were nerfed so they wouldn't go off during XT-002's Tympanic Tantrum, and it was a miserable wipe-fest. I was brought in because it was a pure melee group, then kicked because I couldn't solo all of the adds before they reached the boss.

I cleared 10-man ToC with Jon's guild before setting foot in Ulduar again. Yes, I skipped an entire tier of raiding.

Last night was a great opportunity to get caught up, and I had a blast:

Flame Leviathan was much more fun that I expected from the whiny descriptions I'd heard in Trade Chat right after Ulduar was released. I got to ride up top in the gunner's turret of the siege engine Jon was piloting, and since my biggest complaint about vehicle combat is the steering, I really enjoyed myself. I'm a Hunter, I shoot things. Okay, so I was actually on my Shaman, but I had fun, darnit. We ended up going for two towers instead of four, but it was still fun.

Next up was XT-002 Deconstructor, my old nemesis. He was surprisingly weak compared to what I remembered, and no one died to bombs. We didn't quite have the DPS to try for hardmode, but I'm not complaining.

Razorscale was fun in a crazy sort of way. I was told to focus on the "big shirtless dudes" and had a bit of trouble figuring out which dwarves had shirts on and which ones didn't. They're made of metal, it's tricky! I cheated and spent my time interrupting the casters instead. <.<

--This is the part where Blogger ate half of my post so the next couple boss descriptions are going to be short cause I don't want to write everything out again.--

Ignis was a big pair of feet with fire everywhere. He didn't seem too complicated, but he picked me up and killed me so I guess it's a hard fight after all. I couldn't even use my healthstone. :(

Assembly of Iron (which I shall refer to as the Three Bears) we tried first on medium-hard mode, which did not go well, and then normal mode, which we somehow survived. Baby Bear turned into a GIANT LIGHTNING SPIDER at the end. 0_o

I was a little behind the rest of the raid when we got to Kologarn, so I didn't get to see him do his pop-up book thing but that was okay because the fight was so FUN! As melee I didn't get to see much of the eye lasers I was warned about, and I didn't have to do anything about the crazy packs of adds, either--all I had to do was beat on his arm til it broke off, then hit him in the stomach for a while until he decided he'd had enough of that and grew his arm back, and then it was back to the arm again. The really fun part was that he and his arm had low enough health that I felt like I was actually making a difference, unlike certain bosses that just take FOREVER to die *cough*Anub'arak*cough*. About halfway through, Jon told me to start using Chain Lightning instead of Lightning Bolt, and thanks to that and the efforts of one of our DPS DKs we killed both arms and the body all at the same time and got a nifty achievement!

Auriaya was a little disappointing after all I'd heard about the crazy cat lady--the pouncing kitties didn't seem to cause much trouble at all. We just stacked up in a corner and went wild. The trash leading up to her made up for it, though--basically you play monkey in the middle with big balls of lightning. It's been a long time since trash was fun, and I really enjoyed it.

Hodir was the first of the "big" bosses we did, and he totally beats out Kologarn as my new favorite fight. We wiped on our first attempt--a bunch of people got frozen--but I at least got a nifty achievement for picking up all of the buffs at once. We downed him on our second try, and it was just crazy. I love fights where the positioning really matters, had a ton of fun running in and out and around trying to stand in the spotlights and on the ice and avoid the glowy blue circles. Near the end, I somehow got aggro--scary scary! I held out for a couple seconds, popped my wolves' Twin Howl to taunt him off of me, got him back on me as soon as it wore off, and then the tanks got him off of me and we killed him. It should have been embarrassing, but it felt pretty awesome. I was all RAWR I ARE SHAMAN TANK. :D

Thorim was our last boss of the evening (though I could have kept going much longer), and also pretty fun. It took us a few tries--the arena group was having a lot of trouble and they ended up with six people while the other four of us took the stairs--but we finally got to the part where we could fight the boss. The gauntlet was super fun, especially once I got the hang of the giant fireballs, but Thorim himself was kind of boring. The zappy feet were just confusing, and he didn't seem to have any fun mechanics like Hodir. (And the IN THE MOUNTAINS line was not nearly as epic as I had been lead to believe. They should have had Mr. Smite do his voice!)

Anyway, that's probably as far as I'll get this week--tonight Jon and I are going over to his parents' house to have dinner with the family in celebration of them finally getting rid of his little brother Brian leaving for college (Gratz Bri! :D) and while I'm sure the guild will finish up the rest of Ulduar while we're gone, family stuff comes first.