Novelty Mounts

I wanted to take a moment to brag on my guild a bit. We're a small group. There are only 12 or 13 of us that are active, some more than others, but once or twice a week 10 of us come together to run normal raids. We've been clearing Dragon Soul for a few weeks now, and we're one week away from completing the legendary for one of our rogues (we have two).

The first night we completed madness of Deathwing (which was in the first week of the 5% nerf), he dropped a mount. Needless to say we were quite excited. There are a few mount and pet collectors in the guild, though I'm not one of them. (I worked hard for my Cenarion War Hippogryph back in the Burning Crusade, and I have no desire to ride anything else.) We had a roll off, and it went to our holy priest, Lal. Here she is riding her fancy new dragon.

Lalstraza!

Wowhead lists the Blazing Drake as a 2% drop. But that was awhile ago. Last night we were short a person, but since we really needed to get the final few fragments for the legendary, we went anyway. With the nerf now up to 20%, it wasn't all that bad. We had two healed most of the raid before with the exception of the final fight.

As we finished off Ultraxion, I went to distribute the loot as normal (and prayed that we wouldn't have to DE junk, or sell yet another tier piece for 5 lousy gold pieces), and to my surprise I saw a funny looking dragon. Experiment 12-B. Most of us didn't even realize there was a mount drop on this fight, but here it was. A .5% chance. Point. 5. Iamma, our resto shaman won the roll. What's with all of the healers getting the mounts? 12-B is a chromatic dragon, the same that you see in Blackwing Lair. It's a pretty color, and you can see it in the middle of the rest of us below.

Such cool colors.

We continued on with the nine of us and got to the last fight. We got Deathwing to 4% before losing our tanks to the heavy hitting adds and then we fell apart. We still had plenty of time left before quitting time, so even though it was disheartening to wipe, we went at it again and beat it with less issues. Our first 9 person, 2 heal kill of Madness. Woot! And for our efforts, he decided to drop the reins of the blazing drake again! This time, the bear tank, Gilgalen, won the roll.

So on a night where we almost decided to cancel the raid, we completed it with only 9 people and won two rare mounts for our efforts. Go team! We're now only a week away from finishing the legendary quest chain for the Fangs of the Father. Not bad!

Even though we're not at the cutting edge of raiding, and we're somewhat lackadaisical about heroics, I think I've had the most fun raiding with this group of people in Dragon Soul of any other group or raid. The difficulty level hasn't overshadowed the enjoyment of getting together with friends to kill Internet dragons, and while there are always elusive pieces of loot we're still waiting to see drop, the rewards have overall been adequate with fun surprises like dragon mounts. I'm really excited to complete the legendary for one of our rogues, even if we're near the end of the expansion. It's the first legendary we've worked long and hard for as a guild, and the first legendary we will have obtained in the tier it was meant for.

I think it will only get better in Pandaria, and I can't think of a better group of people to explore it with.