Para-gong Show - Tanking Paragons of the Klaxxi

Kalbeari the Prime has a nice ring to it... I think I'll keep it!

Now that Siege of Orgrimmar is finally completely open to the masses with the last LFR wing opening today, there are more folks coming up against the later bosses in the instance. After many boss fights that come down to simple tank swaps, Paragons of the Klaxxi - with its NINE mobs who each have different abilities - can intimidate the best of us. I'm here to help you break this fight down into a manageable order and to walk you through everything a tank will need to worry about.

At any given time, three Klaxxi will be active during the fight (until the end when no more can jump down). That's three mobs that need to be tanked and all three of them do something different. Some Klaxxi can't be tanked after you've tanked their partner while others require tank swaps or massive healer cooldowns.

The order in which the Klaxxi join the fight is static. At first, you will have Rik'kal, Skeer and Hisek. Next to spawn are; Ka'roz, Korven, Iyyokuk, Xaril, Kaz'tik and Kil'ruk.

The kill order Apotheosis uses is this; Rik'kal, Skeer, Hisek, Korven, Iyyokuk, Xaril, Kaz'tik, Kil'ruk and Ka'roz.

Please do keep in mind this is meant as a guide primarily for tanks. If you're looking for a basic how-to, Evrelia Gaming has an overall guide. If you want to know how to heal this fight (and an even more in-depth look at the fight), check out the excellent post by Healiocentric. It is also worth noting that each guide has a different kill order than the one my guild uses.

Looking back at Throne of Thunder

With the release of the new Siege of Orgrimmar trailer and an official release date for the patch, we're steadily moving towards new content. I thought that we'd take a look back at Throne of Thunder and talk about what we liked and didn't like about Heroic fights in the instance.

Everybody walk the dinosaur!

I asked two of my guildmates - Sara, our discipline priest and Slout, our elemental shaman - to help me weigh in on our general impressions of each boss. Look for tanking thoughts in this colour, healing thoughts in this colour and ranged DPS thoughts in this colour!

And the winner is...

Congratulations to... Hamlet! I'll be sending the code along to you shortly - look for it in your DMs on Twitter.

 Thank you to everyone who left a comment, I love hearing about what people are excited out with BlizzCon coming up. I hope to see some of you there, and if you aren't attending let me know what you're interested in the most and I'll try to take some pictures/tweet about it!

BlizzCon Excitement!

Image from BlizzCon 2013 website

Ah, BlizzCon.

This year, my boyfriend and I were determined to go - as soon as we found out what our tax returns would be. We (or I) nervously waited to hear back and Friday night before the second batch of tickets went out, we knew we would be able to make it.

Saturday, the excitement grew and grew on Twitter. We checked and double checked (and checked again) to make sure our information was correct, that we had a payment method ready and we downloaded Google Chrome for the faster reload time on the website - Thanks Rhidach!

The time counted down, we had all the pages open and ready. 3 minutes to 1pm I started refreshing the ticket page. There were a few times where it seemed like the website had to pick up its socks and handle the influx of hopeful gamers. Otherwise, the reload time was much faster than my go-to browser.

Suddenly, BOOM! The checkout box! In the wrong place! Argh! We clicked through and found ourselves at a respectable 1740 and 1860 - clearly Chronis is faster at clicking than I am, but I blame the checkout box being moved.

We breathed a sigh of relief, but watching the stock tick down so fast was disconcerting. We communicated with another couple to see if they we getting their tickets at the time too. Then, as we waited we debated picking up an extra ticket. We ended up grabbing three total (the other couple did as well) and now there's two more people from our guild who can make it. The excitement of the whole process was new for us but I thoroughly enjoyed it. I wish we could have grabbed more tickets for people but even one extra was stretching the limit.

Just a snippet of the excitement on Twitter

We haven't booked hotels or flights yet, but we're looking at the same place we stayed two years ago and this time we'll probably drive into Buffalo for way cheaper flights. Seriously, flight prices to California from Ontario are just ridiculous.

