Wednesday, December 31, 2008

Happy New Years

May all of you get phat loot and many favorable rolls.....except Gevlon....for being a greedy sumbitch. 

Best wishes to you and your families.

Plague and Arachnid Quarters

We went into Naxx last night and cleared both the Plague and Arachnid Quarters. We one shotted every boss except Heigan, who took us two shots. I got a sexy new tanking ring off of the first boss in the Arachnid Quarter.

Unfortunately, I lost my roll on my shoulders to an Elemental Shaman :( I have wanted the Dreanuaght Stlye shoulders since pre BC. All of this took roughly two hours. I would have kept going,  but we had people who had to go unfortunately.

Naxx has been incredibly easy so far, and I am looking forward to more of the phat purple lootz.

Tuesday, December 30, 2008

Extra day off = more WoW time

I already have Thursday off, but my boss gave me Wednesday off as well. That means more WoW time for me!

We have a scheduled Naxx run tonight, and I am hoping to get in to see all of the fights and get some quality tanking gear. I really want a pair of the T7 shoulders. They are the best looking graphic in the game and the only thing that is disapointing is that they changed the blue glow on them to a yellow glow. A read glow would have looked much cooler IMO.

There are several nice upgrade for me in 10 man Naxx, but the main reason I want to go is to learn all of the fights. Once I have learned all of the fights I will be able to run my own 10 mans once the guild moves on to the 25 man version.

I am not sure which item I want to pick up next for my emblems of Heroism. If I havent received an upgrade from Naxx, then I would imagine I will be getting my T7 gloves.

As far as tanking goes, I am still having a blast. I love tanking heroics if I have a good group and tanking in general is just fun. I ran heroic Old Kingdom the other night with a very good group. We cleared it in record time with no wipes. It helps when all of the dps is doing well over 2k dps. Stuff was dying before I could really tank it. I was more baby sitting mobs than tanking them lol.

I hope everyone enjoys their time off for the Hollidays.

Monday, December 29, 2008

Doing Naxx backwards.

No, this isnt about some raid where everyone stood backwards to make Naxx more difficult. This is about my 10 man progression in Naxx. Last night I made my first trip into the 10 man version of Naxx where we actually downed a boss. The first two bosses I downed are Sapphiron and Kel'Thudaz. Both are interesting fights, but baring dumbness, they really arent that difficult.


Sapphrion: We were having several problems with 'randomness'. A few times, it would be going very well and all of a sudden two ice blocks on one side of the room, and the other group died before they could get to them. We rememdied that by standing a bit closer to the circle during air phase and we downed him the next try. I got a crappy DPS helm out of it. Gotta check and see if it is any better than my engineering goggles or else just vendor it.



Kel'Thuzad: I was the off tank for this fight. At the beginning, I just picked up the Abominations as the came in and tanked them. After KT was engaged in combat, I stayed off to the side and shot him. Yes I shot him with my gun. I did not want to get into melee range and chain ice block someone. When the adds popped up, I picked them up and tanked them over in a corner away from everyone. My first time trying it, I couldnt see the red crap on the ground and died 0_0. The next time we got him with no problem. No useful items dropped for me. He dropped the Priest etc. token, Death's Bite, and something else that I cant recall at this point.



I hope to get into the first raid this week so that I have a shot at some more loot. I am also interested in seeing all of the other fights. Currently I am at 28500 health unbuffed, so usually around 36k buffed.



Heroics: I had a pretty good run of heroics this weekend, although I am still sporting my level 70 badges bracers. I picked up the belt from Azjol'Nerub and the gloves from Gundrak within about an hour. I only accumulated 24 emblems over the weekend which puts me at 24 lol. I need 60 to get my T7 gloves which I am hoping to have by the weekend.



There are still some Heroics that I have never seen the inside of. These include Nexus, Strat, and Halls of Lighting. I dont know what it is, but I just have not been motivated to hit these instances.



I respecced my Druid back to Resto so that I can level completly thru instances. I just was not really digging the boomkin spec, especially since my crit sucked. I got him to 71 this weekend after convincing a buddy to spec his warrior prot. With regemming his old stam gems for new ones, he ended up with over 18k health which made the instances incredibly easy. I will probably get some more play time in on this toon later this week. This will be my next 80 most likey as there is a huge healer shortage and I want to reap the benefits.

Saturday, December 27, 2008

Alts

It is Saturday OT again, so I am posting on another day I usually dont post on again. Today I wanted to talk a bit about ALTs. ALTs stands for alternate characters. These are the characters that you tend to play a bit less than your 'Main'.

I have a bunch of ALTs. Just to entertain myself, I am going to give a little bit of background on them.

Main- Darraxus: Level 80 Dwarf. This is my warrior, and the toon my blog is named after. I created him way back in the day when Scarlet Crusade was just a baby server. I leveled him to 48 and then just stopped playing the game at all for about 6-8 months. I came back when I started talking about the game at work with a friend who was a Horde Druid in a serious raiding guild. I leveled him to 60 as a ridiculous Arms/Fury spec by grinding mobs in WPL. Yes I was that noob. It took me 16 days /played to hit 60. When I hit 60, my buddy told me I should go protection and tank crap. I did not know what tanking really entailed at that time, but I did it anyways. I picked up a crappy green shield off of the AH, and got into a group for LBRS.

