VASHJ DOWN!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

/Moonkin Happy Dance

Oh man does this feel awesome. I went to bed happy. I woke up happy. I feel like a huge weight has been lifted from me. It is a little disturbing how big of an impact this is having on my day. However, it has been almost 5 months since the first time I attempted her before the breakup, and this fight did contribute to that break up to some extent. I guess my feelings come down to the fact that I wanted to down her for so long, but I was unsure if I would ever get the chance. Now that it has happened I am on top of Azeroth.

We tried her for the first time in over a week on Monday, and it went very well. An old guildie that now raids a warlock on another server logged into our vent and gave us a couple of good suggestions. After making a couple of changes we had our most successful night on her ever. In all of our other nights we only got out of phase2 once. On Monday we got out 3 or 4 times including a 1% wipe. (It seems like we always have to have a 1% wipe.)

We had an optimal group for Monday, so I was a little bummed that we didn't down her. Our main Shadow Priest wasn't going to be on again until Wednesday and a couple of people were pushing to try her again on Tuesday. I must admit that I was a little worried to try her again on Tuesday because we wouldn't have a shadow priest. Its not just the fact that Necrodamus is an awesome player, but the debuffs he provides are huge. We generally raid with 4 - 6 warlocks that benifit from Shadow Weaving, not to mention the extra 5% from misery for the entire raid. I was worried that without those debuffs we would have another bad night and people would get discouraged.

Well, two things happened. First, things went pretty well without a shadow priest. The striders were a little slower than Monday, but we did get to phase 3 a couple of times. Second, one of our old Shadow Priests returned from the dead. We were one healer heavy in the raid so we got the Spriest in even though he had never done the fight before. The switch paid off and we got Vashj down in 2 or 3 attempts. I have never been this excited about killing a boss before and it is awesome.

The only thing that could have made it a better night was if I had gotten my T5 helm but it was not meant to be. Here are the loots:
[Helm of the Vanquished Hero] x 3
[Krakken-Heart Breastplate]
[Glorious Gauntlets of Crestfall]

I was a little bummed to see 3 Hero tokens. I had hoped for at least one defender token to reduce my competition for future drops but oh well. I will get it eventually.

One last thing before I move on. I know that a couple of my readers are getting close to working on Vashj if you haven't started already. So I thought I would give a couple of pointers that we found very helpful.

1. Kiting the Strider - On our most successful nights we had a Destruction Warlock doing it, but we also had a frost mage and an Affliction lock spec Curse of Exhaustion. If you use a warlock to kite him I highly suggest a destro lock. When we did it with an affliction lock he couldn't build threat fast enough. Having the frost mage probably helped quite a bit also.

2. DPSing the Striders - If you are ranged DPS and don't DPS the Striders at least a little bit then you fail. If you can DPS the Striders then you need to. This includes healers. I am not suggestion that anyone should abandon their primary job. Healers need to keep their people alive, but you can spair two seconds to get off a SW: P or a Moonfire. Elemental DPS needs to get them down but the elementals go down really easy. You can spare 5 or 6 seconds to throw a couple of spells at the striders. In fact, if you are elemental DPS then you should always be DPSing something. It may be Elementals, Striders, or Naga, but there is always somewhere you can help out.

3. Tainted Cores - These will take a little bit to coordinate and master but it is important that you do it quickly. We tried it a couple of different ways and found that Elemental DPS and Elemental Healers have to be involved. At first we tried to have two people pick them all up and throw them to each other, but they couldn't do it quick enough. We ended up loosing a couple of cores that way. The way we did it in the end was having a designated person pick up the core and throw it to the Elemental Healer. The Elemental Healer then threw it to a designated person by a barrier.

Toon Update:
Graylo - Nothing really to add to the awesome work on Vashj. I am thinking about dropping my idol swapping macros though. It feels like I am losing some cast time. I need to go test it out on Dr Doom.

Graypal - Surprisingly, quite a bit has been going on with him. I ran Heroic Mech two nights in a row and he is now about 2800 rep away from Revered with Sha'tar. I was also able to pick up a primal nether to make the leg enchant. I was also able to hit exalted with Scryers thanks to Necrodamus. He is an old WoW friend of mine that goes all the way back to FoC. He gave me 100 Scryer signets to ding exalted. Now that I am exalted I picked up the Shoulder Enchant and purchased [Seer's Signet]. I also enchanted both of my rings. All of this combined and I am almost to 1000 shadow damage. His gear is getting very respectable. I might even be able to get him into ZA some time.

Grayfel - Building rested XP as usual.