We were hoping to raid with SAN Saturday afternoon, but we had issues getting people to fill slots, a narrow time window- basically, it wasn’t going to work so we agreed to try again Sunday. Later that evening, Reversion and I signed back on to try to recruit guildies to go visit UBRS and BWL for some classic WoW fun times. We got a great turnout!
Me – Divergent – as the paladin tank
Rev – on Consolidate with leet druid heals
HairyGiblets - the hunter
Daruma and Rogerstring - our shamans
Missholloway - an almost-level-appropriate paladin
Delwyn the Rogue – level 72 at the time I think
Invariant - my 58 warlock on the RAF account, along to give soulstones and that’s about it.
We wandered into Blackrock Spire and headed for the Upper part, slaying all who stood in our way. First notable accomplishment: the whelp room! We turned off Retribution Aura, made the shamans wait to throw totems, I ran around clicking eggs like crazy then we AOE’d and boom, filled Guild chat with achievement spam. Lots of Jenkins titles that night!
We finished tearing along through UBRS and found the BWL entrance. I zoned in, then back out since I wanted us to get the UBRS achievement and we hadn’t yet. Tip: zoning out of BWL and back in sets you at the entrance to BRS and you have to run all the way back…
Anyway, we killed the end boss for UBRS and proceeded into Blackwing Lair. None of us had been here before and we weren’t sure what to expect. We figured out we needed to mind control and have the big dragon kill eggs, but wiped twice trying to get the hang of it. Finally we realized that you really just need to ignore the adds because if you kill them they keep spawning. So I worked my butt off to aggro all the adds, Consolidate healed me, the boss, the raid, whoever, and the guildies took turns mind controlling the boss. They did great, I avoided killing the boss when he wasn’t mind controlled (I think I did that one of our wipes) and with a great sense of accomplishment, he went down.
You don’t have to take my word for it either! Hairygiblets videoed our fight and linked it on his blog: here
Oh, another tip: Our first wipe, we didn’t have to run back because Daruma Reincarnated. Our second wipe, we all died, and Consolidate volunteered to run back. Unfortunately, ALL the trash in UBRS had respawned and he and Hairygiblets had to fight their way back in. It seems like there’s a really short respawn timer. Actually the bosses and stuff were back too. I’m not sure what was going on there.
Having passed the first test, we were ready to see more. So we poked our heads into the next room and found a corrupted red dragon who needed to be put out of his misery. He has an annoying mechanic though; he puts a dot on someone, and after a couple seconds, they die from it. No ifs, ands, or buts. Every third dot goes to a tank… so we had a really limited window to get him down, and we didn’t. Got him about halfway. Unfortunately it was quite late so we called it. Next time we’ll bring more bodies as dot-soaking-targets.
A very fun little evening, though!
Sunday afternoon as promised, guild members signed on. We ended up with only five of us; Divergent, Consolidate, Hairygiblets, Datq the resto shaman and Daruma, so we picked up puggers and went to ICC, with me healing and Consolidate tanking this time.
Hairy got some video from this too.
To summarize, we made trash die, we one-shotted the first three bosses, we went to Saurfang, has blood beast issues like you’d expect with multiple first time people (some of the puggers were new too I think) and then a top dps’er ragequit, and some of us were running out of time so we called it.
Again, this raiding with SAN is a lot of fun and anyone who has a spare 80 or is looking for somewhere to role an alt could do worse than joining a blogger guild. Guild chat is never dull!
[insert QQ about US servers]
OOOOOO BWL! One of my favorite Raids! A couple notes (no boss spoilers since obviously you guys want to be surprised). UBRS will reset when you zone into BWL. There is a simple attunement quest for BWL which allows you to skip UBRS and go straight to the raid. It is an item called “Blackhand’s Command” and is dropped by an Orc on the stairs leading up to UBRS. I forget what he is exactly called, but he has Quartermaster in his name and every partymember can pick the item off of him. To complete it you have to touch the orb behind the end boss of UBRS. Not too difficult. Once complete you can use the orb down the hallway from the BRS instance entrance to enter BWL.
Another thing, I dont know if you used the your Lock to summon people into the Raid, but beware that if you do there is a glitch and the trash that spawns during that first boss fight won’t stop spawning after the fight ends. Leads to either extremely annoying encounters with the trash to an unending wave of adds chasing you through the instance.
Vael is an EXTREME DPS race, burn everything (Heroism, pots, etc) ASAP and pray.
PS Hourglass Sand will drop off of adds later, put it on your bar for the second to last boss and use it when obvious.
PPS Hunters would do well to bring a second ranged weapon.
It drops outside UBRS? From those orcs that are in your way if you don’t use the jump to the balcony by the chain? We will have to do that next time. At least on the lock and two others
So that’s why the adds kept coming! (I was in a BWL run this weekend too, and watched the entertaining deaths from my nice spot on the floor…)
Yep, funny thing is, level 80s can get out of the spawning add’s aggro range in Vael’s room, so a group of nothing but level 80s can retreat there, finish up what follows and move on. Just hope no one has to run back in. Had a paladin die on a run due to a mechanic on the second to last boss, and he ran back to find about 15 to 20 adds in the room waiting for him, and he was at half health and mana. He made it back up eventually, just funny to hear him on Vent suddenly start yelling about being attacked.
I love the Classic and BC raids (BC Heroics too), but am currently holding off on them in favor of Loremaster (about half done). Cant wait to get back to pugging the old content again (Old Tier Gear is so pretty).
We were only level 80s… plus my shammy, level 62. I had never been past the first dragon guy’s room (and that was ages ago in TBC when I didn’t even understand what a raid was) so I have no idea what was going on, just that people kept saying “ok, they despawned”, entering and being chased yet again.
I had a blast, we need to finish up BWL by the way.
[...] /who abstract and check the list that comes up. I recognize Hairygiblets from a recent post over at LFM, so I whisper him and ask if this is the home of the blogger guild. BAM, just like that I’m [...]