Blackbear's Cave

The King is Dead! Long not-live the King! In fact, stay dead this time!

The following post was true yesterday when it was partially completed and now only partially true when it was completed today.

It started out like it normally would. I got on my main character: Blackbear, with the intention of doing a few dailies (daily quests) so I could earn a bit of spending money on flasks, potions, etc. I’m all about pushing my DPS as much as I possibly can so I use a few different flask-potion combinations. And seeing as I only have one other level 80 toon at the moment, I have to purchase my flasks. It adds up. All of the questing, putting items on the auction house, clearing items to vendors, it really adds up to a lot of gold. Unfortunately, with no other support from my alt toons (alchemy, enchanting, leatherworking, etc.) all of the items I need for pushing my DPS costs a lot of gold. Therefore, I do a lot of dailies. I prefer dailies that don’t take up a lot of time to get them done. It’s not unusual for me to max out my “completed daily” list to 25. Anyways, I hooked up early in the day to do a few dailies with my friends Mat and Hedwig, along with Mibs, another guildie. Maybe I had some sort of sense of foreboding. Or, perhaps I was getting edgy, knowing the headaches and aggravation that were coming soon. But, I started drinking a bit early that day. In fact, I started out with vodka, cranberry juice, and a healthy splash of pineapple juice. After I completed my dailies, I realized I had a bit of time to play around with one of my lower level alts: Wellborn. I even asked Hedwig a few questions regarding a possible instance leveling spec. But I knew, it was eventually coming. I knew, that sooner or later, I would be getting back on Blackbear to hit the Lich King again. We are at the 10% buff for the Lich King and we were just trying to work out our game. Yesterday went as expected. We wiped fairly consistently in phase 2 or 3, even managing a wipe at 16%. For those that don’t know, that would be a 6% wipe because the fight is essentially over at 10% (thank God!) But, I knew that we would be heading back inside today, even going so far as to cancel the 25-man raid. I sincerely hope that all who didn’t make it to raid today will forgive our sudden schedule change, but 6% away from a Lich King kill is just too close to pass up. Well, we finally made it! It was epic. In fact, I don’t know of any word that can accurately sum up the experience. Epic might not be good enough. As I am not a literary genius, I’m sometimes at a loss for a good description or phrase whenever I write. But, if there were a word in the English language, that can describe a higher level of “epic ness” than epic, I would use it. We were slowly getting the strategy down. Consistently getting to phase 2 and later to phase 3. The occasional “oopsies” make it difficult to see if we were wiping consistently to phase 3. Phase 3 is, in my opinion, the most challenging and the most chaotic. You have to stay away from each other at certain times to avoid leaving a defile spot on the ground that can grow to a massive size in seconds. Vile spirits spawn at regular intervals and must be off-tanked or destroyed away from the raid to avoid killing raid members as the spirits explode near their targets. And, to top it all off, one must deal with the soul harvesting of their character. I assume the player is teleported inside Frostmourne, although I admit, I’m not that familiar with the context of the fight, just the mechanics. But, wipe after wipe, it was beginning to look like maybe it wasn’t going to be our night. Time constraints were approaching on some raid members who couldn’t continue for much longer. We even experienced the fairly common Band of Misfits “1%” wipe. So…damn…frustrating. But, we finally made it! Blackbear the Kingslayer! I love it! So let me just give a shout-out to my fellow Kingslayers!

Matheo, bear druid and probably losing hair thanks to my threat levels. He’s an at-large (or is it a large?) forehead-tank that’s been wonderful enough to endure my swearing and my occasional aggro spike.

Randomski, the unusually named paladin well worth his weight in gold if you’re a threat generating fury spec warrior like myself. I’m so not going to attempt to earn ICC 25 level tank gear. I’ll leave the damage sponging to this guy and Matheo.

Shadowson, probably one of the best, if not the best, priests in the game. Now a Kingslayer, along with probably dozens of other titles he already has. His name seems that much more epic with the Kingslayer title.

Pumpken, shaman healer that looks kind of like Nerytiri from Avatar. I have to admit, when I first thought about it, I didn’t think that Pumpken the Kingslayer was all that good. But I really like it! However, I feel her name would be more epic if she were to change it to Pumpkenpie the Kingslayer! Sounds like some sort of cartoon character from a children’s show.

Lierthes, grumpy paladin healer (LOL, no not really.) I kind of think of him as a healer-in-plate. Lierthes the Kingslayer sounds like a ripped off name of a play someone wrote by plagiarizing Shakespeare. But it’s still epic! J

Glyndon the dwarf hunter! Always epic! Always with an epic beard, as no self-respecting dwarf would ever be without! Too bad pets don’t have titles. Fleabag, his pet, is deserving of the title Kingslayer.

Shocktotem, the shaman dps. Although I don’t know this person well, he’s still a great player. And I think this is another good name to go with the Kingslayer title. Shocktotem the Kingslayer just feels epic to me.

Chrondeath the arcane mage. This is the guy I intend to emulate when on my mage. Sometimes his dps is insane. Not real sure what his name implies but still becomes epic with the Kingslayer title.

And Kawdor the paladin that sometimes needs an adult to help him manage aggro. Of course, that’s probably because he’s now equipped with Shadow’s Edge and will hopefully get the epic Shadowmourne someday. Although I wonder what that will do to his threat generation.

So, there you have it, folks. Towards the end, which was probably going to be our last attempt, it was touch-and-go there for a bit. I believe we were down one dps at some point in phase 3 and we were just pushing as hard as we could. My fingers and the muscles in my hands were hurting by the time we made it to 10%. I wasn’t even really sure if we had actually made it to the final part because there is a pause where the Lich King will just stand there silently. I thought at first that maybe we didn’t get it and that he had glitched for a moment. But, then he started speaking in his distinctive belching voice. After a long bit of waiting through dialogue, you get treated to one of the best cinematic cut sequences ever! Plus, it turns out that we had an “audience.” Some of our guild mates decided to jump into vent and listen to our epic struggle. Although I’m pretty sure that I may have expanded their vocabulary with a few colorful expletives of my own. Hey, I’m ex-military, folks. I know my profanity!

This experience was great. The challenge was great and could be irritating at times, but all in all, it was well worth the effort. However, I feel I should point out something. Despite the headaches from this challenging raid, nothing, and I mean absolutely nothing, is worse than beating the Lich King, and receiving two measly little 258 item level crossbows that practically no one uses. Seriously. I was hoping for at least the epic mace. Yay. Crossbows that no one really needs. Way to go there, Arthas. You dumbass!

/RAGE

Well, at least we now have an epic title! Enjoy the pics!