So like I said, been doing more PvP and have been having a ball. Trying different glyph/spec setups, having found the perfect one yet. Still thinking about doing a BM cleave/burst setup, but I’d want a spirit beast or something and not a damn devilsaur. The stomping is just too annoying.

I’m beginning to become less concerned with getting better stuff on Hesston since I’ve come to realize that A) It’s just stuff, B) I can still DPS with the best of them even without a BiS ranged weapon, and C) 3.3 is going to have a 3 heroics, something I can always run and will surely have something decent in it. I simply don’t have the time to jump into any raids where I can get new a ranged weapon, with the exception of Ony25, and fail PuG groups are more irritating in that place than almost anywhere else.

Right now, I’m having fun again and playing allows me to relax and forget about work, etc. So that’s the most important thing. Oh, and there’s this too:

He’s actually level 44 now after another day or two. Tons of fun, can’t wait to get him to the higher levels and maybe be a bear tank.

Categories: PvP, achievements, screenshots
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Aka, Mimiron downed. Seriously, probably one of the most satisfying kills in a long time. It takes a lot of tenacity, concentration and, at times, a fair amount of luck. I’m gonna miss being there for every big kill and achievement hereafter, but I’m glad I was present for this one.

Summit, Silvermoon-US vs. Mimiron from Hesston on Vimeo.

Slightly lower quality because of all the madness going on in Mimiron’s encounter.

Categories: achievements, guild, raids
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Weee!

Categories: achievements
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Undying run.

All bosses done flawlessly.

Kel’Thuzad.

Breathe Hesston, breath.

50%, adds MD’ed to off-tank. Everything is fine.

Breathe Hesston, breath.

10%, everything is fine. Everyone is spaced out, DPS is good, health is good.

Breathe Hesston, breath.

5%, OT gets ice-blocked. Dead.

No Undying title for Hesston (or anyone else of course).

Breathe Hesston, breath.Breathe Hesston, breath.Breathe Hesston, breath.Breathe Hesston, breath.Breathe Hesston, breath.Breathe Hesston, breath.Breathe Hesston, breath.Breathe Hesston, breath.Breathe Hesston, breath.Breathe Hesston, breath.Breathe Hesston, breath.

I know ‘just a game’ and ‘there’s always next time.’

But SHIT!!!! Who needs that stress again?

Ugh.

**EDITOR’S NOTE**
It should be noted that I am not blaming anyone or pointing a finger here. It was just bad luck. I was/am annoyed at being so close and us not getting it.

Categories: achievements, raids
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To say the guild made progress this week and weekend would be an understatement. To say Hesston made out like a bandit this week would equally be an understatement. This week far makes up for last week, where Hesston got diddly squat.

First, the downings.

I came in as a sub to help with the Four Horseman and Grobbulus on Wednesday night. The Four Horseman were no problem, as most everyone had done it before. It’s funny how that fight can seem so complicated and crazy the first time, but after you get the hang of it, it’s cake.

Next, on to fatboy Grobbulus. After about three tries, we got the sloppy bum down. It’s a fun fight if everyone is doing what they’re supposed to be doing, though once old Hesston ran face-first into a mass of poison clouds. Dead. Nice going, straighten that helmet and get back in there.

The GM had other plans for Gluth, so I stepped out for the night. This was fine though, since after the lengthy break I needed to catch up on farming and some money. About two hours later however, I saw exasperated messages over guild chat and folks saying quick goodbyes. Apparently Gluth did not go well and folks seem to leave a little discouraged. The next night I found out why.

The Gluth add situation is damn hard.

The next night, GM asked me to step in to try and down Gluth. I studied up on it and offered to try and kite the zombie chow using Whitey, my gorilla. I almost did it all by my lonesome, but it just wasn’t enough. I kept missing one or two zombies, then I’d try to pull them back and the others would unaggro from me and start toward the raid. One slip, and it fell apart quick. I felt bad, I really wanted to do it and know that I could. Not this time though, I put my pride aside and let the GM make suggestions and change the plan. A mage and I tried to double team the adds, but we still failed.

So, our GM jumped on his geared-to-the-teeth pally tank and just consecrated his butt off on top of the grate. Our epic healer kept him alive even with 99 stacks of the debuff. The rest of us just went nuts with the DPS on the undead doggy. Tranq shot was working like a charm too, and we killed him. Awesome.

Gluth dead, on to Thaddeus.

