Random Musings

Well this will probably be my last post until nexts Mon or Tues as I will be headed out of state to visit my Grandparents for the weekend. Im am very excited as I have not seen them in almost 4 years and my GF who I have been with for 2 has still not met them. They are like my parents and it sucks that they moved away :(.

On a WoW note, I did some more Arena this week with my lock and it did not go quite as well. We went 8-10, but we are still running into teams with Vengeful weapons and shoulders. We faced a full Vengeful Shatter combo and came very close to beating them. I somehow managed to kill the rogue before the mage pasted me, but my Ret pally partner could not finish off the Mage. We only lost 5 rating for that loss so Im guessing that we would have gained around 25-30 had we won.

I think this team will end up with a fairly high rating, but I am hoping that last seasons 2000 rated teams will be out of my bracket soon. We do win some against them, but it cam be very difficult at times.

Weekend Update

Well, I want at work yesterday so I did not get a chance to update my blog. Did kara as usual over the weekend, but brought my Hunter this week. We cleared it in about 2.5 hours minus Nightbane (nobody had the damn urn). I was wearing mostly blues, with two epics and 2-3 greens and finished 2nd in damage. I only got a pair of bracers, but I figure in the coming weeks I will get alot more.

I also switched my pvp focus to my Warlock and had much greater success than with my warrior. Im at around 300 resilience, with 12k hitpoints, and 1200 shadow damage. Yay for dots. I teamed up with my usual Ret pally 2v2 partner and we went 8-2 and I got my personal rating to 1586 (im gonna try to pick up the season 4 bracers this week). Next in my sites is the season 4 chest (although it will be replacing a vengeful chest, but all of my main pieces are vengeful beside the shoulders.)

I am just not that great at arena with a melee class. There are too many ways for my Warrior to get slowed and or CCed and not alot I can do about it. On my Warlock I can run around and fling dots with wreckless abandon and drain the crap out of the when they arent paying attention.

Nothing Much

Didnt do a whole lot yesterday. I leveled my neglected Druid toon from 6-9. They are such a pain at this level. I have to drink pretty much after every pull. Then I farmed a bit on my pally and did the fishing daily on my warrior. For some reason I want much in the mood to play yesterday. I couldnt bring myself to do BGs and I was late to the raid so I didnt go. Unfortunately with my GF finishing school, my Raiding is going down the tubes. Ill be lucky if I can go once a week.

OMFG I HATE U ARENA

So as the title explains I did some arena last night with my Warrior and Mura the Ret pally. I get so annoyed at all of the counter balance teams. I was only a few wins from getting my season 4 chest but the matchups had other ideas. We went from 1576 to 1511. We kept seeing the same kind of teams. Warrior/Druid, Warrior/Pally, Hunter/Druid, Mage/Anything. One of the biggest problems was us being melee and seeing so many damn Mages.......not just mages, but mages wearing the season 3 shoulders. Isnt it about time for you guys to GTFO of my bracket. Admittedly Im not the greatest PVPer of all time, but 2v2 is completly ridiculous. Perhaps I should look more towards 3v3.

Did not play WoW yesterday.....

So this is going to be a non WoW related blog today. Instead of raiding yesterday, I went with my GF, my best friend, and his GF to the Giants game in San Francisco. San Fran is such and interesting city.....its too bad that driving there is going to give me a brain anneurysm some day. We got there early and headed over the 21st Amendment (a small brewery/restraunt) to have some good beer and food. This was my first time eating there and I must say that the burgers are top of the line.

The beer there is outstanding and different as well. My GF had the pilsner to start and I had the Watermelon beer. Then we both got the Pomegranate Cider which is just awesome. We had the waitress take a group picture of us and I managed to knock over my GF's cider all over the table. Somehow I was luck enough that it didnt get on anybody.

