I hope everyone had a fantastic holiday weekend! For those in the US anyway. What this weekend meant to me is a much needed 3 day vacation, and lots of wow time.

I would like to say a big FU to blizzard this morning. I understand the need to make encounters more challenging as to keep everyone engaged. I recently changed Benedykt over to Holy from the Dark side, so his gear is less than great, but not bad. He is mid Kara geared, but is getting there quickly. I have not even enchanted his gear as I want to make sure I have everything where I want it before I go wasting mats. With that said, he is still 1389 +heal buffed, so not too hateful.

Friday evening, I off healed in Kara. Saturday we finished Kara and I went a second time on Knurd. I went Sunday morning and healed the daily heroic, Botanica. Left there and healed Mech; both heroic. I was feeling pretty good about myself. I have never done MgT with Benedykt and was asked if I wanted to heal a normal group so several alts could get attuned for heroic. I said sure not a problem.

Our group was comprised of a Frost Mage named Remie, (Tallarin) a Bear Tank named DeadlyHeals, (he is normally a healer but has a full tanking set), a warlock named Babnet, (Alent) a Frost Mage named Englishfire, (Deadly’s Wife), and Benedykt. All of us are Kara geared, and ran in with my Kara group this weekend; except Babnet, Alent took his druid Neravan instead. This should have been no problem.

We zoned in, checked the 3rd boss group to make sure we got a group we could handle, and started our run. We had a couple of wipes mainly due to bad pulls, accidental pulls, and all of us playing classes we are not completely used to. For the most part the run went very smooth however. Right up until Kael'Thas Sunstrider. We wiped on him a total of 11 times, and never did get him down. I have run that place many times on my hunter, and so am very experienced on how that fight should go. It’s the same with everyone else. We tried it several different ways, even found a couple of different strats and tried those too. We finally gave up.

This is my FU to blizzard. I understand the need to make things a challenge for everyone, but I would think that an encounter should at least be possible for everyone … on normal anyway. I would expect a group such as ours to wipe on it doing heroic. THAT’S WHY THERE IS A HEROIC SETTING!

This is the second time I have encountered this situation in there … The first being the 3rd boss, we choose not to check and pulled a group that had both rogues in it … That was on my hunter and heroic. We changed the group out for other people 4 different times trying different class combos to see if we could get it, and couldn’t do it then either. That was with a T4/T5 group of SSC/TK raiders.

Blizzard went overboard with that instance in my personal, not so humble opinion. /FlexTheEgo

I am starting this morning with something that has nothing to do with Warcraft. Anyone that knows me personally knows that I avoid the news like the plague. The problem I have with the news is many times it reminds me just how screwed up the world really is. I am a tech support / customer service person, and could probably write a column everyday about the people that I encounter and never run out of material. On my way into work this morning I was listening to the radio, and they started into the news. I prefer this program because they generally do news on the lighter side of what people are doing in the world allowing me to avoid the really screwed up people. So this morning story starts out with a 56 year old woman living with a 20 year old guy. As room mates; nothing special going on there. After a few days of the family not hearing from the woman, they head over to their apartment to check on her. Upon entering the apartment, they find her corpse wrapped in her bed sheet between the bed and wall stabbed repeatedly in the throat. The police arrest the room mate, and when asked why he had killed her, he simply replied that she couldn’t keep the spots off the glasses. What is wrong with people?

Saturday evening we enter Kara to finish up with our weekend badge gathering session. With minimal wiping, we clear the place only to discover that none of us can summon Nightbane, the final, and in my opinion the hardest boss in Kara. There were 3 of us on the quest to summon him, so we called it for the night and headed off to finish the quest. The problem with the quest is we needed to run Heroic Shattered Halls and Settekk Halls. We split the group and 5 of us headed off to run the two of those back to back. Upon killing the bosses in those, we headed off to Netherstorm and picked up the urn that summons him.

I then headed off to the Sunwell to check on the new badge loot as the vendor was up. Unlike everyone else, I was very disappointed, but then again blizzard did me a favor at the same time. There is a new crossbow which is supposed to be the hottest thing going for hunters in all of Warcraft. [Crossbow of Relentless Strikes] Upon seeing this thing, I don’t care if it procs with a fireball doing 25k; wait back up. For those that know me, they know that DPS comes first, with aesthetic appeal being a close second. Knurd was never in a “clown suit” as it is referred to, as I attempted, sometimes painfully, to make his entire gear match. Anyway, I don’t care if it procs with a fireball doing 25k damage every 3 seconds dropping your threat to zero, Knurd will never carry that thing. The part that blizzard made easy for me however, is deciding what to spend my badges on first. The [Scaled Drakeskin Chestguard] is such a huge upgrade, and at 100 badges, (instead of 150 for [big birds head on a stick] ), it made it an easy decision. There is also a lack of hunter gear in general All of the other classes got full sets, hunters got [ Scaled Drakeskin Chestguard], [Gauntlets of Rapidity], [Leggings of the Pursuit] only. Bah, blizzard hates hunters hehe. There are a few other things in there that could be turned into hunter gear, but it is not an upgrade over the loot that can easily be found elsewhere.

Yesterday was Bri’s 5th birthday, so I spent the middle part of my day doing that. God I love Chucky Cheese! Although she was happy and had a great time and that is what counts. About two hours before we were due to leave, I get a tell asking if I wanted to run heroic ramparts as that was the heroic for the day. I said sure and into the instance we went. People should probably just not run these things with me, as it always turns out that once we are inside, the reset timer on the instance always seems to show up stating we have less than an hour. Again I state, blizzard hates hunters … it’s always our fault. :) So we blow down ramparts with less than a min to spare, we were even still inside the instance when it reset transporting us back to Shat. Good times, but we got it done and that is what counts.

Upon returning from the birthday party, we headed back to Kara and summoned Nightbane. We had a couple of new people so there was a learning curve, and after a couple of wipes we downed him. He gave us no love as no one that was with us could use any of the loot he dropped. I rounded out my day with a Heroic Bot and Underdog run. I seem to remember a day when those were hard even on normal. Now they are just fun with no stress as we just kinda walk our way through them. Nothing special in the way loot comes out of these anymore for us … it’s all about the badges baby!

On a lighter note, my 2nd to last blue is being replaced, I sent to the mats off to a buddy of mine and he is crafting [ Belt of the Black Eagle]. That will leave me one blue, and for the last one I need to get exaulted with the Shattered Sun, (I am revered atm), so I can craft [Assassin's Alchemist Stone] which will replace [Hourglass of the Unraveller] and help with mana issues.