We took down the two mini-bosses easily the first try, but most of us (including Hesston) didn’t jump off the platform quick enough and the coils fried us. Our “w00ts!” quickly turned to “whats?” Wipe it up! Second try, damn near flawless. Only bad thing that happened was this one stupid, dwarf hunter wasn’t paying attention to his charge and almost wiped the raid. Yes, that stupid, dwarf hunter was yours truly.

GM: “Hesston, you’re on the wrong side. You’re killing us bro!”

Hesston: “Der” *wipes drool from lip and goes to his OTHER right*

Luckily, we healed through and it was smooth sailing from there. Thaddeus downed, Construct Quarter cleared and…Lieutenant Dan, I gots new legs! That’s right, I now have three pieces of T7. In my wildest dreams I never thought I’d be at this point and I have all of these wonderful people in Satyricon to thank. You’re making my $15 a month so worth it. Also, a good DPS sword also dropped, that I legally won, but decided to give it up to the rogue (also our GM), since I got the legs and it was a really good weapon for him. We accidentally gave that out first though so a ticket was opened. Blizzard, get a move on, our rogue needs that sword!

Next up, Heigan the Unclean and the infamous safety dance. Now I’d never finished this fight before, but I understand the concept well. It took a few tries and many deaths, but we finally did it. Here’s the kicker, not once did I die from the acid splash thing. For some reason I have the magical, mutant ability to do the dance flawlessly. Call it luck, skill or 20+ years of playing platform video games, but I can ace that damn thing. Now if only I had the same luck with Herald Volazj and his stupid insanity. I die every damn time.

Heigan down, no loot for me. That was fine though, I was already giddy with excitement with the legguards and I was glad to see others get some goods. The guild that gears together clears together, huzzah!

The room after Heigan was a nightmare. We tried a few times to no avail, though some made it across. Each time Hesston stepped five feet into the room those eyestalk thingies shot beams at me and I died fast. Nothing seemed to work. These short, stubby legs can only move so fast. Our final solution was to whip up some potions of invisibility and just run for it. It worked, though some used skills by accident, canceling the invisibility, and died. Still, we made it across and faced Loatheb, the fungi guy.

Again, first time at this fight but I understood the debuff and the spores thing. This is one of those fights where I am glad to be a DPS. “Healers, you have 3 seconds to heal us all…NO PRESSURE!” Yeah. However, we were coordinated, the healers were aces and we one-shotted him. Loatheb downed, Plague Quarter cleared and…Loatheb, I got your shadow! I can haz new hunter trinket. I almost have a full backpack of hunter trinkets now, one for every occasion.

After that clean slate of successes (minus the speedbumps), we decided to call it a night. The next night we were going to try 25-man Vault of Archavon, but our attempt at Wintergrasp was a bit of fail. I’ll put this in The Real World intro terms.

What happens, when you put 25 PvE raiders together, who are used to fighting scripted bosses together and many of whom never PvP (Hesston included), in a large and difficult PvP zone against an army of PvP’ers?

“Where do we go?”

“We can ride on the vehicles?”

“Catapults! Pew Pew”

The answer is fail. It was OK though. We licked our wounds, got our 10-man raid together and just went and killed Sapphiron. Oh, did I forget to mention that? Yeah, Hesston got his first kill on Sapphiron. Only took us three tries and when we did win, the entire raid was up. Many of the folks I was with were there for the first one, but I danced a jig when I saw that ding pop up. Seriously, I love these people. Not only are we clearing content, they’re fun to run with too. No one is uptight or has no sense of humor. Sometimes even our wipes are funny.

We took a few shots at Kel’Thuzad, but were tired. Even so, we (or they rather, Hesston kept getting iceblocked and dying), got him down to 40 percent. And, we did that with only one tank. Tonight, we take both tanks. Kel’Thuzad, you will die, and you will drop the Nerubian Conquerer or some other great, wonderful thing for the raid members.

The only thing that bothered me was that, after looking at the reports, my DPS was atrocious. It’s not that I have to be “top of the charts”, I just want to know I am making a large contribution. I’m thinking it had something to do with all of the running around I was doing plus doing fights where KITT is basically a non-contributing member. I’ll be working on and analyzing my shot rotations and skillset this week as well.

However, later this week we’re taking our first serious shot at Malygos. Or as I call him, ol’ Bluebeard. The week will be spent mastering Aces High!, even though I hates it. Malygos, you will die!

Last thing, I also picked up a Grasscutter with the last bit of Emblems of Heroism I will probably use. Will be good for my dual-wielding setup.

Like I said, a good week.