We made it all the way thru the run, but it was not easy. About half way in, my weapon broke and I ended up using a gray quality swird to tank. My sword skill was not up to par at that time so I wasnt really hitting anything. I picked up an upgrade part way thru and it went a bit better. I did not know anything about tanking. I didnt know what aggro was. I was completly and utterly hopeless. I got yelled at about not sundering.....what is a sunder? After the group, one of the group members asked me if I bought my toon off of EBAY. Because people buy terribly geared characters all the time I guess.

Anyways, I got into some good groups and learned how to tank running thru Scholo and Strat many times a night with some of the people I still play with to this day. I learned how to tank. The most raiding I did Pre BC was UBRS lol. I hit level 60 probably 2 months before the new expansion was due to come out. When BC came out, as everyone else, I was a bit shocked at the ridiculous upgrades I got right away from questing. I tanked Ramparts and BF on the first day of BC. The last boss in Ramps was a bitch and I didnt have fire resist gear at that time. Thru BC, I leveled and ran every instance and Raid up to and including BT. Then Wrath came around, I leveled again and find myself grinding heroics and doing raids for time to time.

Alt- Theladon: Level 70 Human Warlock. This was the second character I leveled to level cap at that time (70). I decided I wanted another high level toon, and my buddy at work suggested that a Warlock would be fun. I hated the first few levels of being a Warlock. I constantly died. Then I got my Voidwalker and it was cake from there. After hitting level cap, my Warlock raided everything up to and including SSC. He eventually became my PVP toon where I got into the 1700s with a Ret Pally before Ret Pallys were good. He is now collecting dust while Blizzard figures out how to make them not suck again. It took me 12 days /played to hit 70 on this toon.

Alt- Zurlock: Level 71 Dranei Paladin. This was my third level 70. Since I already had a tank and a DPS, I decided to roll a healer. I choose a Paladin because the Holy Avenger always seemed very cool to me. I leveled him as Ret and when he got to about 68 I switched him to Holy and started healing. I healed in PVP, Instances, and this was the only toon I got the achievement for killing Kael'Thas on. I enjoyed him as Holy, but I have decided to make him Ret again and have him be my primary DPS character. It took him 8 days /played to get to 70.

Alt-Rootmender: Level 70 Night Elf Druid. This was my 4th 70, and he hit 70 just before the expansion. I dual boxed him with a rogue up to 60 using the refer a friend bonus. He was resto the entire time I leveled him. I leveled him thru outlands 100 percent thru instances. I did almost no questing unless it was a prerequisite for a dungeon quest. I healed Kara at level 68 in greens and blue and outhealed the Holy Priest who was level 70 and epicced out. I specced Boomkin for leveling purposes, but really miss resto and think I will spec back and level completly thru instances with rested XP. It took this toon 4 day 8 hours to get to level 70.

Alt- Daedasar: Level 60 Human Rogue. This was the other half of my dual box RAF shenanigans. He did most of the work on the way up, but the druid was the one I was really interested in. I leveled as combat. The most he has done was run a few ramparts runs. I will get to him again eventually, but Rogues are more or less suck right now after being so OP for so long.

Alt- Durothos: Level 59 Dwarf Hunter. This was the second toon I ever made. He will probably get leveled before my Rogue as I actually enjoy leveling my Hunter. He was stuck in the low 30s forever until I used my free RAF levels to boost him to his current level. He hasnt really done much of anything, and his weaponskill is way behind. I want to level him, but he will have to wait until after some of my other toons.

Alt- Deathgorger: Level 56 Dranei Deathknight. For some reason, I find myself not incredibly interested in the DK class. I have seen so many of them that it has kinda put me off to them a bit. This will be my last character leveled if I even decide to level him.

You would think I spend all of my time in WoW with all of these alts, but no. I only sit down and really play three days a week. I log on every day to check my mail and do the cooking daily. That is it. I have two epic fliers (Warrior and Paladin).

Well, thank you for listening to my ramblings about ALTs. What alts do you have?

Friday, December 26, 2008

Pugs are serious bussiness and other Holliday Shenanigans

On Chrismas Eve, I got in a very respectable amount of playing time and made the best of it. When I logged on, one of my longtime in game friends was running a pug 25 man Naxx. I got in just in time to go kill Maexxna. We run in, one shot her and I get myself my first Emblem of Valor as well as the HAWT tanking cloak that she drops. Woohoo for freerolls.

After Spider wing, we were going to give the Abomination wing a shot, but we kept getting blasted by Patchwerk. We turned around and headed over to the plague wing instead. This is where the funny business started. The guild I am in is pretty much the same as my old one as far as messing around, joking, etc. They go out to repair, and the raid leader has a mammoth mount. He invites some people on, jumps of of naxxramas, dismisses his mount and kills them. Everyone has a good laugh. He goes back up and asks if anyone else wants a ride. One of the guys from another guild says "Yeah, I will go". He gets on the mount, they jump off of Naxxramams, rinse and repeat.

The raid leader actually offered to pay double their repair bills, but everyone from that guild just left. When the raid leader asked WTF, the last guy to leave said "We only like to do serious raids". IT WAS A PUG ON CHRISTMAS EVE!!!!! Anyways, we ended up getting a few replacements and two shotting the first boss in plaguewing before some of the other regulars had to go. All along, the guy from the other guild is messaging back and forth with our raid leader. Then the guy starts spouting off each person's repair bill to which the raid leader replies "8,9,10,12,14. Those are the c@#$ sizes of famous porn stars. Now go f$%k yourself."

Overall it was a wonderfully fun time besides the little crybabies from that other "serious bizness" raiding guild.

Afterwards, I did a few heroics and got my T7 chest!!!! I am still noticing a severe lack of healers. I mean seriously, they are all basically gone, out DPSing somewhere. I have to scoure LFG channels to find one and hope they are not saved to the instance we are running.

