They said it couldn’t be done.  Well, I guess “they” is a little nebulous.  The fact is I thought it couldn’t be done.  PTD in the Black Temple?  The Unholiest of Unholies?  Yeah right.  Well, as I said recently, I was signed up to do just that last night.  I don’t think I’ve ever been as excited about a raid invite as the one I got last night for BT.

Our alliance recently decided to change focus from strictly T4 and T5 raiding to more a mix of T5 and T6.  We’ve done the first couple of bosses in MH, and this week we started on Black Temple.  They went Wednesday night (a night this Part Timer can’t make) and downed Najentus.  So last night was a continuation, and we would be starting with Supremus.  Let’s get started with the rundown.

The area around the Black Temple is one I generally avoid.  Too many random nasties about, and I don’t like random nasty deaths.  About the only time I’m in the area is to do the Armament daily from the Isle of QD.  So most of the area was unfamiliar to me.  Heck, I didn’t even know HOW you got in BT.  It turns out you go through a hole in the side of the temple.  Pretty cool.  Here is a shot of the first thing you see.

Yeah, pretty standard looking cave area.  But this is the Black Temple, baby!  I even DISCOVERED it!  Excluding QD, I haven’t discovered anything since SSC about 4 months ago.  I was a little geeked up already.

Anyhow, as this was a continuation, we just ran through a few areas that had been cleared.  Here is a pic of where they say the first boss was located.

On we went, and finally started clearing trash before the second boss, Supremus.  I’m sure you’ve all seen trash before, so I won’t bore you.  There are some dragon dudes, some worker dudes, some other dudes.  We wiped once by pulling in the wrong place and getting oodles of adds.

After awhile, the trash was cleared, and I got to take some vanity pics while we set up for the fight.

First, PTD the Tree in BT, with dead mobs behind!

Next, a shot of the big bad himself, Supremus.

That’s one big, bad elemental dude. Scary. It turns out he hits for a LOT too!  We started at 8 PM server, and were scheduled to go to 12 AM, a four hour raid.  (A four hour raid. [Gilligan's Island Theme Plays])  Now, I won’t bore you with all the fight details, but I’ll try to sum up.

There are two phases for Supremus.  In phase one it’s a basic tank and spank.  Basically you need two tanks for the fight, one holding the aggro, and the other there to avoid this big, nasty hateful strike that does some 14k or so damage.  The healers’ job is to keep both tanks as close to topped as possible.  If either goes down, it gets ugly fast.

In phase two, Supremus basically randomly picks raid members to, well, pick on.  He targets one player and charges at them.  He charges pretty slow, so you can kite him around.  He does this for a few seconds before switching to another target.  What this means is during this phase everyone is pretty well spread out, and prepared to run if they are the target.  I found that for druids, Cheetah form is the bomb in this encounter.  Special thanks to Matticus for letting me know I could USE cheetah in this battle.  It made getting away from Supremus a piece of cake.  Also during the second phase, volcanoes pop up all over that do huge AOE damage.  If one pops by you, you better move, and fast.

That’s it.  The fight switches back and forth between those two phases at timed intervals.  One of the keys is the switch from phase two back to phase one.  At that point the tanks have to pick him back up FAST and the healers have to get back in position FAST and let loose the healing.  This is the real struggle of this fight, IMO.  Most of phase one and two are pretty easy when you know what to do, it’s the transition that can kill a raid.

Any how, 4 hours later, 10 attempts, and one re-clearing of trash later, Supremus was down.  Sadly, I was down too, but I took a pic anyway.  At fifteen minutes, Supremus enrages, and we killed him at 15 minutes and 1 second.  Wow!  At that point we were also down to one tank, one healer, and about 9 or 10 DPS.  It was CLOOOOOSE, but we got him!

And here is our celebratory pic, after myself and others were rezzed, of course!

