World First! ... and a new friend

Well, last night - what can I say. I didn't particularly want to raid. I'm kind of fed up of Gruul. There's nothing I want from him, I ALWAYS die (lots) and he's a boring fight. But, people were keen, we were short on healers ... all the usual stuff, so I went. We started off with 22 or 23 people and wiped on HKM. We found a few friends, children of members, strays off the street - that sort of thing and managed to fill the raid.

Someone was going to announce the pull... 5, 4.... he pulled! Turns out his microphone or vent link or whatever has a delay! Another wipe. This is where I hate being a healer - was so much easier on a wipe when I was a rogue.

Try again - somehow this time we managed to end up with 3 tanks, 4 (maybe 5) healers and 3 or 4 dps with HKM and an add left. Slowly the add died and we moved on to HKM. It was a LONG fight - the dps all got charged and died in an instant. Fear-ward tanks, heal, regen, heal, regen .... slowly, slowly we got him down 9%... cheers from the dead onlookers, laughs about it being the longest fight ever, ... 8% - still going, managing well (Yay for my Spirit gear), ... 7% - BAM!

Did you know that HKM had an enrage timer after which his damage increases by 500% or something? No? Nor did we - nor does Wowwiki or any of the other guides I've read. So - in true Common Sense spirit we decided that we have achieved a WORLD FIRST! We are the World's first guild to discover that High King Maulgar has an enrage timer.

Fresh from this "success" we continue, try again and actually kill him. Some days I can't believe that we've actually done both of them in 40 minutes. Gruul takes a few tries, but eventually he geos down too. It's taken us over 2 hours to get the raid together, get buffed, food, flasks, wipe and kill, but at least we're raiding again.

At this point I'm a bit tired and log off to go to bed. So - I'm lying in bed wondering what to write my blog about and then I remember I have a [Mr. Pinchy] who has his third cooldown ready. Oh well, I'll do him tomorrow... Darling husband starts snoring... Mind going overtime planning blog... tummy starts rumbling...

So - 1.45am - I get up. I put some toast in, boil the kettle and turn on the computer. Oh my - some guildies are STILL online - we sure are a late-night guild. Nom, nom toast, slurp, slurp tea - click on Mr Pinchy. Flash effect! Panic and look for Furious Mr. Pinchy - nope, not there. Check in bag for Mr. Pinchy's Gift - nothing. Finally look at my log to see what is going on - has Mr.Pinchy bugged on me?

And there it is .... "You receive [Magical Crawdad Box]". OMG! I GOT HIM! I GOT A NEW PET! So - 2am is a good time to open your Mr Pinchy folks - you heard it here! My crawdad is a very cute pet and an ideal fishing companion.

So this leaves me with a "Pet shopping list" of all 4 Crocodiles, the 2 seasonal summoned bosses pets (grrr), a lifelike mechanical toad, Willy (children's week - only been here 2 times, so he's the third one) and the new patch 2.4.3 pets (one of which I'm buying as soon as it comes, the other my darling guildies will be charmed into farming with me). I even have a volunteer already ...