ULDAR 25

August Knights ran their first Uldar 25 run last night. The WWS report is linked. Overall, for my first time in there I was pretty pleased with what we were able to get accomplished, including Heroic: Nerf Gravity Bombs. I made healer 5 out of 7 overall, but just main tank healing is pretty good. So now I am off to research a better healing spec than regrowth spam that I am using. Nourish with T7/8 is going to be a requirement, which I am looking forward to it.

Pictures from last night to follow, while I relax tonight. I also made Exhalted with Cenarion Circle finally and made my Mace of Unending Life which completed my set of Symbols of Unending Life.

Blasting from the Past

Well, I have been kind of busy, but I did manage to get a few dozen runs in.  I am a little miffed at the fact that I do not have healing or blasting information form numerous Heroic runs, because unbeknownst to me, the CombatLog is turned off every time you rez.  I did however get a few dozen runs in, HEY ME.  

So this is the combat log from Uldar 10 run on Wednesday night.  I got to fill in for Rjuna whom was out. After this run, I got a confirmed healer spot for this week.  

Our "August Knights" Naxx 25 run on Thursday night, we had a lot of missing people including a main tank and the main raid leader.  

Heroic Runs on Friday morning, which we went form one Heroic to the next included, Utgarde Keep, Nexus, Azjol-Nerub, and Violet Hold.  More Heroic Runs on Friday afternoon, Culling of Stratholme, 2 attempts at Eye of Eternity followed by a Heroic Halls of Stone which bugged out on us. 

Try at getting some stats in on AQ 20 Sunday, but doesnt look like I got much from our run. 

My partial Heroic Utgarde Pinacle run stats from Monday morning. Unfortunately, I don't have the rest of the runs from Monday nor do I have the Heroic Halls of Lightning I got to run as a Moonkin.  But I did get a few Heroic Achievements for the runs.

So all in all a busy, yet prosperous 4 day weekend of World of Warcraft and Heroic Runs.  I also managed to complete my Feralheart Set quests as well. I know it is about useless, but hey it was fun to solo now and quite a remarkable accomplishment.  I also finished up my Ironforge Champion and now working on my Exodar Valiant for Argent Tournament.  And completed all of the Storm Peaks quests, which lead me to Honored with Sons of Hodir faction. And as if to say I was slacking, I also made Exhalted with the Kalu'ak faction and Darnassus. Whew, what a busy 4 days.  I raked in almost 140 achievement points over this past weekend.  So, with Uldar 10 Red tonight, I am ready to heal some butt.

Restarting Toons

Well as you may be aware of or may not be aware, restarting your WoW toons is tough.  You see, I started a Druid named Cebon, then restarted a Druid to play with friends named Fenrous, then moved to a Blood Elf Mage named Cywyn, and now back to Fenrous.  I am continually frustrated by the non-completness now that I ahve on two different servers, especially when if I combine achievments i would be near the 5K mark.  So what does that mean for me, lots of time spent doing older content between raiding.  Well at least the moneys good.

Exhalted Champion of Stormwind

Well, Fenrous made the achievement, Exhalted Champion of Stormwind and began his training for Champion of Ironforge training today. Looking forward to posting my healing sessions from the Heroic runs this afternoon.

I am still working on my initial factions for Wrath of the Lich King and hopefully can push into more Heroic level instances to get the tabard bonuses working in my favor.

Mountain Dew for a New PET!!

Argent Tournament / Daily Obession

Well, I was in a trying to figure out a solution to a problem with Fenrous. You see I am an achievement nut. Like pokemon, I got to collect them all; however, back in the day, I did most of the starting area content for Night Elves, Humans, and Dwarves, which meant that leveling thier reputations was going to be a TON of Runecloth turn ins. Having already done this once to get to Exhalted with Stormwind for a Horse mount; I was not looking forward to doing it a for each of the other 3 factions. Then along came the Argent Tournament, and thus there was much rejoicing.