And that about wraps it up! We are now 2/9 in BT, and it feels great. I’m so glad I was able to go, and I felt like an important cog in our success. The loot was a DPS neck and DPS leather chest. I actually considered the chest for off-spec, but didn’t take it. I’ll leave you with two other interesting pics I got. One is of the top of the stairs after Supremus, and a familiar looking statue. The pic after that is the room right behind him, which I did not go further into. It looks cool, though!

One other note before the pics.  You can raid casually. Your friendly neighborhood PTD is living proof.  You have to finagle to get it done, but you can.  I only raid ONE night a week, and I’ve now seen almost all of SSC and some of the Black Temple now too.  Don’t think that just because you’re a casual player you can’t raid.  Anyhow, enjoy the next two pics, and thanks for reading! You stay classy, World of Warcraft!

I thought I’d go ahead and chime in on one of  Blog Azeroth’s latest shared topics.  This comes from Breana of Gun Lovin’ Dwarf Chick:

What content or goals did you think you would never see, and what have you done? What has surprised you the most? Where do you see yourself in 6 months, after the launch of Lich?

I’ll start with the first part of the question.

What content or goals did you think you would never see, and what have you done?

In all honesty, I never thought I would see very much in terms of 25 man content.  I was always scattered in the way I played the game, and for a long time didn’t devote enough time to any one character to get them ready to raid.  You can see the evidence of this in the fact that I have played since release and still only have two 70s.  I server hopped quite a bit in the beginning, and in retrospect I wish I had just started on Whisperwind, like I should have.  Oh well.

One other thing that helped me along was Blizzard removing attunements.  I don’t know if I would have ever seen SSC if you still had to get attuned, as I have a tendency to carry around those kind of quest chains and not get them done.  Pre-BC, I only ever got attuned to Molten Core.  I never did finish my attunements for Onyxia, BWL or anything else.  My time is at a premium, and I prefer not to spend it running hither and to trying to complete some willy-nilly quest for attunement.

Thanks Blizzard, for removing attunements.

Because of this, I have seen every boss in SSC, and downed all but the Lady V herself.  Well, I never thought I’d get there.

What has surprised you the most?

This weekend I will reach another goal I thought I’d never reach.  Saturday night I’ll be stepping into the Black Temple.  While SSC was always considered well out of reach, I never even considered I’d step into Black Temple, at least not at 70.  I always figured it was a place maybe I’d visit when I had leveled beyond it, but certainly not now.  Frankly, I can’t wait to see what the place looks like.  I really have no idea.  I’ve only watched a video of the Supremus fight, as this is a continuation run and the first boss is already down.  It should be a LOT of fun, and keep your eyes peeled for pics and a rundown sometime next week.

I have no real long-term expectations, but I hope I can at least see a boss or two in BT go down.  Before Wrath.

One other thing that has really surprised me is how well my blog has been going.  When I started out, I was happy that I got over 20 subscribers, and 50 or so hits a day.  Now there are many, many more people who take the time to read my blog, and I’m very thankful for that.  It has been a great outlet for me to invest further in WoW without compromising family time.

Where do you see yourself in 6 months, after the launch of Lich?

I hope that I will have been able to focus on getting one character through the leveling process.  This isn’t to say I expect to be level 80 six months from now, but I hope that I can make a decision as to how I will attack the expansion and the new level cap and work hard at it.  I missed out on a lot in my guild with BC because they were all leveling in outlands while I was in the old world, leveling up an alt druid.  By the time I got to the outlands, a lot of them were well beyond the instances I needed to run.

I don’t want that to happen in Wrath.  With my schedule, I can’t be on the bleeding edge of leveling within my guild, but I think if I focus I can at least stay close.  I just have to decide, will it be my Druid, Hunter, or even my Priest?  The Hunter is potentially the best “leveler” while the Druid would give me the versatility I love.  It’ll be tough to decide.

So there you have it.  I NEVER thought I’d see BT, much less SSC, and I never thought so many people would be interested in reading what I have to say.  Thanks so much for reading!