Until next time. Stay low and keep firing.

Tags: loot,raids
Categories: achievements, loot, raids, screenshots
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Boy oh boy, where do I begin? Old Hesston had a heck of a Winter Veil, running with new guildies, getting gifts from Great Father Winter and getting all sorts of good loots.

A few days ago I ran my first serious run with some guildies, hitting several heroic dungeons in a row. I was able to round out my hunter trinket collection with an incisor fragment from King Dred and the Meteorite Whetstone from King Ymiron. Both are very useful for different situations and compliment the Mirror of Truth quite well.

The next day, Winter Veil Day actually, we got another group together for some more heroic outings. Went to and finished Ahn’Kahet for the first time, though I can’t seem to survive through Herald Volazj’s insanity affect. My teammates always manage to kill me. Even so, we made it.

After the run, I had enough emblems of heroism to get a piece of badge gear, the Heroes’ Cryptstalker Tunic. Like a fool, I’d spent my first series of badges on the mirror and a belt, that was a mistake. Now I am saving up for the gloves too, which will make me more than ready for guild Naxx runs.

Took a large break, then got with a group for an evening run, which held in store the most epic battle of the night.

After going through Ahn’Kahet again and the Caverns of Time: Culling of Stratholme (where one of our lucky party members picked up a new mount), we ventured into Azjol-Nerub, a place I’d heard was quite possibly one of the hardest in the land. That may be true, but apparently we had a bit of an elite squad going in. We downed the first two bosses with little issue, much to my surprise.

Then it came time to battle the Cryptlord Anub’arak, one of Arthas’ chief enforcers. And man, what a fight it was.

Things started off OK, with me and the Boomkin laying down the ranged damage and our elite warrior and paladin tank (and KIT of course) taking it to him up close. After a few moments, Anub’arak released swarms of locusts and scarab beetles upon us. We muscled through, but he soon burrowed under the ground at our feet.

The coast wasn’t clear for long however, smaller nerubian fighters descended upon us. We fought them off just as Arub came bursting through the ground to attack us again. We all engaged the vile Cryptlord, loosing our fury upon his chitinous hide.

Suddenly, he reared up and pounded our tank and our warrior into the ground, killing our warrior almost instantly. Worse yet, our healer caught some of the attack as well, and soon he was down. One would think that all would be lost, with just an old man with a gun, a moonkin and a paladin with a steel reserve facing incredible odds.

Not for this elite group of dungeon runners.

Our tank, using his paladin skills, managed to keep himself alive through Anub’s assault. Our resourceful druid, taking quick stock of the situation, switched forms and revived our healer. He came back weak, but managed to get back into the fray almost immediately. Throwing healing back onto our tank so that we could continue our battle.

We were still a man down, and a good one at that, but we didn’t give up. Our druid switched back to his boomkin form and unleashed nature’s wrath upon Anub while I continued to pump him full of bullets. Our healer was fully back in action now, keeping our tank alive as he took the brunt of Anub’s punishment. It wasn’t yet enough, however, to take down the monster, so Anub was able to escape once again beneath the surface.

We prepared ourselves for more nerubians, I even let KIT completely off the leash. We were attacked again, KIT became a whirling dervish of teeth and claws, taking down as many enemies as he could. We managed the second wave of additional forces and Anub burst through the ground again.

This time, we were ready for the devastating pound attack. The tank used his battle prowess to mitigate the damage and I called KIT to my side to prevent him from being crushed. We survived and continued to fight on.

After another escape into the ground, and another wave of nerubians, our energies were running low. We needed to take down Anub when he showed himself again. He reared up and pounded the ground again. When he finished, we unleashed everything we had upon him. I think I even kicked a few stones at him too.

Bam, strike, volley, zap….we pounded away with righteous fury until….

BOOM!! (Note: Look at the mana reserves *gulp*)

That’s right, we came, we saw, we kicked his ass! Many congrats were had all around and we took a moment to get our breath. Not being the type to sit on our duffs though, we dusted ourselves off, brought our warrior and leader back to life, and headed off to the Halls of Stone.

I won’t bore you with another bang-bang story, but we conquered that place too. The dungeon finally earned me the Northrend Dungeon Hero achievement, which you can see above. Pretty proud of that really. All in all, not a bad two days of adventuring.

To make a long story short (people always say that at the end of a long story), I love my new guild. They rule! I took down some numbers about how I did, which you can see here. I’m pretty pleased with that, for an old man.

Other minor achievements:

Categories: achievements, guild, heroics, loot
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