So, now the Argent Tournament quest chains are a daily obsession in which I participate in completing quests for Champion's Seals and Valiant Tokens. I am currently a Champion of Darnasus and working on Stormwind. I frequently try to group to do several of the quests including Threat from Above, Before the Citadel, and At The Enemy's Gates. The nice part is that the numerous of these quests can be completed at the same time.

So today, I dragged Draklite over to the AT area now that he is level 77 and started doing the quests with him.  We tried dueling but twice the duel canceled before i as done killing him. Think he was having a hard time with loosing his target and me being behind him.  Yes, I know, not fair, but was kind of fun. 

And my Argent Squire never looked so good.  Tomorrow I should have the pendant for Stormwind as well. And there was much rejoicing!

Eye of Eternity

Had my first go at raid healing for EoE 10 tonight. We didn't down Maly, but I am feeling better about raid healing now. First attempt there was some pressure on my mana pool / regen, but on the subsequent attempts, was much better. Class Timers is a MUST, and playing on my laptop isn't as much fun as my screamer machine at home. So we ate some blockage tonight, but all in all I lived to heal at the end on 2 of the attempts, so it is getting better.

Also, www.end-result.org is selling runs through Heroic instances of Naxx and OS. Might be something to look into on their method of doing it.

Naxx 25 Heroic Mode

Well, I have just completed my first tour of duty last night as a healer for Naxxaramas 25.  I got several complements on my healing capabilities having arrived at 4th overall and only 300 points behind the average at 1300.  I personally am interested in reworking some of my talents or settling down with what appears to be a suitable healing objective.

Raid healing now is completely different than what I have done on Fenrous before.  The original raid strategies were pretty simple, keep rejuvenation and supplement with healing touches according to how much damage the tank had missing.  It prevent a large amount of overheals and worked pretty good for keeping the tank alive.  Well that is of course all preBC.  Before, I would rarely toss a rejuv on anyone other than the tanks, and between casts would bandage the ranged dps that was hurt standing around me.  I am wondering now what would be said i if I did similar on one of our Naxx runs.

Anyway, here is my struggle, having only recently dinged 80, there is a good chunk of my gear that just isnt performing as well as I need it to.  Twice last night, while main tank healing, I would be watching my rotating stacks, keeping wild growth, lifebloom, rejuvenation, and regrowth up on the main tank, applying refreshes as needed to keep them rolling and the tank would be 1 shoted right out from underneath me at nearly max health.  I tried to make it a point to keep the tanks above 80% across the raid, which proved to be outside of my capabilities; however, just wasnt able to keep up with the damage coming in.  I wasnt really running out of mana nor was I having to use my Innervate excessively.  It was always up when I felt I needed more mana; however, just the amount of healing that was coming out seemed a little low to me.

So, I am working on identifying if it is simply a Druid Talent build issue or if I just do not have enough spell power that I am looking for in my healing output. So, I am left wondering about my talent builds and playing around with Rawr to answer my question about output.  I have also just recently learned how to output for WWS so my raid sessions are going to be looking up now.

I picked up 4 new pieces last night Valorous Dreamwalker Robes, Desecrated Past, Gloves of Peaceful Death, Siezed Beauty

For my first Naxx 25 man run on Fenrous, we did really well, full clear in a little less than 5 hours, all wings and all bosses.  We did not complete any heroic achievements, but having only laid down in 2 raid wipes and doing the Haegan dance, I am feeling pretty confident on future runs and being an asset and not a liability on the run.

Updated / Enchanted WoW-Heroes Score 1877

History of Fenrous

The history of Fenrous is a curious thing.  Fenrous started out on Azgalor as a Night Elf Druid to be played on the server that one of my wife's co-workers had a character on.  Azmodious.  It is from this humble beginnings that Fenrous' journey started in the World of Warcraft PVP; however, that is not the exact beginning of the story of Fenrous.  No, that begun many years before, many, many a nights of saying, "Five more minutes then I am done honey."

