Saturday, February 28, 2009

Saturday Night Screen Shot


YARRRRR. Dark Iron Dwarves to the rescue. My first kill of KT in 10 man a while back. Go go Meleestorm.

Friday, February 27, 2009

TAGGED

Well, Miss Elf tagged me with another Meme. Yay for me. Guess I will tag some more of you after im done then.

1. What is your name, and where did it come from?? Darraxus. I was named after myself and built the bloody log cabing that I was born in.
2. How old are you, and what is your birthday? Me age is not at matter. Im old enough for the big boy lovins and thats all you need to know ;)
3. Are you in love, and with whom? Aye, I am in love with me weapons and shields.
4. What is your favorite mount, and why? I love mah Gyrocopter...who else can say they built a flyin' machine?
5. Do you prefer a certian type of Azerothonian meal, and where do you get it from? I like to eat me some dragonfin filet to get me big an strong....also like to pound down an ale or 20 with it,
6. You know those giant mushrooms in Zangarmarsh? What is your theory on how they came to be, and why they are so huge? I be the reason for those. I couldnt hold it in no more and had to drop the meanest deuce you would ever know. Came back a year later and all dem mushroom were HUGE.
7. If you saw the Lich King walking towards you, what would you do? Give him a good ole fashioned kick in the scrote for what he did to Muraden.
8. (Dav added this one) Be honest, how many times have you used the Grizzly Hills outhouse without any real reason? I dont need no stinkin' outhouse. I do my bussiness on Hodir's Helmet.

To keep it going I will tag Megan who is the only person who can make a Pally evil, that Flubbernuggin Ratshag, and my buddy Occeleta.

Jewel Crafting and Inscription

I have decided that these will be the two professions for my Druid. I have already started JC, and about 150 gold later I am at 141 skill. I have a feeling this is going to get very expensive if I dont mine my own ore. Ditto for enscription when I pick it up. Both of these are very good professions for your character as well as your wallet if it is done right.

One of the main reasons I decided on these was that:

a) I only have 2 production type professions on any of my toons (excluding fishing and cooking), which is Tailoring on my Warlock and Engineering on my Warrior. My Paladin is a double gatherer and my Druid is just now getting his professions in line.

b) The better gems for my gear will be nice, and not having to grind Hodir rep as a Resto Druid will be equally as nice.

From a profit standpoint, I hope to have this all done by the next patch (should be done well before then to be honest). With Dual Speccing coming out, there will be more people looking to buy Glyphs, and perhaps gems up that DPS/Tanking/Healing gear they have had sitting in the bank for a rainy day.

From a player standpoint, it will be nice to gem and glyph my own gear. It will give me a nice opportunity to try out different glyphs without having to spend a bunch of gold. Anyone have any pointers for JC and Inscription? When should I buy and when should I farm the materials myself? I have plenty of gold, so I doubt that would be too much of an issue.

Thursday, February 26, 2009

Argent Tournament is coming....time for some rep grinding

The Argent tournament is coming. This will be a new and exciting part of the game (hopefully) with some cool rewards. It looks like you will receive tokens of some sort to buy special items such as 250 tokens for a mount and 40 for a pet (it looks like only 25 for an epic weapon 0_0). This also appears to be somewhat rep based. I could be completly wrong, but I think you can represent your own race (Dwarf for IF, Human for SW etc.) unless of course you are exalted with the other factions. Then it looks like you will be able to represent them as well and obtain their tabard, mount, and pet. It also looks like there will be some kind of rep token reward for something in the Argent Tournament that will give you 250 rep towards the major city faction you want.

Will all of the in mind, I have started running around and doing any low level quests I missed. I figured that at the very least, if all of the changes by patch day, I will still get the Ambassador title, and perhaps even Seeker. I did a pretty good job my first time through the Eastern Kingdoms and have less than 200 quests to complete the quest achievement. On the other hand, I am 170/700 on Kalimdor 0_0.