On another note, I went back a specced fro Deep Wounds again in the cookie cutter build. I saw better results, but not the 12-14 percent of you total damage that was being touted by other sources. I was seeing anywhere from 4-6 percent. Overall, it was still pretty nice as that dot keeps on getting aggro while you are pounding away at your main target. I would recommend it, but it is not the OMG BEST THING EVER, like I was seeing on other sites. I would still recommend it, and I think it will be even better as you get gear upgrades.

I hope everyone had Happy Hollidays! For Christmas presents to all of my ingame friends, I made them Mechanical Squirrels and sent them Tasty Cupcakes with them along with a personalized message. In game, I received the winter boots and a frostweave bag! It really is all about spreading the cheer.

Wednesday, December 24, 2008

Happy Hollidays!

Happy Hollidays to all those other bloggers out there like the Hercs, Zanderfin, Phaelia, Megs, etc., etc., etc. You make coming into work a lot more fun! Best wishes to you and yours!

Make that cash!

My blog isnt a money making blog, but I usually make a decent bit of money when I want to. This doesnt include dailies and such as those are usually covering my repair bills and a bit more (plus I hate them, Im not even honored with Hodir yet :( ). Most of my money comes from gathering. Everybody needs raw materials if they are a crafter.

On Darraxus, I am a miner and an engineer. Believe it or not, these are both gathering professions. While mining, I pick up ore, gems, and crystallized pieces. With my Zapthrottle mote extractor, I can pick up all of the little clouds floating around that nobody can get. This is where I make a decent amount of money. In well under and hour I can usually get several stacks of Saronite (which sells for less than Cobalt now, but is very plentiful) about 10 or so Eternal Earth and Shadow (which doesnt really sell for crap, so I am saving them hoping someday they have value, 2-3 eternal water and air, and usually between 4-7 eternal fire. Thanks to Gevlon at the Greedy Goblin, this has become a big money maker for me.

Eternal fires on my server sell for about 32-38 gold a piece. I take my Eternal Fires (or theirs if I decide to buy them instead of farm them), break them down and sell them as Crystallized fire. Crystallized fire sells for about 6 gold a piece on my server. I break it down and sell the Crystallized Fire in stacks of two. I can put my stacks for a bit more per Crystallized fire and still sell them all due to the size of my stacks. People dont just look at money per item. They look for what is cheapest. A stack of two going for 12.5 gold is cheaper than a stack of 5 going for 25 gold. This is what many look at, and also look at their needs. Some people only need 1-2 crystallized fires. They dont want to spend more on excess items. This is why I use stacks of two. It is small enought that it looks like a decent price and it is a useful size. All that means is profit for me. This will obviously vary per server, but I think that this is the norm.

Tuesday, December 23, 2008

Trendy Tank.


No, not a trendy tank....like a woman's shirt. This is about the new trendy spec in tanking. The newest craze with the crazy kids down at Tankspot is the Deep Wounds spec. This spec is supposed to do crazy amounts of damage and threat. The key is to have a decent crit chance. Remember when picking your talents that Deep wounds can also proc off of Thunderclap.

For the most part the Deepwounds spec looks something like 15/5/51. The 5 points in Fury go 3/3 into Armored to the Teeth and 2/5 into cruelty. The crit is needed, but it is hard to justify going 5/5 cruelty and 0/3 Armored to the Teeth due to the fact that you lose A LOT of attack power. How much is A LOT? Well if you have 24K armor at 3 AP every 180 armor, that is 24000/100= 133.33. Then 133.33 times 3= about 400 attack power. Yeah....that is a pretty sizeable loss of AP.

I tried out a different spec, and to be honest I should have gone with this spec. You really need the ability crit talents for it to be at its best. Without them, I was only getting like 2-3 percent of my damage as Deep Wounds. Other tanks are reporting 12-14 percent of their damage from Deep Wounds. I will respec to this spec on Weds and give a better account of how it performs.

Monday, December 22, 2008

Weekend Update.

I had a pretty busy weekend in WoW this weekend. If I wansn't running Heroics, I made sure I had something to do. The weekend started off rather annoyingly as I could not log into my main toon. For some reason I could still log into my other toons, just not the one that I really wanted to play. For the first 1.5 hours, I ended up playing around and doing some quests on my Druid in Howling Fjorde. Then, I was finally able to log on to Darraxus with out getting DCed!

I had big plans to run Heroics all night, but that plan was not to be. There were no healers on and we ended up pugging a terribad healer in Old Kingdom. After several wipe on the first boss we finally got him dow *facepalm*. The healer was usually out of mana about a minute into the fight. Priests should not be running out of mana that quickly. After that, we cleared to the second boss and took him down very easily. At this point, our UBER DK had to go, and with two bosses down, good luck actually getting replacements.

So we dropped group, and we reformed without of DK who logged and the undergeared priest. We pick up another pug priest and an Elemental Shaman to continue on. About 3 pulls in, I get a whisper from someone in the Priest's guild because they need to use her to heal the last boss of Heroic Azjol'Nerub. They ask my permission like it really matters. So the priest leaves, after about 5 minutes the Shaman leaves and we end up just disbanning. This is completely retarded. If you are in a group, you should finish what you are doing before taking off. Last night I got a tell to do Heroic Strat for the daily, but I was already helping some friends get their Red Winter Hats, so I declined.

That evening was incredibly annoying, and I think I finished up just doing some fishing.