You see, there is the Druid named Cebon Gladerunner on Erollisi Marr of The Raenore, which is where the story actually starts.  For a long period of time, I played EverQuest and was the guild leader for The Raenore for nearly a year during this time; however, I found that guild life in EverQuest was limited.  Belonging to a social networked group of friends whom disapproved of me leaving thier non-guilded social group for a guild of like minded individuals, whom grouping was a regular occurance; however, the grouping system for mobs was terrible in EverQuest, but I loved the niche that druids provided the game.

So, I was always loving the Warcraft games, and I signed up for Beta testing.  Luckily I got in during the 'Open Alpha' period.  I was immediately hooked and decided that I would be migrating from EQ to WoW quietly and discreately.  The first night of alpha, I played until I was a Level 12 Druid. I died doing the bear quest nearly 8 times.  Now that was back in the day where the first 5 levels took a LONG time, especially when you spent more time reading quests, saying these yellow question marks are awesome, and just looking around the enviroment.  Also, I couldn't believe my luck in the death penalty system, NO DEBIT.  NO LOSSING LEVELS, just a durability cost,  SIGN ME UP.  So I ordered my Collector's Edition World of Warcraft and was

 on my way to enjoying myself, or so I thought.

One of the basic mistakes that I made in EverQuest, very early on, was turning in the Book of Discordia, and becoming flagged, PERMANETLY for PVP.  Which at level 1, meant that you died ALOT to people whom just wanted to be mean because your noobsauce, even at the time a toon 5 levels higher, because I got on the EQ bandwagon when it came out, could EASILY kill you.  So, I selected a non-PVP realm, Role Play, perfect for me, or so I thought and off I went to Earthen Ring.  Cebon had been reborn as a Night Elf Druid.  I had given up porting people and making food, for being able to have no death debit.  I was enjoying myself.  Then the envitable happened, as a casual gamer, there is only so far you can go in the game, so by the time Cebon was mid-40s, I had already become overly bored with the game, but still logged on occasionally, to work a couple of quests down a night.  Hey, I was doing more quests in WoW then I ever could even find in EQ, and I wasn't having to monster grind to get up in levels.

All is well, and I am leveling, then one day my, then wife at the time, comes home and sayes that I needed to talk to this guy at her work about World of Warcaft, because he also played.  Turns out that during this conversation, everything that had started to disappointment in WoW could be fixed.  And trust me, not having any friends playing or knowing

 anyone else playing has a HUGE impact on your enjoyment of WoW.  So, I decided that I would join Azgalor, playing anything that I wanted, as long as it was Alliance, and Azmodious would help me out doing quests.  At the time, Azmodious was a Level 35 Night Elf Hunter.

Now, you have to understand that I was pretty unhappy with EverQuest, unhappy with Earthen Ring, and didn't really want to start from scratch, but knew that if I went to play with Azmodious, that I would probably not play after a few months of reaching level 60.  So, off I was to try something new, thus the Night Elf Druid Fenrous was borne.  At this point in time, around Mayish 2004, there were only a few new instances being added to the game, with Dire Maul having recently come online.

Thus, the Legacy started on Azgalor.  Orignially, I decided that I would create a guild named Ordo Lupus and convince Azmodious to join, which I did successfully do; however, my absence in EverQuest, and all the rest of the online games did not go unnoticed.  Unfortunately, that is again when issues would arise.  See, the social gaming group found out that I was playing World of Warcraft, and between them complaining about the class abilities and me playing Alliance, we lived for a few months with utter turmoil, as myself and Azmodious were doing more and more redicoulus things, like trying to kill the Dragons at the entrance to Caverns of Time.  And we did get the first two dragons down as a level 45 Hunter and level 32 Druid.  Eventually, the guys either stoped complaining or were playing Horde more than they were playing Allaince.  I have to say, the series of events that happened next for the most part are thier faults.

So, the leveling began, Azmodious and myself having reached level 60 at nearly the same day,

 assisted and ran quests with the other Ordo's members hoping that we could get onto better content.  During this time as Ordo Lupus' Guild Leader, we grew out to 25 active members, 15 inactive or very casual players, published 3 web comics, and I worked on my gear.  The battlegrounds were just beginning and was a good time sync when other people were not on or doing things with guildies.

