Enthusiastic Aesadonna is enthusiastic!

Things have been busy for Team UR; we killed Heroic Zon'ozz on 7/25, which was the final boss barring us from working on Heroic Spine! In atypical UR fashion, the kill was quite memorable!

Dargons everywhere! And Thiala (and Gizzy's!) butt. XD

You see these dragons fighting? It was the weirdest glitch I've ever experienced in a raid! It all started with one Force of Destruction (from the Hour of Twilight instance) spawning in the room with Zon'ozz. He flew around erratically as we cleared trash, much to the amusement of myself and the annoyance of others. I even jokingly called him "our good luck charm" on Real ID.

And then, another spawned! After that, a  Dream Warden appeared and engaged in epic battle with the two Black dragons. Unfortunately, two-on-one wasn't a fair fight and our green friend died quickly. The two remained dragons remained until our first wipe, when they despawned.

6/8, holla!

This was our lovely kill. I mentioned "UR fashion", which translates "half the raid is down and our DoTs are why the boss is dead." As you can see, I'm one dead Derp Kn00b. (Dying with a boss who has less than 5% is my thing, I guess, haha)

We've been working on Heroic Spine for the past two weeks, which is HARD. The first week, I remained a Frost DK and helped our Blood DK on AoEing the massive amount of Corrupted Blood that exists after stripping the second Plate.

The second week, I was asked by our GM to swap to Unholy for the valuable raid cooldown Anti-Magic Zone. I haven't had an Unholy spec since Tier 11, so I felt clunky and lost for a good portion of the night. I even did the worst thing ever and accidentally replaced the button I had for AMZ with Summon Gargoyle. Having to sheepishly explain my mistake and apologize was pretty embarrassing, but I guarantee it's something I'll never do again!

We're getting to about 25%, which is pretty decent. Hopefully we'll have a kill soon and we'll be that much closer to becoming Saviours of Azeroth before Pandaville is upon us!

My little lolcat

On another tangent, this pretty little Worgen is my future Herald of the Titans toon! One of my new guildmates, Hestiah, threw out the idea of putting together an Alliance-side run and I immediately pestered Beefbus for us to get in on it!

Beef, Amowrath, and I have been running Wrath dungeons like crazy to get gear. Setsunai is a Feral Druid, which feels similar and different all at the same time! I look forward to see what goes down later this month and you bet I'll be updating about the trials and tribulations that I didn't experience while it was "current."

Speaking of Hestiah, look at what she sent me! (Illidan is missing; he's on my computer desk. :-D)

After raid, I ran a dungeon with Ponerya, Beef, Hestiah, and Amo. Pon mention refilling her Lich King cup while we took a small break and I lamented the fact that my home state lacked the gas station that stocked the WoW cups. She said that her state too lacked the gas station and that a Twitter friend set her a set of the cups, which I thought was the coolest thing.

Hestiah then mentioned that she had a couple extra sets and she'd send me one. I freaked! When I asked her how much I owed her and she told me nothing! That... blew my mind. Here's a new guildie, someone that I hardly knew, and she was kind enough to send me a set of cups for free, just because I wanted them! BRB, CRYING FOREVER. Silliness aside, I'm still really touched.

I was a little starstuck to meet an awesome blogger!

Last night, Beef and I met Navimie of The Daily Frostwolf! She's on a mission to meet people from the WoW Blogosphere and get a screen shot with them. It was kind of a crazy happenstance that we met at all, but it was a really nice experience! :-) Sorry for my emoticon spam; I'm kind of um, famous in the guild for constantly making faces. XD; 

You can read her entry on meeting me and Beef here, which I thought was cute. Look out Liss, Pon, and Juv - she'll be coming for you!

Frustration.

On the bright side, I was able to get in on a Heroic Hagara kill last Wednesday. UR defeated her last week as a guild for the first time, but I had missed out due to the Real Life Aggro Machine. So, yay, acheesement! And double yay for one-shotting her. :-)

Ignore my hot (extra) dead body, that witch decided to nuke me at 2% during our final lightning phrase.

And now, for the part in which Aesadonna whines mercilessly about Heroic Ultraxion progression.

Never have I felt like such a failure in my seven years of playing this game. I'll be the first to admit that I'm not the best Death Knight out there, hell, I'm grateful to my guildies and the officer core for putting up with my shenanigans. But for the most part, I'm competent. Even while H Ultra is completely borking my frame rate and actually freezing my computer due to the lack of optimization of the fight itself, I'm still able to pop into blood presence and furiously smash the defense cooldowns needed to soak the Hour of Twilight as directed with a relatively good rate of success. My derpocity doesn't extend to not being able to press buttons, or I doubt I'd still be a raider.

But rather, it seems like no matter what the hell I do, I can't break over 34k DPS. I average 32, or 29-30 whenever I have to fight my computer more substantially. I'm expected to do 36k minimum and I'm nowhere close, even whilst adding Golemblood Potions to my rotation. The fight itself doesn't pander to the strengths of a Frost Death Knight, but there has to be something I'm missing. I'm so desperate at this point that I've considered dropping my 2nd PvP spec and testing the waters with Unholy, since I have a Gurth'alak. Or even attempting Masterfrost, though apparently that's a hot mess if you don't get the rotation just right. I feel like I'm running out of options.

I just can't stand the thought of being a liability, it's sucking the fun out of the game. Kind of ironic that I used to complain about my ex-guild's lack of enthusiasm for the game outside of raiding, but I think I understand now.

Week in Review #1.

In the spirit of wanting to become a more active WoW-blogger, I've decided to post either a weekly or bi-weekly recap of things that Aesadonna has accomplished or awesome happenstances. So, here's Week in Review #1!

Gratuitous kill shots (+ rambling!)

It's no secret that I love taking screen shots; they're the WoW equivalency of a photograph, capturing a moment for you to relive. Kill shots are amongst my absolute favourite things to "snap" -- being able to savour that accomplishment all over again and to see how you've grown as a player are wonderful feelings. This is Aesadonna's raiding journey through the Cataclysm.