The next day I got a decent amount of things done. I did some more fishing and got it up to 440. I also did the cooking daily and picked up the recipe for Huge Feast. Tons of stuff went on the AH. I took a page from the Gevlon over at the Greedy Goblin and put up some crystallized fire on the AH. The eternal fires were down into the 38 gold range, but I was selling crystallized fire for 6g 30s a piece. Profit!!!!

Besides my side stuff, I actually did my first complete raid. I was just putting around on my way to level some weapons on the banished mob in SMV when I got an invite from the Guild's raid leader. They needed and offtank for 10 man Sartharion. We did it with no drakes, and didn't even have a death on the boss himself. I was in charge of going into the portals on the drakes and picking up all of the adds on Sartharion himself. Besides the emblems, I also got a hot new tanking ring!

After that, I hit some heroics, but ended up 11 emblems short of my T7 chest. I will probably be able to pick up that badboy on Wednesday.

With all of this, I also managed to get my Ret Pally to 71. The Pally is a lot of fun to play despite the fact that I actually have received Northrend green item upgrades. I kill stuff very fast and blow the questing. I prefer my Paladin to my Druid for questing. Boomkin is just boring. I am thinking of speccing back Resto and just healing my way thru instances to get to level 80. Leveling is actually slower than it was on my Prot Warrior. I can have a ton of mobs beating on me with no effect like I did on my warrior. This is probably due to the fact that my warrior came to Northrend with high avoidance, a lot of armor, and over 16k health unbuffed. My Pally and Druid are at around half of the hitpoints that my Warrior had.

There is still a dire shortage of healers. I can seemingly never find a healer, and when I do, they are often times saved to the instances I want to run. Being a healer right now is pure profit.

Saturday, December 20, 2008

Sad Pandas work on Saturday :(


A rare Saturday post from me as I am working today. Didnt find out until about 2 hours before I went home yesterday either. Normally today would be the one day I can spend with my lady without either of us having to work. Oh well, the big check will be greatly appreciated for Christmas. Speaking of Christmas, my family decided to do Christmas today 0_0. At least I dont have to suffer thru more turkey and mashed potatoes and other not delicious holliday fare. We decided to go Mexican this year. I am bringing Tamales...MMMMMMMM.

On a WoW related note, I just barely got the acheivement for completing a daily 5 days in a row despite the fact that I have done the cooking daily every day for like the last month or so. Cant wait till I get some play time tonight. Hopefully there will be someone who needs a tank for a raid so that I can get some phat loots. If not, I will just be running tons of heroics so that I can get my T7 chest. See you guys on Monday!! Here is a picture from a while back in BC.....funny what you can see when you look around while on the Gryphon.


Friday, December 19, 2008

WTF COOKING!!!111one!!

My Northern spices did not sell for the first time because a lot more people got in on the action and undercut me :( So instead I bought a ton of Rhino meat and the Mighty Rhino Dog Recipe to get the last two points of cooking so that I can make a Feast. Little did I know that 46 Might Rhino Dogs later I would still be one point away. DAMN YOU RNG. I did put them on the AH for 10 gold a pop and hop to make a nice little chunk of cash from them.

In other news, while doing my cooking daily this morning I got to revered with Kirin Tor lol.

Besides my usual Heroics and Dailies, I have found that I am a half-ass achievement hunter. It is like achievement ADD. Ohhh, what are all these people fishing in the fountain for *casts line*. What is this? A coin....oh there is an achivement to catch all of them. *Fish, fish, fish, fish* OK IM BORED. Lets go see if I can get Old Ironjaw in Ironforge. *Fish, Fish, Fish*......BORED AGAIN STUPID DROP RATE!!!! Hmmmm what can I do with these low level fish? I KNOW!!!!! So I sent all the fish that I caught in IF to a former guildy who had always been a complete douchebag....individually. About 80-100 fish filling up his mail box. Back to Emblems I guess :)

Thursday, December 18, 2008

Blitzing Heroics and the New Guild

Well, last night I said goodbye to my long time guild which has been falling apart at the seems lately. I ended up joining a guild which had several of my old guild members. Go figure lol. Anyways, I started out doing some Hodir dailies when I got a tell from a former guildy to do Archavon. I get summoned there, we kill trash.....there is no boss. Somebody who had already been saved came to the instance. DOH. So we disban and I start doing Heroics.

We start with Heroic VH where I get my pants to drop finally :) They tried to make me work for it as we got the Voidwalker boss and Xezozz (the Ethereal guy), but we 1 shotted both of them.

Next up was Heroic Drak'Tharon which was also the Heroic daily. We blasted thru in in absolutely no time thanks to a great balanced group. I got a DPS chest upgrade off of the Lich boss.

Then we headed off to Heroic Azjol-Nerub and one shotted all of the bosses there with no problems.

Last, we did Heroic Utgardde Pinnacle and blitzed thu the instance, only dying once when the third boss landed right on top of our healer and one shotted him. We collected our loots and were done for the night.

The healer was my favorite Druid healer from my old guild. He is now in my new guild. We got a bunch of badges, and I am less than 40 away from getting my T7 chest. I am thinking that I may be able to get it this weekend. After that I will be going for the gloves for my two piece set bonus (but will be grinding out the Kirin Tor rep for those tanking gloves until then.

My new guild seems a lot like my old guild when my old guild was good. It makes me happy that most of the people I liked are now in this guild. Sometimes change isnt really change at all....besides getting more purples :)

Wednesday, December 17, 2008

Arena Season 5: Staying Prot.

EI am going to stay prot for arena season 5 for several reasons (assuming I still have my uber ret pally partner).