Does anybody know if the secondary factions like Argent Dawn and Thorium Brotherhood in Searing Gorge give any reputation bleedoff to the main factions. I want to know exactly where I should go quest. I suppose I could look on Wowhead or something. Right now I am polishing off a few quests I missed in Duskwood. After that, there were 3 quests that I missed for Deadmines. I actually had a few quests to complete in Elwynn Forrest as well....including having NEVER KILLED HOGGER!!!!!! How the hell did I never kill hogger? I have killed him on every single character I have ever played. I have killed Hogger on Darraxus the help people out....yet I never finshed the quest *facepalm*.

That is what I did mostly with my playtime last night. I also got into a very quick Archavon 25 which dropped a bunch of junk that I was not at all interested in. At least I got me two emblems.

In other news, I have decided to pick up Jewelcrafting on my Druid. I have been mining Copper and Tin while completing these lowbie quests and sending them to my druid. I will probably also pick up inscription on his sometime down the road. Both of these professions make good money and are both very alt friendly.

Have any of you dont the ridiculous rep grind. I leveled pre BC on Darraxus, so my reputation is not has high as I would like it. Any pointers besides the cloth turn-ins would be greatly appreciated.

Wednesday, February 25, 2009

Ah ah ah ah STAYING ALIVE

Yes, that is a BeeGees reference. And that song is awesome. Anyways, what I wanted to write about today is survival as a tank.

With the most recent content, survival really has not been challenged to the extreme. Many tank cooldowns go unused because there is really not much danger in dying if the healer is doing their job. Threat has not really been an issue either, and tanking has basically become a competition of which tank can do the most DPS.

With Ulduar coming out soon, tanks may need to take a step back and remember how to use those cooldowns. A good tank doesnt only keep threat, they also help the healers by using proper cooldowns to keep themselves alive. Gone are the days of spamming shield block to make sure you did not get crushed. The shield block mechanic has changed. Crushing blows are no longer, and if you are reading this, I hope you are already uncrittable.

Warrior survival comes down to several abilities and general principals. First we will go over the different abilities a warrior can use.

Shield Block: Shield block now block all attacks for a certain amount of time. A block is not considered actual avoidance as you still take damage. When you block, you remove a certain amount of damage based on your block value. For example, if you have 1000 block value, you will block 1000 damage on each hit. That can really add up and help out the healers a lot. Shield block is also good for threat as each block will proc damage shield, which can crit and possibly proc deepwounds (if you are specced into it as I am).

Shield Wall: As most Warriors know, this is no longer mostly useless. In BC I can remember very few times where I actually used this ability due to the very long cooldown. Now it has a 5 minute cooldown and will pretty much be up for every boss in a raid instance. Shield Wall reduces all damage by 60 percent for a specific amount of time. This is a wonderful emergency button that can really save your ass.

Last Stand: This is another one of those abilities that was made better in this expansion and can be used a lot more. It boosts your max XP by 30 percent for a short period. This is very helpful in situations such as soft enrages and Maexxna's web wraps. What tank wouldnt like to have near 50K HP every once in a while.

Enraged Regeneration: This ability can be a life saver in those situations where a healer may be a bit distracted. This ability heals you for 30 percent of your health over time (much like a druid HoT).

Demoralizing Shout and Commanding Shout: Demo shout reduces the amount of damage you take by reducing a mob's attack power. Commanding shout raises your maximum health pool.

Thunderclap: Not just an ability for tanking trash. Thunderclap also slows the attack speed of mobs, making it so they hit you less often. Obviously a survival tool. Dont forget that Thunderclap can now crit and apply Deep Wounds.

Some other things that can help you not die are pretty much common sense. Dont sit down in a boss fight. You will get critted. This was an old rage generation move, but is very dangerous and can cause extremly spikey damage. Do not turn your back to mobs. You can not block, dodge, or parry when the mob is behind you. Last is DO NOT charge when you are already far ahead of your healers. It will take them a while to catch up and you may be dead by then.

