ICC, Tier-9 Set and Achievements, Oh My!

Twas the night after Christmas and all fell asleep,
after the excitement dwindled and ended last week.
Kids all snuggled tight in their bed's
while zhu zhu pets got thumped on their heads.
Ma' snoring on the sofa, and me looking for my authenticator
trying to log on to the random pug generator.

Christmas night: Invite'd to join a failing ICC 10-man run. They were on the second boss and had to refill ranks. After about 4-5 more wipes, we successfully took down this boss. Keys we found: 1) The boss is surrounded by a shield, then summons groups of adds to fight for her, typically a (or 2) casters and a melee. Burn down the casters immediately. They shield up after approximately 10 seconds and can only be melee killed afterwards. Melee on the other hand drop poison and need to be killed via casters. Our OT could handle these while we burned down the casters. Before the next wave, dot the boss up then mana up. When successful, we had her down in about 3 minutes. I picked up the Scourgelord's Baton, replacing my old off-hand.

Moving to the gunship battle, I selected the to man a turret. Always fun in Wintergrasp, I thought I'd do well here too. Fire the turret at the gunners on the opposite railing. There are 2, one for each turret. You should be able to take one down before the turret ice-blocks. When ice-blocked, I would stand on the railing and target the gunners firing across. Just don't be like the other lock and fall off the boat.

We finally got to the third and final boss of the instance. This is a simple tank-n-spank if you have the ranged dps. With only 2 locks (and it was 1am local), we simply couldn't kill the ads quick enough without someone getting hit, strengthening the boss, and causing a wipe.

Saturday: Random Pugs until I was able to get the Heroic Pit of Sauron and Good Grief achievements. Good grief was a bit of a surprise in that I never thought we'd kill any boss in less than 60 seconds.

Last night, Sunday: While waiting for my spot in line, I ran up to Icecrown and plopped down the 50 badges for my Tier 9.0 Warlock chest. Gemmed and enchanted, it has a gear score about 10 points better (via pawn) than my tier8 piece. This doesn't take into account the set bonus for having 4 pieces (gloves, shoulders, legs and chest). I did notice on a few boss fights last night that my dps was almost 3k, up from the 2k-2.5k I was getting before. Personally, I look the much more. The violet skirt on the T8 piece was starting to get to me. I've turned off my helm and cape so I can see the intricate detail of these pieces. No, I don't care to look like a bird-man.

We'll see if I am able to log on tonight. My ISP, AT&T, prematurely disconnected my DSL before my move to a new house.