1) He does enough damage, and with all of the support abilities I will have as a prot warrior, he should be able to smash them into the ground. Some of the abilities that I really like for PvP

a) Gag Order: If you are specced into this, you really are a caster's worst nightmare. You can silence them from a distance with heroic throw, or while you are up close with a good ole shield bash.

b) Warbringer: Charging in combat from any stance is hawt. Having it break snare effect such as frost nova is extra hawt. A warbring charge followed by a sheld bash is BAAAAAADDDDD for casters.

c) Concussion Blow: Not only does it stun the opponent, but it hits for a very good amount of damage. Mine crits for over 3k.

d) Shield Slam: Besided being a prot warrior's big damage ability, it also takes a buff off of the target. Get a few of these in and you opponent will be practically naked.

e) Shockwave: A nice chunk of damage and an even better AOE stun.

f) Improved Spell Reflect: It will be more deadly for casters to focus fire now. Improved spell reflect not only reflects for you, but you teammate. Frostfire bolt in your FACE.

g) Damage Shield: Watch and laugh as a rogue beats himself to death.

h) Other nice abilities for warriors: Enraged regenration is a nice self heal, and intimidating shout is a nice interrupt. Lets not forget that retalliation and shield wall are now on seperate 5 minute cooldowns and shield block will come in handy against rogues.

It aint bad to be prot in PvP anymore.

Tuesday, December 16, 2008

Dusting yourself off and starting again.

Within the last week or so, my guild went from a formerly BT raiding guild to pretty much extinct. There were problems with people not showing up to the raids when we finally had the bodies to raid as well as people being impatient and getting saved to other raids.

All of our officers ended up leaving first, followed by the GM kicking all of the ALTs. Then we had several more key members leave that had been there since the beginning. I was one of the final crew to leave the burning ship.

In a way, it is very sad for me. I have been in this guild in one way or another for over 2 years. The first incarnation of the guild ended when the then GM decided to G-kick everyone. We reformed as Reborn and continued doing what we did. Eventually, the GM of our former guild ended up joining on as well. We raided up to and including BT before the expansion. Towards the end of BC, raiding really started to die off. Then we all started leveling in Wrath. The first ones to 80 bolted and went to guilds that had already started raiding. Then the other problems set in. Not only had we lost good players to other guilds, we lost several tanks and healers who just didnt pick up the expansion.

At the same time, I kind of feel a bit of relief. There had been too much drama lately, and that is not how the guild rolled. We were a bunch of bullshitters just having fun together. If we couldnt even be that, then perhaps it was time to move on.

R.I.P Reborn. I will remember you fondly and dedicate my first phat purplz to your memory. Thanks for the good times.

Monday, December 15, 2008

Naxx fails, Guild fails.....but I did save money on insurance by switching to Geico!

So, a lot of new in my world (of warcraft) over the weekend. First thing is that the guild I have been in for the last 2 plus years basically fell apart. Not getting the people they needed fro Naxx runs, the GL left followed by the old guild leader announcing that the guild would no longer be a raiding guild. This was met by

A) A mass exodus of people who still want to raid.
B) The new (old) guild leader kicking out everybody's alts.

There are now less than 35 people in guild. At this point, my arena buddy offered to get my into his guild as they are short on Warrior tanks and are the 5th ranked raiding guild on the server. I am leaning towards joining them. Most of the people I have played with over all of this time have now moved on and we don't even have a single healer in Guild. Another plus is that the new guild would have raid nights that are compatible with my real life schedule. I think I have already made my decision, it is just hard to let it go.

On a less gloomy note, I got my Red Sword of Courage over the weekend finally! Those damn pants out of Heroic VH still havent dropped yet :( I run that heroic pretty much daily and have yet to see it drop. Cloth bracers seems to drop just about every single run.

I did my first foray into Naxx in a pug, and it did not go well. The tank were good, the healers were good, but the DPS was terribly low. It did not help that the raid leader brought along an extra tank :( The top DPS in the run was at about 1400 dps. That is very bad for Naxx. That is good at level 70 running SSC or something. Not level 80 running Naxx. Needless to say, we were unable to get Anub'Rhekan down and it costed me roughly 50 gold in repair bills.

I finally did some questing and such in Northrend with my other toons. I respecced my Druid Boomkin and headed to Howling Fjorde, then I respecced my Paly ret and headed out to Borean Tundra. So far so good. I got about half a level of XP on both and then went back to my warrior.

I have noticed since the expansion that there seems to be a great lack of healers. Before my guild fell apart, there were probably on 3 healers for the whole guild. Everybody else went DPS to level and just seemed to never spec back. When I try to pug heroics, I also find that the channels are just filled with a few tanks and a bunch of DPS. Im guessing that most of the healers are doing guild runs and arent really pugging anything.

Friday, December 12, 2008

AOE tanking. Not just for Paladins.

When you first hit Heroics, you won't generally be completely AOE tanking. You will probably need at least one CC because the mobs can hit damn hard. With that said, with the changes to the warrior class, there is not excuse not to be able to AOE tank. Thunderclap is pretty awesome now and for me crits for over 1000.

Thunderclap is probably your most important ability for AOE tanking. Not only does it do some decent damage, but it also reduces the attack speed of things hitting you. Getting hit less=good (at least in content you dont outgear by a ton).

Shockwave is the new hotness for Prot Warriors. I does a bunch of damage and also stuns the targets for a short amount of time. My Shockwaves crit for well over 3k damage. The cooldown on this ability is not incredibly short, so you will have to choose when to use it.