Remember, it is not only the healer's job to keep you alive. Do your part and become an UBER tank.

Tuesday, February 24, 2009

Emotion in Games

Just like movies, video games are a form of entertainment. Just like movies, sometimes we let outselves get caught up in the stories as well. Nobody would think twice if you told them you cried when Old Yeller died. What would someone think if you told them that you got shed a tear for something that happened in a video game? They would probably scoff and think you are some sort of weirdo. Is this fair?

Lets take a look at the difference between the two. The first obvious difference is that most movies have live actors in them while video games do not. However, there have been plenty of cartoons that have made someone shed a tear (I am looking at you Disney). Would the same people who cried at a cartoon criticize the person who got emotional over an event in a video game?

The second big part of this is time invested. Even the shortest of games gives you more entertainment time that any movie. Most movies last between 1.5-3 hours. Console action games usually last between 10-20 hours of playtime, while RPGs may last into the hundreds in hours. MMOs are a completly different animal as they do not have an end for the most part. It is safe to say that if you play an MMO, you are putting much more time and effort into it that say, watching Titanic.

While watching a movie, you are completly detached. You are sitting on your sofa or the chair at the theatre watching a movie. There is no interaction. In a game, you are usually playing an avatar which is a pixelated extension of yourself. You control what goes on around you. You are happy when you do something "heroic" and may get pissed when you "die".

WoW has several quest lines and angles that can get you emotionally invested. Wrath Gate comes to mind. Bolvar was the leader of Stormwind for 3 plus years. You passed him every time that you ran to a Battleground in Stormwind and even did a few quests for him. He was also without a doubt the most badass of the Alliance bosses. Then one day, he is just dead. It was a sad moment in the lore of WoW. The siege into undercity was also an emotional type quest that has you storming into Undercity with revenge on your mind.

My whole reason behind this post is Ulduar coming up. In that instance, you will be taking down so people that you may have some strong in game history with. To me, it is a bit sad that we have to take down Hodir, especially after Thrusting his Spear, Polishing his Nob...errr Helm, and Blowing his Horn over and over. We are exalted among his sons (I just hit exalted with them yesterday, yay), but we are going to kill him. Same goes for Thorim and Freya. We helped Thorim make up with the Sons of Hodir and get his grove back. Then we accidentally betrayed him and got him captured by Loken. We helped Freya's Avatar clear out the scourge in Scholazar Basin and now we are going to smash her to bits.

It would be nice if instead of killing these characters, we set them free and they come and help us at the end of the instance against Yogg Saron. How epic would it be to get the boss nearly down and here comes a bunch of Titans to finish him off. I hope that this is the route Blizzard takes. I love the lore of WoW and hate to see great characters get killed off.

Goodbye Phaelia :(



Phaelia over at Resto4Life has announced that she is leaving the blogosphere. Phaelia has been a wonderful source of Druid information and was a huge part of the WoW blogosphere. Best of luck to you and I wish you the best in your life.

Everyone give the ole tree a hug before she embarks (no pun intended) on her real life quest.


Monday, February 23, 2009

Weekend Update



Well, first thing, I got a link over on WoW Insider which put my traffic through the roof )-). Thanks to everybody who came and left comments with some great feedback. Also special thanks to Megs and BRK (fo shizzle) for the original links. Now onto that weekend in WoW.

Raiding: None to speak of this weekend. Tried getting into a pug OS 25, with no luck. I had already finished Archavon 25 and part of Naxx 25 earlier in the week, so I knew that raiding was gonna be slim pickins unless I wanted to go to 10 man versions of Naxx or Archavon (I really didnt).