In yesterday’s post, I talked about how my raiding alliance has essentially given up T5 content in favor of moving into T6.  I won’t make any bones about it, I’d prefer not to jump right into T6.  I feel like our raiding alliance, as it was constituted, could have pushed to finish the T5 stuff before moving on.  It seems that nowadays, though, a LOT of raiders are doing the same thing.

I’m a completionist at heart.  It probably has something to do with my history involving video games.  I vaguely remember having the Odyssey2 when I was little, and when I was about 10 years old, the Nintendo Entertainment System was released.  I still remember going to Ace Hardware with my best friend at the time, and watching as him and his parent plunked down the cash for the NES cadillac version with ROB the Robotic Operating Buddy and all.

From the moment we started up Super Mario Brothers, I was hooked.  I will never forget my first REAL gaming experiences with the NES and Mario.

One of the key things that Mario taught me is to always search every nook and cranny for secrets.  In the early games, there really were only a few, but you can see that in the evolution of the adventure game, the devs cater to completionists like myself.  There is often a collecting bonanza to be had, and countless hidden gems and treasures to acquire if you really want to “finish” a modern adventure game 100%.

As such, I always like to not just finish levels, but scour them for every last hidden gem before moving on.  I’m not a fan of backtracking, I prefer to either get it all or leave it entirely.

This has affected the way that I look at progression in World of Warcraft.  SSC is the “level” I have been playing in raiding for the last few months.  I’ve put in a lot of time and effort to learn the bosses, and contribute to the raid’s success in any way I can.  We’ve still only tried Lady V ONE STINKING TIME and we’re moving on. It’s like we’ve been working our way through world 1-1 through 1-2 to 1-3 in Mario, and then never getting through the Castle at the end.  Maybe I’m being a little OCD, but it’s driving me nuts.

Do you fight your way through any Zelda game only to give up and start on a new game when you get to Ganon?  NO!

Do you give up on Metroid when you get to Mother Brain?  NO!

Do you give up on GTA when you….uhhh….get a girl?  NO!

Now, I KNOW that the Lady Vashj fight is tough.  However, I don’t belive it’s due to gear.  I don’t think we can go gear up in early T6 to the point where we flat outgear the encounter.  Hell, a good deal of people in our raid are already outfitted in a LOT of the 2.4 badge gear.  It’s like we’re partially in T6 gear already!  From what I understand, the T5 endbosses are about SKILL and ORGANIZATION - NOT gear.

So, maybe it’s not really about gear anymore.  Maybe we just don’t want to try to deal with the bevvy of wipes it will take to get the Lady V fight down.  Maybe we don’t want to make the hard raid selection decisions it would take to get through it.  Whatever it is, we’re moving on.

Nowadays when looking at guilds that are recruiting, you’ll often see stuff like this:  5/6 SSC, 3/4 TK, 3/5 MH, 3/9 BT.  Since they removed those attunements, everyone is doing it like that.  A lot of them take a few lumps with Lady V and/or Kael, and then just give them up.  They tackle the first few relatively “easy” bosses in MH and BT rather than put in the work to finish T5.

I just don’t know if this is good or bad.

The Pros of Skipping to T6

• You don’t have to bang your head against the proverbial wall of Lady V and Kael.  There’s no two ways about it, they are tough, tough fights and you cannot, at least at this point, outgear them.  Perhaps you can in some ways when Wrath hits, I’m not sure.  Many people (Matticus for one) say Kael in TK is the toughest fight to learn in the game.
• You get shiny new gear, better than the stuff that drops in T5.  Let’s face it, with the 2.4 badge gear, a lot of stuff in T5 isn’t all that appealing anymore.  You can get better just by running heroics/Kara and hoarding badges.  The T6 level gear, though, is at least on par with the 2.4 badge gear, if not better.
• You get to see new content that perhaps you wouldn’t have seen before.  A lot of people, myself included, never thought they would step foot in BT.  We can do that now, even if we can only get through a handful of bosses.  I know I never thought I’d step in Naxx either, and I never did.  (The upcoming “new” Naxx doesn’t count!)  New content is good content.
• You get to say “we’re also 3/5 in MH, 3/9 in BT”.