Then we headed over to the ballpark. Anybody who hasnt been there should go. Even if you arent much of a baseball fan you will love ATT park. My friend's GF could not stand watching baseball on television but absolutely loved the game. To top it all off, the Giants won and my GF's favorite player Benji Molina hit two home runs. Then I got to enjoy the fun of driving home. It took longer than usual thanks to stupid road construction (aka Caltrans standing around and doing nothing). I got home at about 1215 AM and had to be to work this morning at 6. Yay for less than 5 hours of sleep. I suppose that it is a good thing I am used to small amounts of sleep as I can still function at a normal level.

PVP

Most of the time I like to PVP on my warrior (assuming i specced him for pvp otherwise it sucks). Yesterday I took him into WSG to get the last badges I need to get my season 4 bracers. Believe it or not, Alliance actually won some! As a matter of fact we went 3-3 in the games that I did. That is much better that the blowouts I had become accustomed to. In every one I was top 2 in damage done and killing blows, but most importantly I captured several flags and killed flag carriers a number of times to return our own. The only bad thing about WSG is that you get a relatively puny amount of honor for doing it. Once I get my 20 marks I will probably be hitting AV because 600 honor is better that 200 honor any day.

Weekend Happenings

Well, a decent ammount happened over the weekend. I did my weekly Kara run of course and stocked up on some more badges. I also got my Hunter from 67-69. Hopefully I can get him to 70 by this weekend so I can be drug thru kara for some phat lootz. Our Guild also hit black temple this weekend. We downed Najentus, but apparently had a bit of trouble with Supremus, though I think it wont be much longer before he follows.

I spent much of last night doing some of my first real arena matches of the season. I started a new 2v2 with my Warrior, specced MS, and joined forces with my buddy and Ret pally Muralyon. We ended the evening at 1576 and I got my Brutal Gladiators Leggings. I think im gonna farm some honor today and try to get my season 4 bracers. Next week I should have the rating as well as the arena points to pick up my Season 4 chest. The only thing I really regret about my Warrior is that I picked up the Axe way back in the day instead of the Sword or Mace.

On a side note, one of the more progressed guilds Alliance side on our server is folding. It seems that a lot of people got tired of too much time spent raiding. I have a feeling that we may be getting a few of those players due to the fact that our raiding schedule isnt nearly as grueling as many of the others.

Our guild has some amazing players for what they do. We have an abundance of awesome tanks and healers, and our pew pew is starting to catch up as well (still a few laggers). The biggest problem we seem to have is individual people having a brain fart at bad moments. I would imagine that this is the case will all guilds, but it seems that sometimes people are severly lacking focus....like when the main tank goes down on Kaz'Rogal like 30 seconds into the fight.

Ahhhh the weekend

Well, im at work late tonight as I am filling in for a co-worker who took the day off. My internal alarm clock woke me up at 0630 AM.....and I didnt need to be to work until 0300 PM. So I spent the morning playing WoW. I ran Setthek with my hunter and got Setthek's Quill. That is going to hold me over nicely until I can get the Sonic Spear or the Arena one. I have the season 2 shoulders and crossbow already in my bank (with gems in the shoulders and a scope on the crossbow). In Setthek I outdpsed a same level Elemental Shaman and a level 70 feral druid who was in kitty form.

At this point Im pretty damn tired and just counting the hours until I can go home...tick tock tick tock. At least my boss left so I can get on the computer and check out all the tasty blogs.

Pally Healing

Ok, so one of my alts is a holy pally. I have about 1760 unbuffed plus healing and 24 percent holy crit. I notice that on overall healing meters I am usually one of the bottom 2 (with another pally) when we got to 25 mans. All of the other healers are priests with 2100-2300 plus healing. I also notice that I overheal more than anybody else. Is there a trick to pally healing besides spamming flash of light with the occasional Holy Light. I notice that on some fights like Prince (Kara) I will outheal everyone else by alot. Any tips anyone has would be greatly appreciated. Also, my libram sucks. Is the badge one worth picking up?

