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cdthirtyfive and qwaitxseven ran Heroic AZN today.

UGH.

First run we had a Feral Druid that wanted to tank, and a Tank that wanted to DPS. One wipe on Krik’thir the Gatewatcher and our warrior DPS hearthed. So, we pulled in a DPS pally that was fairly well geared but purifying poison was “the tank’s job.” As if a Druid tank should shapeshift and clear poisons from the party. Two wipes later and the pally zones out while the Druid has to go run some arena matches with a friend. Since Wintergrasp was getting ready to start, the mage with us ported back to Dalaran with us where we saw our Druid sitting around in the bank.

A few hours later we decided to try again. We found a pally tank, a mage and a warrior for DPS. One wipe, warrior disconnects. We find an epic geared rogue that actually knows the fights. Cdthirtyfive died, kept healing as Spirit of Redemption, Qwaitxseven healed in a pinch as I ran back into the instance. A mana pot, shadowfiend and Hymn of Hope and we’re back in the game and downed the first boss.

Now its on to Hadronox. Our naxx-25 geared main tank somehow doesn’t realize that tanking in the green poison clouds would make healing difficult and we wipe. A little strategy discussion and its decided to avoid the green poison clouds. After we down Hadronox, two people are so anxious to loot that they roll right into a cloud.

Now its on to Anub’arak. I don’t know why this fight was so difficult. He gets ready to cast Stomp, tank stands there and bam, 18k damage. As if that isn’t enough, some of our party doesn’t see the ground rumble and bam, have to heal 3 people that were spiked into the air. Doesn’t take long and we wipe. Another attempt, roughly the same errors and the same result. A quick strategy chat, quite a bit of effort and we manage to down Anub’arak.

I had never seen the fights, so, I didn’t really know what to expect. Qwaitxseven had run H AZN a few times and gave me the quick rundown, so, I wasn’t really surprised at some of it. If our tank had a little better AOE threat, I think this would have been much easier. Had our mage watched the scarabs a little more, that could have prevented quite a bit of spell interruption which caused some healing problems.

All in all, it was a learning experience to be sure. 38 gold repair bill sure didn’t feel good, but, I did hit Revered with the Wyrmcrest Accord so I could get the [item]44152[/item] and picked up [item]44200[/item] as well as it was a slight upgrade to my current gear. After enchants and a gem, it puts me self-buffed at 807 int/772 spirit and 2178 spellpower.

A rather simple achievement to achieve, it just takes running enough Heroic instances and looting the bosses for these items. I probably would have had one more as I forgot to loot a miniboss once during a Violet Hold run.

In Heroic Violet Hold, a normal run consists of two of six minibosses followed by Cyanigosa. I try to run Violet Hold every day as it is a quick, simple instance, provides a bit of rep through Championing (wearing the tabard of a faction) and provides Emblems of Heroism. After perhaps 10 runs, I had encountered each of the six minibosses to earn this achievement.

I run a lot of Wintergrasp — usually forming the raid. I don’t do too many instances, so, getting 100 Stone Keeper’s Shards took me a bit longer than people that run instances. When turning in ‘Stop the Siege’, a quest in Wintergrasp, I hit the 100 mark.

cdthirtyfive’s fishing skill was 1 while cooking was 450. In order to get the Chef title, you need to brew Captain Rumsey’s Lager which is a drop from the Fishing Dailies in Shattrath. The first daily was to fish something in Shadowmoon Valley which required roughly fishing 205 + the Aquadynamic Attractor and the Limited Edition Nat Pagle Fishing Pole. Powerleveling fishing to be able to catch the fish in Shadowmoon Valley took a few hours, the quest was turned in, but, no Recipe.

The second day, the fishing quest required a fish in the rivers of Terrokar forest which required fishing 355 to cast. I leveled fishing to 235, buffed up, but, no good. Missed too many fish. I went back to Orgrimmar (why pass up the chance to try and catch Old Crafty) and leveled fishing to 280 and went back to fish Terrokar Forest. Bingo, received the quest fish in about 8 casts, turned in the quest and voila, the Recipe was in the quest reward.

