Best Raid EVAR

Let's start things out on a good note, shall we? Or, I guess I should say AWESOME note. My guild usually starts out the week with a Naxx run since it's the most upgrades for the most people. After several agonizing weeks of my leather spellpower upgrades not dropping from their respective bosses, tonight THEY ALL dropped!! I was so excited. WOOT! Here's what I got:



Esteemed Bindings - Inspector Razuvious
This is the upgrade I needed the most, as I was still wearing the epic drop from Heroic Violet Hold, which you can see in the picture above. In all my weeks of raiding Naxx, I had never seen these drop, and was beginning to think they never would. Bindings of the Expansive Mind, arguably better bracers since they have hit on them, had been dropping week after week, but since i run with varying numbers of locks and mages, I was told I would have to wait until no clothies needed it before I could be considered for it. My guild is kind of hesitant when it comes to giving me cloth gear even though I've been there for just about every raid since the guild started. However, I'm also the only Boomkin, and our only Resto Druid usually comes on his DK. If SP leather drop, it either goes to me or it's DE'd, so I'm a shoe-in if it drops. IF it drops. I was kind of cranky, since I saw the cloth bracers three times and hadn't seen the leather once, but since neither drop is my BIS, I could understand the wait. But tehy finally dropped, so now I just have to wait on Unsullied Cuffs from Sarth2D. It's on our guild progression to-do list, and last week we had problems with people showing up for raids, so I don't expect to even down 2D that many times before 3.1, much less win the bracers if they drop since they're pretty much BIS for every caster in the game. But we'll see. :)

And, as the screenshot shows, the bracers finally gave me my Epic! achievement. I was so excited about getting the bracers, than I forgot I would get the achievement when I equipped them, which is why the shot is so messy.


Legguards of the Boneyard - Sapphiron
Pretty big upgrade. They are replacing my T7 pants. I've been passing 7.5 legs to others who needed them more, and it's been a few weeks since my token has even dropped from Gluth or Thaddius. Funny thing is, my token did drop earlier that night and I had planned to put myself up for consideration when the token was up for council, but someone in the raid kept whispering me about a leg enchant. I guess I missed the raid warning for my token and it went to someone else that also had T7 pants. So, we all had a good laugh about it at my expense when I told them why I hadn't said anything about wanting them. They probably would have gone to me too since I hadn't received any loot for a few weeks. (We start with Construct, so this was the first thing of interest that dropped last night.) I guess it was a good thing I did miss the notice. Again, because I'm the only Boomkin, I was guaranteed these legs if they ever dropped, and I would have felt bad taking away a token from someone who could have used it. Legs are the only part of my set I can skip and still get the set bonus anyways, so then I would have felt really bad. Good things really do come to those who wait, I guess... sometimes.

Valorous Dreamwalker Cover - Kel'Thuzad
FINALLY!! Like the bracers, I was having bad luck getting KT to drop my token. It actually did drop last week as well, but went to the DK tank that MTs most of the Naxx encounters, so he totally deserved it over me. This week, TWO of my tokens dropped. I had already gotten two big upgrades, so I was a little worried that it would effect my chances of getting this, but the loot council was generous and gave it to me and the other to our feral druid. The helm in the druid set is the only piece that gives a considerable amout of hit, so I was really anxious about getting this since I was using 2 prismatic hit gems (27 hit rating each) just to be capped. With this, I can change one of the prismatics to SP and also change the gem in my belt buckle to SP. Woots!

Without a doubt, the best and luckiest night of raiding I've ever had.

"But Cer," you ask, "didn't most Boomkins who raid more than casually got these upgrades months ago. What the hell took you so long?!" Well... since this is my first blog post, I'll make it extra-long and give you a little background on my adventures in WLK-land so far.

My guild is newly-formed, and currently working on getting all the progression done before Ulduar hits in 3.1, which is pretty exciting for me since WLK content is my first real raiding experience. I started playing the game last June, and didn't really get to raid in BC much seeing as how I hit 70 a little over a month before the release of WLK. Not to mention that I was the first 70 in the small guild I was in, made up of local friends so we could all level together. We made a few tries at Kara once enough people hit 70, but never downed Prince since raid times were limited and almost half of us had to leave before we got to the end. (One time, we almost downed him with 7 people left, but got unlucky on the where the infernals hit and finally wiped with less than 10% health on him.) Then, strangely, most everyone quit playing with the WLK release just a few short weeks away. I thought the expansion would bring them back to playing eventually. Most of them were in this guild as alts and had all their mains on a different server, so I decided to give them time to come back and took a few weeks off after hitting 80. Later I found out that they weren't even really playing on their mains, so I gave up on them coming back. I started playing again, trying to pug heroics and such, and through a few lucky turns, I found myself in the raiding guild circuit.

After some guild hopping and following one guild through a merge and then a fallout, I became a regular of Leviathan. We're a new guild, formed out of the remnants of two or three long-standing ones. We started with low numbers, but have been doing our own 25-mans for about 5 or 6 weeks now. (maybe longer; i dunno) Before that, we were doing joint runs with Implicit, who have since disbanded. All in all, it's been about 8 weeks of raiding endgame. Not having done endgame before, I think I'm learning raid mechanics fast. So, as you can see, we haven't been raiding that long as a guild, so upgrades are going slow, but I think we'll all be pretty well geared before 3.1 hits. And we're always recruiting more players.

I'll keep you updated on all the ins and outs, as well as give my take on all the PTR stuff.