Demoralizing Shout is still as important as ever when AOE tanking. Making things hit you less hard is good. If you get smashed, so will the rest of the group.

Cleave is one of the old standbys for AOE tanking and is still a good option.

Glyph of Sunder will also help a lot when AOE tanking. It will place a sunder on a nearby bad guy when you sunder your main target. Its like the old tab target AOE tanking only dumbed down.

Generally what I like to do it charge in, thunder clap, backup, and then Shockwave. While they are stunned you can throw up a demo shout. Follow that with another thunderclap, and do you regular threat rotation on the main target. You can always tabe sunder if you like or throw in a cleave or two. If the AOE pack is getting read to go down, dont blow your Shockwave cooldown again. Make sure to wait until the next group for that nice big chunk of AOE threat.

AOE tanking is just that...AOE tanking. You are using your AOE and the DPS is probably doing the same. If you want them to focus fire a target, make sure to state that or mark it. If you dont, and they pull aggro, it is your fault Mr. Tanky.

As always, tank responsibly. This message has been paid for by Darraxus for President.

Thursday, December 11, 2008

All Aboard the Fail Boat: A Guide How Not To; Heroic Violet Hold


That pretty much explains more horrible, horrible luck with heroic VH last night. The biggest fail part is the we got the eyeball boss and the aarokoa boss. Yeah....easy ones. The moral of the story is to always get a good healer, but then we knew that. Lets take a spin in the time machine and see how we got to this point.

So, I log on after work figuring I will get a very quick Heroic VH run in before the Gym. We go in with a Mage officer, his GF (a druid healer), a RL mage buddy, and a Ret Pally from Guild. We get in, everything is going fine, and then we wipe on the eyeball boss. Why? Because they kept DPSing during the optical focus phase. So we run back in, and we start over. We kill the first two bosses quite easily. We are on the 15th wave of trash, and a blue caster offhand drops. The Druid healer wants it. While she is busy checking out the shiny new blue item, wave 16 slowly beats me to death. Wipe....on trash......FAIL.

I head off to the Gym, come home, spend some time with my lady, and try to get the run going again. We get our healing lead officer (priest, who BTW had to be in bed shortly), a different officer playing the other officer's mage, a freshly dinged 80 warrior from guild, and the same ret pally from earlier. We start killing the mobs and notice that we get the Aarakoa boss first....I didnt put i back on Heroic......FAIL. Our priest has to go to bed, and I finally convince out original druid healer to come back.

First try with the new healer.....dead on the first boss....again. She whispers me that she will give it one more shot. We clear everything up until the last boss. As the last boss spawns, out ret pally dies. The fight is long and the Druid runs out of mana. The Mage is dead. Did we pull it off? Hell no. I die, the pally reconnects, doesnt bubble and gets killed, warrior is dead, healer dies with the last boss sitting at 3500 health. Demoralizing.

I give it a rest for a bit and decide to go and mine some nodes and crap to make some cash and to also not want to kill myself :) My former arena partner Mura finished 25 man Naxx and offered to come along. The only problem is we couldnt find a healer at first. Then I got a tell from a level 80 priest that he would heal it. So it is Mura, our Warrior, the Mage DPSing, and the PUG priest healing....or not healing is more like it. We get to the first boss. Fail....the priest either had horrible lag or terrible reaction time because we were not getting many heals. After the wipe, he says he has to go and jets.

At around this time, I see that my favorite Heroic Healer is finished with a 25 man Naxx that he was involved in. I hit him up and he comes in to heal. We get it that time with no wipes and no real serious danger at all for that matter. Goes to show how much a good healer means to a group.

Wednesday, December 10, 2008

Helping out your Healers

A tank helping out their healer can go a long way. It makes people want to run with you, and you will make new healer friends that invite you along to their runs. This goes for guild healers as well as pug healers.

One of the easiest things a tank can do to help is use his cooldowns. In the AOE fest that was the end of BC, people stopped using common sense and cooldowns. Now that we are back to heroics and raiding, this can be bad. There are a number of things you can do to help your healing brothers and sisters out.

1) Use your trinkets: If you have trinkets with on use abilities, they should be on your tool bar. Better yet, make a macro that charges, then uses one of your trinket uses. This gives the healer a moment to get his bearings straight and start healing you. If you don't have on-use trinkets equipped (like me atm), then disregard this.

2) Mark targets for CC: It is not old and outdated. It is still good practice, and hit keeps you from taking 15k damage in a second. Marking has been around forever. Once again, people forgot about it in BC-AOE. Marking targets is also important as it make you learn what each mob does. Knowing your shit is part of being a good tank, and not a face roller.

3) Use your cooldowns: Pre Wrath, you didnt really need to use your cooldowns or special abilities. Shield wall was on a very long timer, and it was usually a given that shield block would be up all the time. Well, times have changed. Shield block is now on a 45 second cooldown. This is a huge change as you can no longer spam it. It is best used when pulling, then charging into a group. You take a lot less damage and give your healer a chance to catch up. Shield wall is now 5 minute cooldown and reduces all damage by 60 percent. Pretty nifty as it can be used on EVERY boss fight. Last stand is another nice OH SHIT button with pretty short cooldown. A new one is Frenzied Regeneration. This is basically a pretty powerful warrior hot that can help out a lot. If you notice you are taking alot of damage, it would be very useful help to the healer for you to pop it. It has a 3 minute cooldown.