The Cons of Skipping to T6

• You didn’t learn the “true” tests of T5.  You never learned some of the toughest fights in the game, that at one time were meant to prepare you for T6.  Remember, this 2.4 badge gear is still new.  You’ll hear old raiders say “Back in my day, we couldn’t skip Lady V or Kael, we had to fight them uphill, both ways, on 13″ CRT monitors, too!”
• Because you didn’t learn the tough T5 fights, you will most likely get stuck in T6 as well.  That’s why you see 3/5 MH, 3/9 BT so often.  If you don’t learn organization fights in T5, you aren’t going to do it in T6.  Though I suppose by the time you are really tired of the early MH and BT bosses Wrath will be here.
• You can’t finish the attunement quests for T6, which do give some nice rewards.  You also don’t get to strut around IF or whatnot knowing you’ve helped kill Lady V and Kael.  The real Kael, that is.
• You’re a quitter.  Ok, not really, but I couldn’t think of another con to stick here.

Well, that about sums it up.  It turns out the cons are pretty simple, you’re going to get hung up in MH and BT just like you did at 5/6 SSC and 3/4 TK.  There are some very tough fights that require everyone to be on their game.  Perhaps you just want to see the content and get the drops you can, and I suppose I can respect that.

As far as the pros, you do get to see content you otherwise might not see.  Now, you aren’t going to take down Illidan any time soon, but you can at least bleed on his doorstep if you want.  There is also some nice gear to be had in the early bosses, and it could potentially help you go back and take down that Nasty Naga.

Well, in the end, I’m going along for the ride myself, so what does it matter?  The completionist in me will have to take a back seat, since I don’t make any decisions.  I am thankful that I can show up, though.  I’m also a mere 100 hps away from the 9k requirement that has been set for BT, so it looks like I probably will be going on Saturday.  I do look forward to it, and hope we can at least perhaps take down the first boss or so.  Look for a rundown of the lowdown some time next week.  Thanks for reading, and be sure to let me know what you think.  Is the “New” raid progression better or worse?

I’m sure we’ve all heard the people in general chat saying things like, “LF4 More, Heroic MgT” or “LF2 More for H UB, need tank and heals.”  Why you would announce that you’re looking for more when you have neither of the most important classes, I have no idea.

Anyhow, no, I’m not actually looking for 24 more for Black Temple.  BT is, however, in my near future, I hope.  I raid in an alliance of about 5 guilds on the Whisperwind server.  None of the guilds can effectively run 25 mans on their own, so for some time we’ve had this alliance.  It start with Gruul, and moved on to Mags, SSC, TK and MH.  Now, we are set to hit the Black Temple.

Now then, I don’t agree with our progression, but I don’t have any say in these discussions, so my opinion doesn’t mean jack.  For some time we were running Gruul, Mags, SSC and TK pretty regularly.  We were spending 2 nights a week on TK and SSC, and we got to 5/6 in SSC and 2/4 in TK.  (That could be wrong on TK, don’t quote me on that.)

I have only participated in a couple Gruul and Mags runs, but I have been in a LOT of the SSC runs.  I was in the group that first killed Morogrim, FLK and Leo.  I was also in the first (and maybe only, I’m not sure) group that even took a crack at Lady V.  Personally, I wanted to continue down that path.  2 nights a week in SSC, the first night hopefully getting at least the first 4, then the second night taking out the last boss and then working on Lady V.

It hasn’t worked out that way.  You see, it was slow going at first.  It took us a couple months of 2 SSC runs a week to get to 5/6.  There was a LOT of wiping going on, as a lot of people had to learn the various fights.

2 months ago, I didn’t even have to sign up.  I could just log on shortly before start time, and they ALWAYS needed one or two more people.  Around the time we took down Leo for the first time, and got to have regular success in SSC, signups exploded.  Where before we were sometimes struggling to fill runs at all, we now had 30+ signing up for every raid.  We also took a hit in our efficiency, since many people each week were totally new to the instance.  I don’t think we’ve seen Lady V since.

