Nerds at Play

Almost a year and a half after the Burning Crusade came out, my first character finally earned the title, “Champion of the Naaru.”

Back when my Mage hit 70, I completed the long Cipher of Damnation quest chain in Shadowmoon. I did most of the pre-requisites while leveling, and I finished off the group quests with some guildies. It was easy back then - everyone was trying to get their group quests done. Now it’s a bit tougher, unless some guildies are gracious enough to walk you through it.

After that, Walkere never made any progress on the Trials of the Naaru quests. We tried Heroic Shattered Halls, but it was impossibly hard with a warrior tank and our then-newbish-gear (although we did kill the first boss for the Nightbane quest). I don’t think we ever worked up the gumption to try Arc, Shadow Labs, or Steam Vaults. Once they were removed from the Hyjal attunement chain, it seemed that we were never going to complete the quests.

Re-enter Sythrick, Protection Paladin

After my extended hiatus, my Paladin (Sythrick) became my main. I was eager to get all of the new badge gear, so we ran Heroics all the time. It didn’t take long for me to figure out that Heroic Shattered Halls is easy mode with a good tank and a good healer. We were able to move quickly through all the other heroics, too - Arc, Shadow Labs, and Steam Vaults.

The only problem was, I never did the Cipher of Damnation quest. Paladins aren’t exceptionally good at questing, so I never went to Shadowmoon and I simply skipped them all.

One day I realized that we were doing Gruul’s and Mag’s every week, and that I could easily do all of the Heroics needed for the quest chain. I spent an evening working through the solo quests, grabbed some guildies to kill the big elite guy, and started running the Heroics.

Before long, all I had left was Trial of the Naaru: Magtheridon.

And Magtheridon… Doesn’t Go Down

We’d easily cleared Gruul’s and Mag’s for about a month by the time I grabbed this quest, so I figured it would be easy to finish it off. Not so.

That week, the two regular raid leaders and a couple other key players were out doing real life stuff. Two of us stepped up to lead, but the newbs that filled the other spots made the night a living hell. We repeatedly wiped on Maulgar due to bad pulls and it took us three shots to kill Gruul. By the time we got to Magtheridon, everyone was tired, we wiped 4-5 times due to mis-clicked cubes, and we called it.

So much for getting the title that week.

This week, I figured all would go better. It almost didn’t.

Twenty minutes before raid time, we find out the raid leader and one of our healers aren’t going to make it. Doh! Here we go again…

We will in some spots (with better replacements this time), and we clear through Gruul’s pretty well. It looks like we’ll do ok.

Yet we still wiped twice on Mags. On the first attempt, it was going smoothly until one cube clicker got bounced in front of Mags and got cleaved. The second attempt, people couldn’t kill the Channelers quick enough, so there weren’t enough healers to keep me up through Mags.

On the third and final attempt, we had a Blast Wave get off at 2% - but thankfully enough people survived to burn him down. Oi.

In the end, despite many unexpected failures on Mags, I finally got my title. Sythrick is officially a Champion of the Naaru, and he’s the proud owner of a Phoenix-Fire Band. At least I’ve started my Fire Resist set for Illidan…