So for the past couple weeks, I’ve been venturing into Ulduar 25-mans with The Aftermath. I’m still a member of Fatalis; however, our previous raid teamup with another guild was full of fail, and so Fatalis formed its own core raid that has actually been pretty successful at repeated full clears of Naxx and is venturing into Ulduar itself. Why would I leave such a raid? Time constraints, unfortunately – Fatalis raids on Saturdays and Sundays; while I can raid on Sundays, Saturdays are almost either spent spending time with my girlfriend (which only happens on the weekends for now) or visiting my parents. They’ve been nice enough to let me pop in from time to time, but for the most part, I spend my time behind instance portals with The Aftermath nowadays.

The past few weeks were pretty rough – we’d go in, punch Flame Leviathan in the mouth, then throw ourselves at XT-002 or Razorscale for a few hours to no avail. I’m not sure what changed last night, because we were taking down bosses left and right (compared to our previous attempts, of course – we’re not down to Yogg-Saron, but we made serious progress). Heck, I even came away with some of what you kids would call “phat lewtz.” (Unfortunately, I was running low on DKP by the time the phattest of lewtz for the night came along.)

I didn’t get any screenshots of Flame Leviathan, because it wasn’t a first. We did do him with one tower up (Thorim’s Hammer, which is ludicrously easy to avoid), and I was doing a different job this time (siege driving instead of siege gunning), but it was pretty much a breeze. Here’s just a few highlights of the rest of our evening…

Razorscale down! I can only attribute our failure to do this last week to lack of focus. Heck, we were just a few DPS away from keeping her permanently grounded this time around (she did a deep breath, blew us all backwards, took about 6 yards into the air – and came back down).

Ignis down! And for some reason I was cheated out of Hot Pocket – even though I was the very last person in the pot! Grrr. Next week, Ignis!

XT-002 Deconstructor down! It was kind of nice to see this guy eat it after our previous attempts to him. Oddly enough, I don’t think I got a single bomb the entire fight, and the only reason we didn’t pick up Nerf Engineering too was a single Scrapbot at the very end of the fight. Blah. Next week, XT!

Kologarn down! And yes, that’s me, down-left, teabagging Kologarn (and rocking a Sporeggar Tabard). This might be the only kill shot where I’m clearly visible, since on most I’m behind a fireball. Dagblasted warlocks.

And last but not least…

 

Yes, that’s right: I finally got the one achievement I wanted from the moment the Ulduar achievements were announced. Thanks, Iron Boot Flask! Heck, I even put it on my bars so I wouldn’t forget it, and popped it when Brundir was at 200k or so health:

It’s a touch hard to see, but it’s on the 3 – in place of Death Grip, which I most certainly did NOT need for this fight.

Oh, and obviously:

Iron Council down! Yeah, that’s me, dead center. I like my Iron Dwarf costume!

Tonight I believe the plan is to go do Malygos and possibly a quick sweep of Naxx for a few items for people who still need upgrades (because, hell, I wouldn’t say no to a BoH or Death’s Bite), due to people being absent (like, say, the raid leader) – but who knows, maybe we’ll be back in if everyone’s on? Hey, it could happen.

Do not adjust your picture – this is not a test. That pic (click to see the full-size version) is yours truly, standing in front of the boss. Why? Because I told my guild I had respecced to a tanking spec and tanking gear, and wanted to tank something. “Oh, let’s run a heroic!” they said, and we started trying to find people.

Then someone realized it was 30 minutes or so until we had to fight for Wintergrasp again. “Want to run a 10-man Vault?” people started asking. So, sure, we went to Vault, and it was bizarro world – Vorgar, who I’ve only ever known as a tank, was DPSing; Skelli, who is almost always demonology, was a PvP-oriented affliction build; Kel, the tree, had spent 150g getting all boomkek’d up and was ready to blast some things thankyouverymuch; Vixx, the rogue was in a PvP spec… okay, Vixx, loves stabbin’ the Alliance, that’s not really a surprise.

And yours truly… was tanking. See? Bizarro raid! And yet, down went Archavon, boom – no problems! (I even picked up a Hateful Gladiator’s Dreadplate Chestpiece, though I haven’t the faintest what I’m going to do with it.) So apparently, we were feeling cocky. “Let’s do OS-10, they say.” But one of our healers can’t go. “OS-25?” One of our DPS warriors has to switch to his resto shammy, sure, but OS-25 is agreed upon. I /faulsey* a little.

“Let’s do it with 20 people for the achievement! Oh, and don’t worry Zul, you’re the only tank, but you’ll be fine.” I /faulsey a lot. Yet, everyone seems confident, I do my very best to hit the buttons, mitigate the damage, and keep the monsters punching me in the face, and eventually all three drakes, then Sartharion himself fall to us, with very few deaths (a couple facepulls, a few people getting swarmed with elemental adds). And I got the achievements from the screenshot above. Ta-dah!

Tanking is such a rush. I think this might be what I really want to do – to be honest, I was getting pretty complacent with DPSing. Rotate, rotate, dump runic power, snore self into coma. This, though… it was downright exhilarating, and I loved it.

* I should explain /faulsey. It comes from Faulsey, of Master’s Call – when he started showing up in BA Chat, he was also starting to raid, and he frequently displayed a mixture of panic and excitement – maybe 1 part panic, 3 parts excitement? This quickly became known as /faulseying. (If you’re more panicky, or frustrated, it becomes a “flailsey.” And now you know.)