4) Silence, and Stun, and reflect OH MY!!!!: These are normal abilities that should be used on a regular basis to help out your healer. Pretty much every tank should be specced into Gag Order. If you are, this gives you two silences. Heroic throw will silence casters as will shield bash. This is win. You can pull caster mobs with Heroic throw and have then run straight to you without having to LOS. Make sure that you are silencing caster mobs when you can. Spell reflect is also a very nice ability. If you are specced into the improved version, then you can reflect spells cast at your buddies as well. They will tank you for it.

5) Communicate: It is all well and good to use the abilities given to you. The last thing you can do to help out a healer is to let them know that you are popping a powerful ability. This may give them a chance to regen a little mana, or heal up an injured party member. In all relationships, communication is key. This includes the Tank-Healer relationship.

On a side note, I tried to mostly pug heroic VH last night, and it was not happening. I had a terrible DK for my guild who was doing under 1k dps, a pug hunter who was all kinds of dumb doing around 1k, and a very good pug hunter doing about 2k dps. The healer was also very good and a pug. Unfortunately, we got the Ethereal boss that drops the orbs, and the DPS kept doing dumb shit. The boss will enrage if his orbs get to close and hit me for 10-12k damage. Well, I would be kiting him along, and then all of a sudden, a bunch of ghould pop up and TAUNT the boss. He stays there whacking ghouls, the orbs catch up, he come back after me, and smashes me to bits.

We wiped 4 times on that boss before I logged off in disgust. I am probably going to talk to some officers about the DK, before he gets into a raid and sucks it up. During BC, he was an extremly well geared shadow priest that struggled to do 800 DPS. Now he is a level 80 DK and was only doing 800 DPS. He is well below the curve for similar geared DKs, and I fear he doesnt really know how to play. His terrible DPS was always tolerated because a) everyone likes him (he is a very nice guy), and b) he was a SP which gave mana to everyone. Now he is a DK which are a dime a dozen, and he really doesnt stack up.

Tuesday, December 9, 2008

Speed Gaming

Unless is is a designated WoW night, I need to speed game in order to get anything done. I usually log on quickly before work, do my daily cooking quest and check the daily heroic and regular instance daily to see if it will be something I am interested later in the week.

Some days when I get home from work, my fiance is still in class so that gives me a limited bit of time to play as well. Yesterday I took advantage of that by blasting thru Heroic Violet Hold with a guild healer, a guild DPS who I out damaged, and two pugs. We got thru it with zero problem (although my stupid tanking pants still didnt drop.)

I previously posted a post about things you can do with very limited time. Heroic VH is one we can add to the list. It takes probably less that 30 minutes, gets you 3 Emblems, and the chance to get an epic. Plus it is in Dalaran, which is extremly convenient to get to (via Hearth or whatever method you like).

Monday, December 8, 2008

Heroics

That is basically what I did this weekend. Ran heroics. I probably ran around a dozen or so. I ran Utgarrde Pinnacle, Utgarrde Keep, Azjol-Nerub, Drak'Tharon, Violet Hold, The Oculus, etc. etc. I got enought badges to get the Chained Millitary Gorget, which is very nice. I will be saving up for my t7 chest next.

I picked up a decent number of upgrades over the weekend, but not a single plate tanking epic dropped in any of my heroics. The Sword from UP still has not dropped for me either. Items I got include the Essence of Gossamer (111 stamina trinket from Heroic Azjol-Nerub), the Titanium Plated Shotgun (made by myself), Titansteel Tempered Treads (made by a BS), the Revered Chest from Wyrmcrest, and the Honored Leggings from Argent Crusade. I am going to continue grinding AC rep for the nice head enchant.

I also did a decent amount of questing, unlocking the Sons of Hodir dailies and finishing the Drakuru quest lines.

We had plans to run Naxx on Saturday, but I think it may be best for some of the people to obtain some decent gear. The Guild poked their head in on Sunday evening and downed the first boss in the spider quarter.

I have now been healed in Heroics by every class other that a Shaman. I must say that Druid Healers are still my favorite followed by Priests and Paladins. I ran with a very good Paladin healer last night in Heroic UP in a 100 percent PUG. I still have not decided what toon I am going to level next. I think perhaps the Paladin, but again, I am not sure.

Does anyone know where some good tanking shoulders drop for an 80 warrior? I know that some nice ones drop from Patchwerk in 10 man Naxx, but we havent quite made it there yet.

My stats are looking pretty good atm. I am at 540 defense without having to use a defense trinket, 25500 health unbuffed, and 23000 armor. My dodge is close to 19 percent, while block and parry are around 15.5 percent (yes I know that Block is not an avoidance stat).

Friday, December 5, 2008

Mission: Impossible

Do you ever have a theme song running in your head when you are doing something? I logged in this morning to do the cooking daily before work. As soon as I log on it say "11 minutes until server reset". I pick up the Mustard Dogs daily and realize I only have 2 Rhino meat and I need 4!!!!!

Queue Mission: Impossible theme music.......... I hop on the Griffin to Borean Tundra and wait. About 5 minutes later im in Borean and hop on my epic flier. I fly over to a large patch of Rhinos and gather all 6 of them. I proceed to smash them to bits and get 4 meat out of it. I hearth back to Dalaran, and make the dogs. I then start my mad dash back to the flight point area where I have to turn in the quest.

Queue the "The Final Count Down" by Europe. I run up the stair, turn in my quest, get my reward, then bam DCed from the server. More like Mission: You aint stopping me from doing my daily cooking quest BEATCH!!!!!

So yeah. That was my morning, now I am at work. Fun day ahead which consists of work, gym, dinner, sleep. Yay.

