I spent most of the week gearing up. Upgrades were obtained, boosting my item level to 377, one shy of the maximum possible with drops from heroics. Expensive enchants and gems were applied. Food and flask were purchased. I installed Deadly Boss mods and read strategies on the wiki. All of the preparations had dearly depleted my cash reserves, and I dreaded the coming repair bill. Never the less, there was nothing left to do but face the madness... of Deathwing.
Well, that was modestly anticlimactic. No loot, but I did snag over 320 gold in bonuses, because the raid finder inserted me into in-progress raids on my first visit to each of the two halves of the zone. I had to go back through the first half of the raid a second time to kill the remaining bosses and qualify for the achievement needed to run the second half, and I decided there was no harm in killing the fourth boss a second time for the 80 gold prize, rather than leaving the group to find a replacement. Then I ended up doing the same for the second half.
All told, first runs through the raid finder, 400 Valor points (docked by 100 due to the weekly cap) and a large PROFIT in gold after only two deaths. There wasn't really even significant loot drama, though some people definitely made some questionable rolling decisions. Four hundred wipes, it isn't, but then I can't say that it made me want to line up for a raid slot to do this the "real" way either. On the plus side, I win teh Cat-a-cal-ismz. .
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| In defense of whomever hands out the Valor Points, killing Deathwing, the bringer of Cataclysm and destroyer of Azeroth, would be worth a whole 100 VP more than completing some random heroic, except for the weekly point cap. |