A quick trip over to the Inn in Shattrath, purchased the two ingredients and made the Lager right there.

Win Alterac Valley while controlling both mines and you earn this achievement.

Qwaitxseven, normally a shadow priest, respecced Disc to try out a few battlegrounds to see if healing was in his blood. With Dual Specs coming soon, cdthirtyfive might become Holy/Disc for PVE, and Disc/Holy for PVP. Qwaitxseven will probably go Shadow and Disc as his specs.

There wasn’t a lot of time in the game and the Horde handily outnumbered the Alliance, so, he didn’t get much time to test healing as Disc.

Probably one of the easier achievements to obtain, when I got it, I didn’t really even realize that we were going to earn it. The group I went with was somewhat overgeared, though, cdthirtyfive is still running a few blues and greens but still healing his little undead heart out.

This instance is a pretty decent heroic instance to get started with. Its pretty simple, relatively quick, and you can almost always find someone willing to run it. The gear requirements for this heroic are not that great – its like the RFC of heroics. It’s also very much like Black Morass where the mobs come in 18 waves with the 6th, 12th and 18th wave being a boss. There’s time to drink after the boss and you do drop out of combat after each fight allowing you to drink/eat very quickly. Conjured food is great here since you can be a little more liberal about topping up just in case you get that bad pull or someone pulls aggro or takes a bit more damage than expected.

Probably one of the first ‘special’ achievements you will get.

Not to let Old Ironjaw slow down Herbskinner, Qwaitxseven and Herbskinner decided to try out ZG again after being a bit more geared than the last time Qwaitxnine (a death knight) and Herbskinner tried farming ZG rep.

While we were a little surprised that once the lure was baited, the boss was immediately summoned, after a somewhat confusing battle, we were able to down Gahz’ranka within a few minutes. We were a little unprepared for the battle and there were a few tense moments, but, down he went. We did also kill one of the Priestesses which went pretty well.

While running Heroic Violet Hold, a necklace dropped for cdthirtyfive. I asked the party if I could need roll on it as it was quite an upgrade from my old necklace and they said sure. Bam, rolled 100.

This isn’t required for the ‘Salty’ title, but, I figured, why not get it while I was in the alliance town. After getting ‘The Fishing Diplomat‘, the first trick was getting into Ironforge.

I went to the western ramp out of the lake under the bridge and mounted up near the Alliance Shaman Trainer. From there, I went up the earthen ramp, across the bridge, through the Trade Quarter, through Old Town, made a wrong turn almost into Stormwind Keep, turned back around and went into the Dwarven District and into the Deeprun Tram. I was not dismounted, ran through a number of non-pvp flagged alliance. The guards did attack a number of times, but, I kept running until I zoned into the Deeprun Tram.

Once I entered the Deeprun Tram, it was a few seconds before I was able to get on one and on my way to Ironforge I went. I didn’t really expect a lot of resistance once I got into Ironforge, but, I kept my armor on expecting that I would probably kill a guard or two if needed and would rather stay alive than take a durability hit. I brought two guards with me, and rather than run past the Forlorn Pool decided to kill them. I tried Feign Death which released one guard, leaving me with a level 75 guard to kill. He wasn’t much of an issue.

Throughout my fishing, I was greeted (or ignored) by a Fiti who fished a little in the pool while I was there. A gnome Death Knight, Rokubx rolled around me with Path of Frost up but, left me alone to continue fishing.

Several other Alliance waved, or walked by without noticing me. However, Malthias did kill me and started fishing there for a while. Rather than get killed, I logged out and came back after the Battle for Wintergrasp.

One time when I zoned in, two Horde were also fishing there. Jerrod, an orc hunter and a death knight friend of his were fishing. Jerrod got Old Ironjaw in roughly 145 casts he estimated. I was already at 800 casts when he left.

After a total of 894 casts, [item]34484[/item] was mine.

Not that I have that many achievements complete for the Salty Title, but, one of the hardest ones to obtain is now out of the way.