Anyhow, shortly after that, the Alliance leaders decided to switch up our targets.  One night each of SSC and TK were dropped in favor of MH runs.  I don’t agree with this, but as I said before, I have no say.  I wish we could try to be at least a LITTLE more selective and make some honest attempts at the last T5 bosses, but that ain’t happening.  Instead we are moving on.

So, anyhow.  This Saturday, we are going to make our first foray into the Black Temple.  Now, I am already signed up, and though I disagree I am excited to finally see this instance, but I have a problem.

I need to get to 9k unbuffed HPs by Friday.  I think I can do it, but it will take some work.  I have an old pair of Earthsoul leggings that I can gem for stamina and swap out my present badge legs, and I also have the blue boots from MagT just sitting in my bank.  I don’t have the playtime to farm furiously for badges before then, but maybe I can pick up another useful piece or two.  Hopefully I can get there.  If I do, I will certainly blog about it!  Also, if anyone has any recommendations on what I could do, you can go ahead and peek at Pummra’s armory in my sidebar.

It’s been a little quiet around here lately, sorry about that.  I’m a key player in a HUUUUGE project at work, and our launch is this weekend.  It’s been one of those weeks.  I’m sur a lot of you out there can sympathize.  Anyhow, here’s a little bit about the latest goings on with PTD.

The Shammy Ditches the Elekk

As a lot of you know, I’ve been working my Stormwind rep so I can dump the hated Elekk with my Shammy.  I’m so sick of getting STUCK everywhere, I can’t take it anymore.  Well, the deed is done.  I conveniently saved the last couple of turnins that would push me to exalted for the mini quest hub in Elwynn where horses are sold.  The first thing I did was destroy that stupid Elekk mount.  Poor guy, don’t tell PETA.

Do I want to delete? HELL YEAH! I hopped on the cheapest horse on the lot, a beat up Pinto.

Wow, I sure look big on that thing.  I actually feel kinda sorry for that horse.  I hope he has a warranty!

So there it is.  Exalted Stormwind rep with my Shammy.  As an added bonus, I know where I’ll be vendoring and repairing from here on out!

Hunter Gears Up in Karazhan

I also put together a Kara run last night.  It seemed like it might not go off, and I actually half-cancelled it, when suddenly two of our best tanks threw their hats in the ring.  We had 2 priests, a Warrior and Pally for tanks, and a mix of DPS that included my Hunter, 2 Mages, an Enhance Shammy, Kitty Druid and a Fury Warrior.  Interesting mix, to be sure.  Luckily we had the Shammy along who made the melee DPS very strong.

We blasted through pretty much everything.  We had one wipe after the ramp leading to opera, where we accidentally pulled the whole room.  Other than that, we one shot everything, skipping only Illhoof and Netherspite.  We would have gone back, but a couple people had to bail so we called it a night.

Loot-wise, it was both good and bad for me.  I actually got one of the best cloaks a Hunter can have in the Drape of the Dark Reavers.  Nice. I also happened to pick up TWO pairs of gaunts. I got the Gloves of Quickening from Maiden and my T4 gloves, the Demon Stalker Gauntlets from Curator. I already have the Crystalhide Handwraps, so I have some thinking to do there. Anyone have any thoughts on those three? None have enchants as of yet, the Crystalhide are gemmed but with easily replaceable stuff, no epics.

Anyhow, what I REALLY wanted though was a new ranged weapon.  No dice.  No Crossbow from Attumen, no Gun from the BBW (which I REALLY want…I am a dwarf!) and no bow from the Prince.  Bah, humbug.  Someday I will upgrade from my old, blue Valanos’.  I just don’t know when.

Well, that’s about all for now.  I do have some more in depth posts brewing, I just haven’t had the time.  Next week things should start to clear up, right about the time all the adulation and cash starts rolling in at work for the great job I did on the site.  We’ll see.  Thanks for reading!