I'm really looking forward to meeting up with my guildmates, there's at least 10 of us going and last time we had a blast hanging out and drinking by the pool (bar) together. I'm looking forward to the opening ceremony, seeing all the cosplay, and sitting in on more panels. There's been some talk of ALL THE TANKS getting together so that will probably consist of all the awesome tanks I follow/read blogs of and then me in the corner being shellshocked.

I missed the costume contest last year, so I'm going to make it my mission to get there and see it this year. I'm looking forward to all the meetups and I'm planning on finding all the druids (and former druids) I can. I also want to meet as many people from Twitter as possible. There are people I want to meet that I've met via Twitter and I'm so glad so many of us can make it. Ceraphus put together this huge Twitter list of all the attendees that we know of https://twitter.com/Ceraphus/blizzcon2013 . Go check it out!

Topping off this post, I have a code for a Lil XT that was given to me (last August, for shame) by Opheron on Twitter. If you're going to BlizzCon, watching via the Virtual Ticket or waiting to hear what the news is, leave a comment here about what you're looking forward to this year at BlizzCon! If you don't want the pet, but still want to leave a comment that's ok! Just let me know in your comment. I'll announce the winner via my blog and on Twitter May 14th.

Are you waiting for news about Titan? Looking for new costumes to drool over? Anticipating WoW news? Excited to meet anyone in particular? Hoping to catch Ghostcrawler at breakfast? Hoping to hear about something I missed?

 Let me know and you'll have a chance to win a Lil XT - I hear he's a great battle pet to have!

** I won't be accepting any more entries after May 12th at 12:00pm. One entry per person, even if you comment multiple times. I'll choose the winner via a random draw. 

Tranquil, Undaunted and Still Alive!

Hi everyone!

Boy, it's been a while and a lot has happened since the last couple posts. When I wrote my Guardian gear guide, I had just found a job and started working in earnest. Now that my boyfriend and I have moved and settled in, I find I have a little extra time to write.

In game we've been fairly busy, I've been tanking as one of three main tanks for Apotheosis and we are now 7/16H! We snagged a heroic server first kill along the way, and are currently dancing with Qin-xi and Jan-xi until we beat them into the floor. (And we're recruiting, come check us out!)

I got my green dragon,

Other than raiding I've been mostly puttering around on alts, I leveled my priest to 90 and my new monk tank to 85. I still haven't done many dailies, or grinded up the rep for many factions. I'm sadly sitting around honoured or revered for most of them. I did make it a priority to finish up the Order of the Cloud Serpent, and got the rep for gear I would need to get into raids but I haven't pushed through for Golden Lotus, or the August Celestials.

I tried out Brawler's Guild and was horrifically embarrassed when I got pecked to death over and over by Dippy. I think I've been scarred for life. I don't want to go moonkin on my druid and many of the fights favour ranged over melee. I may need to get my priest some shadow gear and try that.

And I washed my yak.

The thing that's held my interest for some time has been Challenge Modes. I recently got my Challenge Conqueror: Silver on my druid and got to pick my pretty phoenix! The really awesome thing about Challenge Modes is that as a guild, we've been rotating groups and people through to try and get everyone at least Silvers so we can all get phoenixes. We had one group get Realm First Challenge Conqueror Gold, and that spurred a lot more people to get involved.

Pretty biiiird, pretty biiiird.

I've tanked every CM on my druid and healed some of them on my priest. It's my intent to heal all of them on Kaleri and I have a group interested in Golds so we're shooting for that. I've thought about tanking Gold CMs, but you really need a set group and swapping folks in and out (the way I got my silvers) isn't ideal.

I'd like to blog a little more about Challenge Modes in a future post, not guides but more what they were like and how I felt tanking as a druid and healing on my priest. Stay tuned!

Flying off into the sunset