Down goes Mayong, Vampires and All..

That’s right, for the first time, Arsenal managed to down Mayong. Now, before anyone goes and starts wondering “hey, isn’t that a T7 raid and shouldn’t you be able to 2 group it by now?!” – just because he’s green, doesn’t mean he hurts any less. Well, ok. Maybe he does hurt a little less. But I was still very proud (and excited) for the guild taking him down. On our third pull none the less. This is Arsenal’s second attempt at Mayong, they didn’t get a whole lot of pulls on him in T7 before having to call it a night.

Of course nothing dropped for the troubador, we had two dirge pieces drop, a mystic bp as well as a necromancer bp, and some other random goodies like the disease bracelet. Once we coordinated ourselves on the final fight it really did seem quite easy. His smoking body can still be seen on the floor in the screen shot. Of course, Goudia is not anywhere close to being finished SoD. Since she’s never been my main before, she’s behind in everything, and I do mean everything. Shadowgeist got his Soulfire sword though, even if it is a tier late, I’m happy. Alaena (I probably spelled that wrong, she’s a guild templar) got hers, and Kaumo (warlock) got his. I was going to box Calreth for his update since he had classes, but I found that I couldn’t properly time bladedance without lagging all over from trying to play two accounts. I didn’t want to risk my group getting eaten by some miss timed aoe, and decided that he’ll just have to come along next time maybe when he doesn’t have tests going on.

Tonight we’re doing the Protector’s Realm, which is (as rumor have it) the T8 version of Labs (but harder..) so I’m anxious to see how that goes. We did have about three groups of guild members and had a few pick ups have to come along as well. Our regular guild coercer was unable to attend, so we took along a 71, our illusionist is also MIA, so we grabbed a 72 who was decked out in adept1’s and still managed to parse higher then some of our regular dps members (he plays a conjuror main). We also grabbed a 70 bruiser from guild who’s working on having that become his ‘new main’ as he has a swashbuckler that we already have one of. We grabbed a 75 warden, a 75 dirge, and a 70 dirge. In fact we had four bards, and I was the only troubador. Dirge is always flavour of the month on AB with troubadors a close second from time to time when everyone starts complaining about there being a lack of them (for raids only of course).

I’ve been crafting like a mad person since Frostfell came out, and I’ve also been doing the quests offered on the thundering stepps docks for house items (dishes, specifically). I collected 100 food items for both Thundering stepps and Everfrost, and was rewarded with a nice plate, and a mug. Of course now I have the concern that everyone is just going to be eager to step on one anothers toes and harvest every shrub they can find — but leave everything else up. Especially wood nodes, I see more wood nodes around then anything lately. I know this was to discourage “Cherry Pickers” (People who only harvest one of any sort of node and leave all the others up) and to try to get rid of the surplus of ‘useless’ bushes. A great idea in theory, just depends on how many people are going to be after these dishes. They’re not lore, you can sell them on broker, and you get 2% (well, I was) tradeskill exp for completing the repeatable quests. Not sure if those will be changing over time.

I love the new Frostfell items, since Goudia is still fairly new she’s got her wreath and tree now, as well as some plushie snowmen, the carol greeting cards are amazing and a nice touch, as well as the new plates of cookies and the hot chocolate mugs. The hanging lanterns give homes a warm fuzzy feeling and the outfits of course are fun as well.

So much going on and only so much time to do it all in. I’m torn between working on Claymore / SoD (is there really any point to working those now or are they going to become extinct like the previous quests such as Godking and Prismatic 1.0?). I’m also cranky because I really wish bards (at least troubadors) could choose the mage staff as a reward for SoD as opposed to the dagger. I parsed on average 1,000-1,3000 DPS (on fights where I wasn’t constantly staying out of range to ensure the survivability of my group, after all a dead bard is a useless bard) and I want to see that rise. I need proc gear in order to do that though. Not bad I suppose for a troubador who doesn’t have a single piece of fabled gear (except for that charm item, and does it count?) yet. We’ll see how things go!