More Cataclysm Random Heroic Dungeons 1/9/11

I did some more random heroics on Brieanna tonight and completed Grim Batol and Halls of Origination. Halls of Origination wasn't bad, the tank had an attitude and I was thinking about kicking him but he said he was having a bad day and apologized. We got through that one ok, but I didn't get anything out of it. I also queued into heroic Lost City of the Tol'vir to see if my new heroic weapon would drop, it didn't.

Grim Batol was another story, it is brutally hard. The third boss, Drahga Shadowburner, is anyway, the others aren't too bad. Drahga Shadowburner starts off pretty much the same as in normal but in heroic the fire adds he calls will one shot you, so you have to kill them before they get to their target and kite them if you are the target. In normal they hit for around 60,000 damage. Make sure you are not near anyone if they are going to make it to you or it will take them out too. The other thing he does that is different than normal is the dragon he gets on in phase 2 has an ability called Flame Breath that shoots out 180 degrees in front of him, you don't want to get caught in that either.

Being a ranged melee I usually stand way back when I am fighting, but that is not a good idea here. You want to stand close enough to him so you can get behind him quickly when he does flame breath. You can not outrun it. You will want to stay out of any clouds on the ground too.

The only real difference I saw with the last boss was he has an ability called knock back that isn't there in normal and he summons 2 adds at a time, after Gale Storm, instead of just the one in normal. Of course the fights last a lot longer in heroic than they do in normal but that is to be expected.

I got a new pair of boots out of Grim Batol so I guess it was worth the 26 gold repair bill.

Now I have Heroic Grim Batol, Halls of Origination, Lost City of the Tol'vir, Shadowfang Keep and The Vortex Pinnacle out of the way in my Cataclysm Dungeon Hero achievement.

Random Heroic Dungeons 5/21/10

I spent the night doing random heroic dungeons on Brieonna tonight. I still need to upgrade my 232 shoulders and hood to the 245 items, then I will have gone about as far as I can with triumph badges.

I had a couple groups I bailed on, the people were undergeared and there was no sense sticking around, they were not going to finish the instance. One or two undergeared people in a group isn't bad, you can usually do a run no problem, but when you get more than that you just don't have the DPS to take the bosses down.

I was in one group where we had a Druid tank. There was also a Paladin in that group that was pulling before the tank could, or pulling more after the tank pulled. I warned them and they said "maybe you haven't noticed I'm a tank", to which I replied "you're not the tank in this group, the Druid is". I told them if they pulled again I wasn't going to heal them. I guess they didn't believe me because they pulled again, so I let them die. They got the it after that and didn't pull anymore.

I really don't care if people want to kick me from groups like that, my primary job is to keep ONE tank alive, then me, then the DPS. Having two people pulling puts everyone at risk of a wipe.

ToC 10 Man 5/20/10

We had a half guild run, half pug run on ToC 10 man tonight. I was healing on Brieonna. It was my very first raid ever on any of my toons. It didn't go very well and I attribute that to most of us, in the guild, being new to raiding and we were hoping for some help from other people with more experience. What it boiled down to in the end was getting talked down to by people who must not remember their first raid. One asshole in particular, Faite a Warrior, who said he wasn't there to carry anyone. I don't think anyone from our guild was expecting to get carried, we just wanted to learn. He was nothing special anyway, I really don't see where he had any room to talk, he wasn't geared nearly enough to be talking shit. Anyway it was a lot of bullshit and probably the last raid I will do, I will go back to PvP, something I know and no one can talk down to me about.

Random Heroic Dungeons 5/18/10

I have been doing a lot of random heroic dungeons on Brieonna to get gear drops and badges to buy gear. That is coming along pretty well. Since Sunday, when my gearscore was less than 2900, I have managed to bring it up to 4672 between drops and gear I have purchased using the badges. I only need 2 more pieces to get the Epic achievement, feet and waist.

I did a few dungeons with a friend of mine, Arkantose, tonight. That went really well, his gearscore is right around 6000 and he was tanking. For the most part I was able to heal him using just HoT's, he really didn't need a lot of heals anyway.

We ended up doing Trial of the Champion, Halls of Lightning, The Forge of Souls, where I got a nice neck piece, and Culling of Stratholme all in heroic mode. The runs were fast and a tank and healer queuing together is pretty much an instant queue so the queues went really fast.

I had one bad group in Azjol-Nerub. They weren't really bad players, they were just really poorly geared. It's not too bad to get one or two poorly geared players in a group, but every once in awhile you get a whole group of them and this was one of those times. There were 2 under 3000 gearscore, another under 3500 and the tank only had a gearscore of 3700. We made it all the way to the last boss without any deaths, some pretty spectacular healing on my part if I do say so myself, but there just wasn't enough DPS to take the last boss down. And every time he did Pound it would kill the 2 lowest geared players, one shot them, so then we were down to the tank, one DPS and the healer, just not enough. I finally bailed on that group, I could have completed 2 instances in the time I was in there.

I am pretty confident I will have my gearscore over 5000 by this weekend.

Brieonna - Level 80 Holy Priest

I got Brieonna to level 80 last night (Saturday). Now starts the long process of gearing her. I am doing random heroics for that. I get drops and also badges for gear. When I hit 80 my gearscore was around 2700, I have been able to bring it up to over 3800 since then.

I ran The Forge of Souls, Pit of Saron and Halls of Reflection on normal with a guildie tonight and got a nice staff and wand out of them. I only have one of my BoA pieces now, a trinket and that will get replaced soon. That will be nice, no more sharing the trinkets with my Shaman, sending them back and forth.

I got a couple pieces of gear with badges today and might be able to get a couple more tomorrow.