Tanking in your underwear

An interesting conversation in raid chat last night got me thinking......we dont see the people we are playing with. There is a good chance that they are playing in their underwear/birthday suit. I know when I get home from work I like to play WoW in front of the fan in my boxers. Just a funny thought. And dont act like you dont do it!

Peaceful Adventure into SSC

Yesterday we did SSC so that we could see some of our brand new recruits in action. They seemed to do pretty well....accept for the Rogue....who died at least 10 times (according to recount). We went in and killed Lurker, Leo, and Fathom Lord which is no big deal for us, but for some of the new guys this is their first real 25 man experience past Gruuls or Mags.

The reason for the run being peaceful was that out douchebag of a fury warrior didnt show up. His attitude towards other raiders has made the raiding environment somewhat stressfull and has made some of our best raiders consider leaving. He often drops rude comments about people such as "You suck" and never apologizes for what a dick he can be. To top it off, several of the female players have been defending him (Oh, that is just the way he is, if you get to know him he is really nice blah blah blag). I dont want to get to know him. I want him to shut up in raids. I want him to show up and not complain about the fact that the bosses that night dont drop any loot for him. I want him to pew pew more and QQ less. To be honest, he is very good dps...but fury doesnt really bring anything to the raid that a rogue doesnt (as he doesnt even carry around tanking gear to offtank if needed). The run went smoothly, we didnt have any drama, and it was alot of fun. It is amazing what one person sitting out can do for morale and fun factor.

Black Temple here we come

Reborn is making their first "real" venture into Black Temple this week. A while back on a farm night we poked our heads in and even took a few cracks at Najentus, but it wasnt our normal raiding group. The other night we also had a few members go and help another guild down a boss or two.

We will probably be hoping to at least get Najentus down and possibly Supremus on out first real trip in. Wish us luck.

Monday Morning Quarterback

Not a whole lot happened over the weekend. I had my worst kara run in months. Took over 4 hours to clear as opposed to the normal 3 or so hours. It seemed like there was a general lack of focus, especially from our PVP spec ret pally who pulled aggro on pretty much every single pull. I did some more instancing with my hunter who is now 67. I have destroyed all other DPS in those instances. Last night I blew away two mages. We cruised through mana tombs until the escort. We had a brief server reset yesterday which caused us to have to run Mana Tombs 1 and a half time. The second time we forgot to clear all the mana wyrms. We wiped on the last part before the mini boss. Awesome.

I have been exclusively pugging with my Hunter. Most of the time, my guild does not want to run an under 70 instance. Another thing I enjoy with pugs is that you have to be on top of your game due to the fact that so many players are just plain bad. I rarely get asked to trap, but I often put a freezing trap at the healers feet or a in mana tombs I would lay down a frost trap for the mana wyrms. I dont really understand how some players can be bad on hunters.

I got a feva...and the only cure...is more healing

We went into TK last night and and only downed VR including a people acting like retards 1 percent wipe on the first try. Three defender tokens dropped...WOOHOO......three priests have more DKP (DAMN). That puts me next in line for the shoulders.

We are currently recruiting more healers. We are running one resto shaman and the rest priests at the moment due to lack of options. If anyone is interested, we are 3/5 MH, 3/4 TK, and 5/6 SSC. We could use more resto shamans, resto droods, and Holy Pallys. We are also looking for more ranged DPS (notably Warlocks and Hunters as we already have like 5 mages.)

We do have another Holy pally in guild with about half epics but he is absolutely terrible. He got outhealed by our Shadowpriests in the raid yesterday....Lol wut?

On a side note in real life, my GF is an absolute beast when it comes to negotiating things. If you looked at her, you probably wouldnt think so but she is feisty. She is in school to be a nurse, but I think she would be a terrific lawyer. We got a cable bill that was more expensive than it should have been (we got charged for two months at the new non promotional rate which which should have been one month at the new promotional rate. Long story short, she calls the cable company and pisses the Customer Service off enough that they actually ended up hanging up on her (big no-no in customer service). She calls back and speaks to a supervisor. We now have our cable/internet extended at the promotional price lol. By the time this "promotional deal" ends, we will have had it for about 3 years.