Azmodious and I wanted to raid. We wanted to hit end game content.  End Game at this time was still, Dire Maul, but they had added two new big time upgrades to the game, the dungeon instances which contained Tier 1 sets and Zul Grub.  Now, understand that originally T1 is now what is considered T0 sets.  So if you wanted to progress, you needed at least 10 to do most of the dungeons, had to have a set of T0 gear, and be getting upgrades out of Zul Grub.  We couldn't get our Retribution pallys to accept the fact that they either needed to Tank or Heal, that anyone Retribution spec'ed in a raid was gimping the raid.  It is also at this time that we realized that we had to get our gear and they were not going to group with people that were not guildies; however, they were also against adding people whom they didn't know personally to the guild.  So, very quickly we were already gimped by my members.  Eventually, I had my Wildheart set all 8 pieces, and they had nothing, having just done quests for gear and buying items off the auction house.

Enter, The Children of the Grave.  So one day Azmodious sends me a tell telling me to drop guild and come with a group to Zul Grub.  I was excited to say the least; however, I wasn't happy with dropping guild, but they let me come along in one of their PUG spots because I was restoration spec'd.  Yes, these are the days before Tree Druids, before Moonkins, and before druids did anything other than HEAL in raids.  This is also the time of AQ's world events prior to the opening of the portal.  So, off I went with 20 people I barely knew to heal the tanks.  At this point I was hooked on end content raiding.  So much so that by the time Children of the Grave started to fall apart, I joined another raiding guild which was doing Molten Core and Blackwing Layer raids every week, Retribution.  It was a great time for me, healing and then working on gear in dungeons. Faction work as another priority and was REALLY painful in those days, where only by turning in stones did I get to Revered with Argent Dawn. But, I was working on Tier sets, and had my want lists, and pretty much had everything macro'ed out that I was never turned down for a raid spot, and eventually became Class leads and Healer leads.

By now its Thanksgiving 2005, I had decided to go to my brother's house that year.  While the kids and everyone did activities downstairs, I was feverishly playing away upstairs grinding out Argent Dawn faction and doing any pickup raids I could since about this time all of the active Retribution guild runs had begun to wind down and the guild leadership was talking about scraping the guild into a 10 man raiding guild for Burning Crusade.  My brother decided that he

 was tired of playing EverQuest ina  two box scenario because there was no-one to play with and joined me on Azgalor playing a gnome warlock.  After a couple of weeks worth of play, he made 26, we decided that we would attempt to roll Horde and join the other gaming group; however, they were playing on Bonechewer and my Horde toon, albiet low level, was on Laughing Skull.  So we sat down and mapped out a new guild on Emerald Dream called Sanguineous Dragons.  It was at this point, I decided that if I couldn't play Fenrous, I didnt want to play a Druid.  So the Blood Elf Mage Cywyn was crafted.  I wish I could say everything was well, but it wasn't.  I think looking back now, we overlooked one core design flaw when we mapped out the guild, THEY were not playing as much as we were lead to believe.  So we attempted to get raiding going,

 which failed.  We attempted to get a Core Dungeon group going so we could do faction grinding, which meet with some success, as in my

 factions are maxed, but ultimately resulted more from finding pugers than anything else.  Then I tried to find a couple of raid groups on Emerald

 Dream.  The one I ended up getting a chance in the very first run resulted in me rolling against people whom had already won 2 items, and end result was 2 spell dps casters getting 4 items

 each, while I got nothing. Then was told when asked about my disappointment, that is the way it rolls.

So, here is Azmodious telling me, dude, come back to what you love.  Come back to your Druid on Azgalor.  So I informed my brother of my decision and rolled back to playing Fenrous.  Now I am in a good guild, with Azmodious and my brother Draklite.  The guys that play at work are all in the guild as well, and from here is where my journey back into raid healing has begun.

So far, what an interesting Journey it is......

Rantings of Fenrous

You've found Fenrous' Ordo Lupus page dedicated to the fine are of being a Druid in the World of Warcraft universe.  It is a very niche place to be and one that I call home.   Please excuse my dust as I get settled into my new topical ranting / obession place.