Tier 6

Vashj Down - Check
Keal'thas down - Check

Hyjal, here we come. Well, after we go back to Vashj and Kael to finish gearing those who we couldn't fit into the raid, but 25 of us are keyed and ready for Hyjal. We killed Keal late and only got one stab at the Hyjal trash. We lost control on wave 7 and Jaina Proudmore died before Winterchill showed up. We probably won't get another shot until Sunday, as we'll be keying others for fight over our next 2 raid nights.

Quick Update

Things are going well in Apples. I made full member status the other day, along with Hooray who also came over from Bloodmoon. We had a second Vashj kill and got 10 more vials (8 new people, the other 2 didn't have the quest the first time). We 2-shotted her the second time and it was pretty easy. It's nice to be in a guild where all the raiders care about and work towards progression, and are a friendly group on top of that.

We've had 9 pulls on Kael so far, 7 Sunday night and then the guild had 2 more on Tuesday after clearing TK and setting us up for the rest of the week. I missed the Tuesday night, but Sunday looked really good. We saw phase 4 on our 4th pull with only one adviser up, although we had a lot of dead already. My job the first night was mainly tanking the sword and dagger. I'm hopeful that we'll kill Keal soon.

I got my ZA shield last night and am playing with different gear sets. I had to start leaving all my healing gear in the bank except the S2 healing mace, healing shield and a libram just to have room for everything, especially all the consumables I'm now carrying.

We also did a quick Kara run. It was my first full run completed in under 3 hours, which was kind of cool, especially considering we had alts on the run.

Vashj Down

Title says it all. It took Apples 3 nights to learn and kill Vashj. On the third night, we killed her on the second attempt, with only one death and everyone up at the end of the fight. It was fairly impressive. Several hours later, Dark Favor killed Keal, so they are still ahead on the progression charts.

Here's a video of our Vashj kill.

Vashj-2008-01-13.avi

It mainly shows killing the elementals. I was off tank on the Nagas and ended up picking up Vashj towards the very end of the fight. The guild did an awesome job.

After Vashj, we went into The Eye and did everything but Keal.

It was my first Al'ar kill, which was kinda nice, and apparently the guilds second. It wasn't too smooth (we killed him on the 3rd attempt), but we got it done. I had some major mana issues on the first part, but that got solved when they had me tanking all the adds in phase 2 (we just killed the adds in phase 1). We just left the adds on me without killing them and had a druid picking them up new ones and me taunting them off. DPS stayed focused on Al'ar. They must have changed the fight slightly so that when Al'ar dies, the adds now despawn, which was nice. As a side note, when I tried tanking the adds with my back against a wall, every time one blew up, they would go into evasion mode and their health would reset. If it wasn't for that, we would have had him on the second attempt. I was blocking the adds for 708, so on blocked shots I was hit for about 250-550 and non blocked for around 1100. I'm surprised I had as many unblocked hits as I did with redoubt, and wonder if a few got behind me. I'll pay more attention in the next run. Regardless, the healers managed to keep me up, although I know it took at least 2 when a lot were on me.

My first run on Solorian was a joke, it was so easy. I'm not sure how many times Apples has killed him, but I know it was at least one or two. Void Reaver went smooth, of course. His biggest problem is still the trash in his room.

With luck, we'll be hitting Kael on Sunday night. We have 10-12 people that still need a Vashj kill, but if we can get her in the first 2 nights and a good start on TK, we'll be in good shape for a Kael attempt on Sunday.

One and a half months later

Wow, a month and a half since I last posted. A lot has changed since then, and a lot hasn't. No real raid progression for my guild, Bloodmoon Rising. We did get Eagle and Hex Lord in ZA, but we haven't actually been able to get more then 2 pulls on Zul'jin. That's been it for raiding. I don't think I've even seen the inside of a 25 man instance since my last post.

Last night, I finally left my guild and joined a new one, Apples. More on that later. Apples is a few bosses ahead of where we were, with Fathom Lord, Al'ar, Solaran, Doomwalker, Kazzak and Zul'jin all down. Nothing there I would consider huge advances over where were were, and honestly, all bosses we should have had down by now. Apples is the second most progressed guild on the server, only one boss behind the lead guild, who have Vashj down (but not the world bosses or Zul'jin). Apples raids 3 nights a week, the same as Bloodmoon. Wish me luck. I'm excited to get back into raiding.

Here's a post from Blutreich from the maintankadin forums showing what abilities are effected by spell hit and melee hit. Nice, useful info.

spell hit
judgments
exorcism
holy shield
1st tick of consecrate
blessing of sanctuary
damage shields
mana tap/arcane torrent if ur a BE

melee hit
judgment of command
hammer of wrath
hammer of justice
avengers shield
taunts
melee (allows more seal procs)
seal of blood

basically guaranteed*
judgment of blood
subsequent tics consecrate
seal of righteousness (javascript:void(0)
Publish Postif your melee swing hits)
judgment of light/wis
seal of light/wis (if your melee swing hits)

not sure
seal of vengeance