So yeah......we need healers.....and my GF pwns your GF :).

Farm Night = Dont show up night

Once again, another farm night gets cancelled when due to lack of attendance. I ended up getting my hunter to 66. I did a pug CoT: Durnholde and we had zero wipes. I also led the run in damage by like 200k over a same level mage and a level 70 ret pally. I cant wait to equip some shiny epics at 70 and see what my dps is.

On another note, we have had several people leave in the last few days. Most of the said that they are just not going to renew their account and one left because our raiding schedule doesnt fit his. We are supposed to go do TK tonight (hoping for my T5 shoulders), but we will see what happens.

GL gone for the week, Raids still rockin'

Apparently our guild leader is gone for the week (I was unaware of it), so we ventured into MH without him. Overall it went pretty well. We one shotted the first two bosses (despite not having a tank with fire resist gear to pick up the infernals, which is usually covered by our raid leader). Then we go to Kaz'rogal. On the very first pull, our Pally tank dies so we wipe it. Next to attempts we get to Kazrogal, but the stupid Dire Wolves engaged him early before I tank could pick him up and took away precious DPS time. We ended up completly wiping at 10 precent and 4 percent before calling it a night.

I understand that the fight can be difficult for mana users, but we have them go all out at the beggining before people start blowing up. Somehow I was outdpsing two of our mages while prot spec in my DPS gear. I feel that there was probably just a small amount of focus lacking which probably was the difference in us not downing him.

We will be back to smash him on Thursday, but tonight is (allegedly) farm night. I doubt 25 raiders will show up and I will end up leveling my huntard.

4th of July Weekend

Got a 3 day weekend for the 4th and had a great weekend. Im just sad that it is over. On Thursday we made our first attempts on Kazrogal and downed him on our second try, but the shield didnt drop :(.

I played a bit on Friday, mostly farming. That evening I went to my GF's parent's where we had sausage kabobs and ribs. We also had a few beers and set off some overpriced fireworks. The neighbors got some good ones from Texas so I got to play around with some Roman candles (which are illegal in California).

The next morning, we had breakfast over there as well. My GF's dad makes the best omelettes I ahve ever had. Pepperjack cheese, ham, alvocado, onions, bell peppers. To top it off he made biscuits and gravy and sausage.

Did my typical Saturday Night Kara that evening, but I brought my healer instead. We also did our ghetto 5v5 (where several of us get points for multiple characters). At one point we had an arcane mage, prot warrior, holy pally, and two resto shamans.....needless to say we didnt win those games lol.

I have also been leveling mine/my friend's huntard. It is his account, but he only logs on sporadically to do some PVP. I do all of the PVE. He is level 65 now, and I will probably get him to 66 when I get home and start using Kill Command! BigRedKitty's forums have been a huge help and helped make my decision on speccing. Anyways, that is all I have for now.

Bad player Alert (Scarlet Crusade US)

So we had this Drood named Mellisandria that got invited to guild about a month or two ago. She is one of the worst players ever. She could not tank or DPS (she was feral). She got several drops during raids because she liked to roll on every leather item that dropped, so she got the nickname Ninja Bear.

After getting a bunch of purples, she decides to take off and start her own guild called Melli's Minions or some crap. Guild hoppers are annoying. It is really no wonder she left her last server as it is likely that nobody wanted her. A few quotes from people in guild.

GUILD LEADER: "This is ok, trust me. You just need to look at it in the terms of us giving her purples to go away. Whats nice is that we have another Feral Druid to take her place, and he knows how to tank. Win/win imo."

