G.N.E.R.D. rage

As a general rule, I don't try to keep up with the special World Events like Hallows Eve. Sometimes I find them mildly amusing, or get carried along with others who want to do events like the Headless Horseman. The new achievements system seems to have focused some people even more intensely on getting every possible quest and holiday accomplishment done than usual. So, I wasn't really that surprised at a nearly insta-invite to help out with the G.N.E.R.D. pvp-oriented event.

Of course, I also didn't know what it was, how to do it or where to get GNERDs. But Wiseman and Kyoka patiently explained it to me, so I started flying around dutifully collecting lots of GNERD candy for the buff. To do the accomplishment, you need to notch 50 pvp HKs while under the influence of the candy buff. The tricky part is that if you die, you lose the buff, so you have to have a decent run and bring lots of candy just in case.

We all loaded up on candy and queued for Arathi Basin. And I got to immediately confirm the true OPness of the Ret Pally pvp. I wasn't even playing very well in terms of using all my abilities effectively, but immediately went on a total ramapging frenzy. With 2 healers behind us (Snapdragon and Uglykid), we just walked up and flattened everything in our path. We stomped through the blacksmith, took the farm and headed up to the mill -- using the travel in a big group strat. Without defending nodes, you don't always win this way, but it can work well, especially if you cap fast enough that they don't have a place to respawn (you can get a 5-cap and quick win this way). It optimizes HKs, though and since we each needed 50, that seemed ideal.

I'm crashing through and vaporizing horde when suddenly a box pops up "Achievement: Wrecking Ball" What the hell is that? Heh, it's 20 straight killing blows in a BG without dying. I didn't die until very late in the BG, Wiseman and I finished with 37/36 killing blows (tops) and all of us had >100 HKs. Everybody got the GNERD achievement easily. Wiseman and I also got the 300k dmg in a single BG achievement.

Then we queued for Eye of the Storm since it was the daily. It wasn't a rout, but we won. And I discovered the other side of OP Ret Pallies when one walked up and vaporized me. The nerf bat's a-coming, I'm sure.

Dethno, Wiseman, Kyoka and eventually Bloc headed off to do lvl 60 dungeons. I did some more pvp with Ragon, Sariana, Sherider and Sealth. Then we noticed we had a good 5-person group and went and got Sariana her epic flight form in Heroic Sethekk (Sherider tanking on his pally since neither Ragon nor I would respec, heh). And cleared that achievement for good measure.

I meant to try out the guildlaunch mods to profile my toon, the guild and try importing Thursday's SSC run as a raid (for practice) but forgot. Maybe I'll get a shot tonight, or more likely tomorrow. I'll probably end up an hour or more late tonight, so hopefully others will start the cleaning house process in SSC before I get there. It'll be fun to empty the instance, but I really want to move on to TK and Kael'thas soon.