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And That's It

Exactly one year ago today I started this little corner of the net to chronicle my adventures (or misadventures) in Azeroth.

A year later, I'm writing what I believe will be my last post.

Am I quitting WoW altogether? Not sure. With Cataclysm on the distant horizon and my penchant for gaming I can't say that with any certainty.

I'm not going to delete any of these posts or close the account or anything like that, because if there's one thing I've learned it's that you never know where life is going to take you. I'm also going to keep my Twitter account up and running, although I'll likely not be posting from it (except the auto-posts from Raptr).

I'd like to thank all of you who've read and commented on this compilation of pointless ramblings. WoW bloggers and readers are some of the most kind, helpful, and wonderful people out there.

It's been a truly amazing trip. I wouldn't change a thing.

If you're interested in following my real-life adventures, here are a couple of links:

http://www.jasonbenefield.com
http://twitter.com/jasonbenefield

Take good care of yourselves for me.

For the Alliance! For the Horde! For Azeroth!

-Jason

All That and a Cold Wet Nose

Haven't been playing in a while. Landed in the hospital a couple of weeks ago, and then last week the Baby Tank had surgery. No playing means nothing WoW-related to talk about, so there's been no blogging either.

Hoping to get back in the saddle soon, but in the meantime, here's a pic of a puppy:

He's the newest addition to the Aggro Junkie family. Going to pick him up on Wednesday.

Talk at you soon.

Trial of the Crusader

Finally got the chance to finish ToC last night. I had previously been in on a couple of runs that didn't work out way back when EoF was trying it for the first time. Last night, though, we cleared it and I, at long last, got the achievement for it.

My observations are as follows:

It kinda sucks.

I've heard people say it sucks, but now I know for myself that it, indeed, sucks.

Filler content FTL.

Progression

EoF was supposed to head into ICC Wednesday night. That didn't work.

Tried Thursday. That didn't work either.

Finally, we made it back in on Saturday. I was sick and out of commission earlier in the week, but there were also a couple more folks who couldn't make it to the weeknight raids. It was probably a good thing, really. A little break now and then can't hurt.

I was lucky enough to get the shield from the Gunship Battle. Finally, I got to ditch the one heroic item I was still lugging around. I've always had miserable luck with shield upgrades.

The real story of the night, though, was Festergut. First attempt was an almost instant wipe. During the second attempt I died and our other tank blew up due to 10 stacks of Gastric Bloat. The third time, however, proved to be the charm. Clean kill, no deaths, much rejoicing.

We took a look at Rotface before we called it and, if we execute as well as we did on Saturday, I'm hopeful we'll be able to drop him this week.

Out of My Cold, Dead Hands

In TBC I proudly carried my Khorium Destroyer, crafted for me as a gift from my lovely wife, Cheesi. It was the tank gun back then...kind of a rite of passage into the ranks of the meat shields.

When WotLK came around, I crafted myself an Armor Plated Combat Shotgun the second I hit 80. Great tank weapon when you start your heroicing.

That's a long stretch of time to be carrying nothing but a gun. Veneretio recommended a while back to pick up some thrown weapons for a trash set, but I never really got anything in TBC or early WotLK that I wouldn't be embarrassed carrying in a raid. Thrown weapons back then were pretty much built for rogues, so they were great for trash threat. Plus, throwing has a much shorter cast time than shooting (that was a big deal pre-Heroic Throw, but even now it's helpful to have a secondary option in the event that the pulls are happening quick and HT is on cooldown).

Not too terribly long ago, I coughed up some emblems for the Blades of the Sable Cross, the first really accessible replacement for an Engineering tanking gun in a very, very long time.

There was nothing wrong with the Blades. In fact, they were quite nice. It just felt weird to not have a gun. It was hard enough to take off my goggles, but losing my gun, too? I felt naked...couldn't walk through Tinkertown without getting dirty looks.

Last night during our ICC cleanup (didn't get Festergut, but made some progress on him), Stinky fell and Tatia said she/he/it dropped a BoE: Rowan's Rifle of Silver Bullets.

Thanks, Blizz, for making sure I don't have to bring knives to any more gunfights.

Recap

After last Wednesday's..."issues"...with ICC, we walked in on Saturday and one-shot all the content we had previously cleared. We then two-shot Saurfang.

The Turned Champion isn't really that bad of a fight when you get down to it. It just requires communication, especially when things don't go according to plan. If, for example, a Blood Beast starts gnawing on melee for some reason, don't panic...just say something to the ranged responsible for picking them up. There's not a ton of room for error, but you can get yourself out of a fix if you stay calm and just talk to each other.

We took a look at Festergut and are going to give him an honest effort tonight if we can manage the personnel. There was a lot of "do we have the dps for this?" talk, but I think we can do it. The mechanics on that fight aren't as complicated as some of the other ICC fights, so our dps crew should have enough room to work without that much distraction.

I also learned that I can't tank Heroic Halls of Reflection, specifically, the waves at the beginning. I gave it my best effort, but simply cannot pull it off. If the mobs all came from the same place, I could manage, but because they're coming in from all over the room it's a little too much for this poor, old, beat-up Warrior to handle. I also get a bit of lag sometimes when dealing with AoE, so when a rifleman drops a frost trap on top of whatever AoE the group is doing I end up with a couple seconds of a frozen screen only to return to find a dead healer.

I'm sure I could do it, but it would take some practice. The problem with practicing a unique set of pulls from a specific instance, though, is that four other people are paying for it, too...both with time and repair bills.

All in all, it was a good weekend in Azeroth. Got my Ashen Verdict ring and even managed to putz around with the holidays. I don't think I'm gonna get titles out of both of them, but I'll settle for some achievement points and vanity items. My banker is very happy with her new Lovely Red Dress, but keeps bugging me about the black one.

Hopefully we can take out Festergut tonight and cross another boss off of our progression list.