" I only ran with her a few times. Once was when she tanked heroic ramps.......it took 2.5 HOURS! The other was when we had her come in to finish up a kara run and I ended up having to take part of the green beam on my healer because she couldnt figure out how to get in the GIANT EFFING GREEN BEAM! Good riddance IMO."

"LMAO.....you guys are just cold.....truthful, but cold. Ask Dex about are hour and half to get to the second boss in Arc run, an we didn't even put in an attempt on them."

"It took nearly 3.5 hours to run heroic blood furnace with her tanking, 2 rogues sapping, she wouldn't break sap to pull after initial. so normal pull looked like this. 3 mobs, 2 are sapped, she pulled the one left about 10s after(i started to stay there resapping to make up for this), then when that one was killed she would wait the duration of saps. I started doing the majority of pulling and breaking sap for her to speed things up. She couldn't tank more than one at all because she wouldn't swipe, she would just tab maul, and half the time the two of us rogues were stun-lock tanking."

OFFICER: "Ho dear lol... I keep track of our tanking corp and never counted her amongst the ranks. Went once to take stock of any tanking potential. Um yeeaa I sort of just let Ed/Touched handle that one lol."

What is everyone's thoughts on Guild Hoppers and bad players?

Warrior Multi Tanking

Well, most of my posts have just been about stuff I have been doing. This one is a bit different. This one is about multi-target tanking as a warrior.

Multi target tanking for a warrior is generally much more difficult than the other tanking classes (especially paladins). I'm going to go over a few things that can be a big help when trying to tank more than one mob.

1) Thunderclap. Thunderclap is the first ability I like to use when multiple mobs are on me. This gives good initial aggro and gets those targets beating on you. Thunderclap only affects up to 4 targets, so it is certainly no consecrate.

2) Demoralizing shout. Using Demo shout will give you a bit more aggro and also make the mobs perhaps hit a little less hard if they do escape.

3) Once you have done these, go with your standard rotation on the main target (when you can). You should also be tab devastating is there is more than one extra mob. With enough mobs beating on you, rage should not be an issue. You cleave very liberally. I would use it as much as possible.

4) If you are still having difficulties, dress to impress. It may not be the best looking thing, but the Rep shield from the Sporeggar is a very good trash shield. Out fit it with a shield spike and get to work. You can also have someone make you some storm chops, which do damage when you are struck.

All of this can make your multi mob tanking that much easier. If you have any questions, you can ask me. Tankingtips.com and Tankspot are also phenomenal resources for tanks at any stage of your careers.

LOL ARENA

I called in sick yesterday and the stupid servers were down. Oh well. I went and played some PS2 for a while (Fight Night and an older baseball game), did two loads of laundry, then went to have lunch with my GF at her work.

When I got back, I did some fishing (got it over 300) and cooking (almost 375), Then I decided to hop on my Pally and do some farming. I farmer for maybe and hour and a half in terrokar and put all of the herbs and ore I got on the auction house. I woke up this morning and pocketed over 500 gold WOOT.

I also decided to do my first arena games of the season. BAD IDEA. I think almost every team I faced had 1 if not 2 full vengeful rogues. We got owned....bad. Like 2-8 bad. I had planned on doing the PVP daily afterwards, but was so steamed at PVP that I just didnt feel like it.

Last night was MH night. Raid time comes around and we have 20 people on. There are also two "Raiders" that are hanging out on their alts and acting like nothing is going on. Every raider we have recruited lately seems to be coming to a raid or two then not showing up again. We had a new Shaman AFK out in TK about a week ago, then he DCed. Then he didnt log back on for almost a week. Another one came to a single SSC run and hasnt been back on. Needless to say, there is a bit of drama going on at the moment. We had to grab two pugs to finish filling the spots. We downed Rage and Anetheron once again, but didnt put in any attempts on Kaz. Alot of this drama came to the front when the guild couldnt get 25 raiders on Sunday and ended up going to Molten Core instead. I see changes coming.

How inconvenient

Bleh. Called in sick today and its server maintenance. Stupid patch.