Thursday, December 4, 2008

First Heroic

Besides doing alot of farming last night (got my engineering to 446 off of a yellow and then green level up to go along with tons or Eternals) I got to run my first heroic!

Utgarrde Pinnacle was the Heroic Daily yesterday and there is a chance it will drop my HAWT tanking sword. I picked it up, grabbed some DPS (Rogue buddy, Enhancement Shaman Guildy, Arena partner Ret Pally, and a pug Holy Priest. This was my first level 80 isntance tanked, let alone Heroic.

The run with pretty smoothly with the obligatory one wipe on each boss so I could really get the hang of it :( The first boss is pretty easy as long as you stay out of the candles. The second boss is also very easy as it is a bunch of beasties that come in waves. The third boss was the toughest as you have to fight a bunch of waves of baddies before you get to fight him, then he does a very nasty whirlwind. Probably lasted a bit longer since all of our DPS was melee and had to back out of the whirlwinds.

The last boss wasnt incredibly difficult. He makes you cower in terror and runs up to a Vrykul boat where he usually summons some type of mob. He also has an ability that he casts where you can hit in while he has it or it does a ton of damage to you. At the end, the stupid mail DPS belt dropped and no tanking sword for me. The priest put me on his friends list and said if I ever need a healer just holler.

Hopefully, the next time I play, I will have the time to get my engineering to 450 and make my damn shotgun. This weekend, I am planning to run Naxx, but if we dont have the bodies (like I suspect will happen), I will just end up running a bunch of heroics instead. I think I may get the belt as my first piece of badge loot, but im unsure. I want the chest the most, but I think that the belt is possibly the biggest upgrade atm.

Wednesday, December 3, 2008

Woot get to play tonight!

Ah Wednesday. A non-snuggle WoW night. I get to sneak a few minutes in during the week, but it isnt the same as actually getting to sit down and run some instances and such. I will prolly get my defense enchants then hopefully will be over 540 defense. I also want to fly around Sholazar basin and gather up a bunch of nodes and crap. I need 20 saronite bars, 15 eternal air, and 15 eternal water still for my shotgun. I was just going to buy the air and water until I saw what they were charging for it. Instead, Im gonna run around with my mote extractor.

The choice between farming and doing instances is a tough one. On one hand, I can get my shotgun. On the other, I can grind my Wyrmcrest rep to get my chest. I think that instances may be the way to go as I can usually find some time to farm but not to instance.

Anyone have any recomendations healthwise unbuffed for a tank, Im sitting at around 22k atm with about the same armor. I also have over 2k attack power :)

Tuesday, December 2, 2008

Getting things done with limited time.

As I have said before, I have pretty limited time to play. It is mostly on Weekends and on Wednesday. I usually get a few minutes here and there and like to try and get something done. Here is a small list of things you can do in a very limited amount of time (10-20 minutes).

1) Cooking Daily: If you done have cooking, then you are a damn slacker :) If you do (and you should), pop into Dalaran and do the cooking daily. They are very easy and net you some spice and a dalaran cooking award (or two if you are lucky). It will also grab you 16k XP and a I believe a bit of cash as well. This is time well spent. Beside the Northern Spices (which are needed for making the top foods), you will get some funny parody spices from time to time as well. These include Old Spice (which you put on yourself or somebody to make them smell better) and Baby Spice (shameless Spice Girls reference, but it allows you to shrink people to adorably small sizes. Best used on Gnomes, Bear Droods, and Boomkin).

2) ANY DAILY: If you have any plans on doing any kind of raiding or running of heroics, all of the major rep factions have some nice gear waiting for you. You obviously dont have time for an instance, so go and do a few dailies for your faction of choice. All that rep will add up and you will make a bit of cash to boot.

3) Gather: This one is only convenient if ou logged off somewhere other than Dalaran. An epic flying mount is also prefered. Herbalist or Miner doesnt matter. Get on your mount, fly around the zone and collect your nodes. When you have time to sell them or craft them, it will have been worth it.

4) Fishing: Fising in WoW is nothing like fishing IRL. In real life, you sit there for hours on end, may not catch anything, and (in my case) throw them back. In WoW, you can catch several fish per minute. Catching these fish will level your fishing skill. Leveling your fishing skill means you dont have to do it later. WIN. Also, you can take all of the fish you catch, cook it, and use it for raids or sell it on the auction house.

5) Auctioneer: Play the economy. Log on. Go to an auctioneer. Scan. Alt-tab and enjoy Darraxus the Warrior. Check the auction house for good deals after the scan. Buy then and resell them for more. Profit. This one isnt really incredibly fun, but when you see the cash rolling in, you will thank me.

I hope this is helpfull for all of those WoW fanatics out there who have a very limited amount of time to play like I do.

Monday, December 1, 2008

Ding 80!!!! About damn time.

Well, with my limited playing time, I dinged 80 last night in Sholazar Basin. It is a pretty fun zone that is basically a remake of Ungorro minus the annoying patrolling elites. I ended up spending a crap ton of money leveling my engineering, but I did obtain my Titanium Goggles. My engineering is now 441. It seemed like almost every node I flew by in Sholazar had someone on it. I even saw players as low as level 71 out ther mining...WTF?

I did some equipment swapping, and I am now at 520 defense. Still 20 away from the magic uncrittable number, but I havent even got any defense enchants on my gear, so hopefully that will cover it. After I finish my last quests in Sholazar, Im going to head to Zul'Drak and start doing the questing there. I am very excited about "championing" for rep and cant wait to run all of the 80 instances and Heroics. If everything goes well, I plan on running our first Naxx 10 man next Saturday.