Questing: I actually did quite a lot of questing and suck over the weekend. Most of it was with my fiance, who hit 71 on her now Boomkin. I got to 75 on my Resto Druid as well. We have been having a lot of fun running around killing stuff. I think she has really found her niche as a Boomkin. I rand the Zul Drak Ring of Anguish Quest with my former Ret Pally arena partner (now on a 2100 rated 2v2 team). While doing it, a couple of Horde were helping us out killing the bosses. Once I finished, the Horde were only on the second fight. Since they had been nice enough to help, I stuck around and helped them take down the bosses (which included me dying on the last boss). They thanked me afterwards. Sometimes it is nice to help the other faction. Sharing us caring :)

Dungeons: I ran a dungeon or two on my main over the weekend (Got My Girl Likes to Skadi all the Time achievement in Heroic UP), but I spent quite a lot of time in instances with my Druid and my pally. My fiance also took a trip thru the Nexus with me and did 1200 dps in her first instance as DPS at level 70. Not too shabby at all. Last night I got into a regular Violet Hold with some guildies that was ridiculously easy thanks to the fact that we had a T7 Pally tank and a Ret Pally doing over 3.5k DPS. Also included was our Raid Leader, Trypod, on his level 75 Shaman that took him about one week to get to that level 0_0. I also did a couple of dungeons on my Ret Pally, who is ridiculously fun to play.

Damn you Strat: Yes...the Baron's mount has still not dropped for me. It is rather irritating. I still farm it from time to time, but it is starting to get very annoying. Myself and another friend may start two manning ZG for shots at those mounts as well as Heroic Sethekk Halls for the Raven Mount.

Also, Damn you Sewer Rat: Still have not caught that little (big) bastard yet either. Spent about another 30 minutes fishing in the Dalaran which is really more than I care to spare on the damn thing.

Reputation and Achievements: I parked myself in Moaki Harbor last night as I was one daily away from exalted with the Kaluak. I gathered my pups um and got that achievment along with the 10 exalted reputations one. I picked up the fishing pole and the penguin egg, which also finally gave me the 50 pet achievement and the Skunk pet, Stinker. If you obtain a Stinker and see a Bombay Cat pet around, pull out Stinker and watch the Pepe Le Pew reference :)
Overall, it was a very fun weekend. Hope all of the purples flowed like wine for the rest of you over the weekend!

Sunday, February 22, 2009

New Farm spot for Engineers

I have not seen this on any other blog, so I figured I would make a post about it. This is obviously for high level engineers. In the Borean Tundra, right outside of the Fizzcrank Airstrip is a bunch of robo guys. When you kills these things, you get to loot them for thei vendor trash and can engineer them for more vendor trash and other items. In just 30 minutes of farming I got the following items:

11 x overgyrated gears 1 gold 90 silver
58 x stripped sprocket 9 gold 6 silver
33 x sprung whirlygig 1 gold 43 silver
36 x whizzed out gizmo 2 gold 81 silver
22 x sprung sprocket 2 gold 61 silver
1 x Icy Mail Circlet 1 gold 38 silver.

That is just the vendor trash that dropped totalling 19 gold 32 silver

The useful items are the engineering items that dopped and their auction house values.

20 x Handful of Cobalt Bolts - 90 gold on the AH
5 x Frosteel Tubes - 118 gold on the AH
19 x Volatile Blasting Triggers - 115 gold on the AH.

That comes out to a whopping 323 gold for those items. This was all done in 30 minutes, and looks like it could net you close to 700 gold per hour. Not bad at all. This is of course assuming that all of those engineering items sell at that price.

Saturday, February 21, 2009

Friday, February 20, 2009

Bettering yourself as a tank

Usually, as a tank, there is always something more that you should have done, or could have done. It could have been that you were not Heroic Striking enough and DPS got killed (not to mention all of the rage that was wasted), or it could have been that a shield wall or last stand would have saved you but you did not use it.

I have tried bettering myself since day one and have become a pretty good tank. Now, I am going to try something I have never really done....keybinds.

Thats right, since day one I have been a clicker (shame). It has worked for me for the most part, but I have come to realize that it is impossibe for the mouse to be in more than one place at once. I started this process a little bit ago by putting Heroic Strike on my mouse wheel. I just recently started trying to use keybind with shield slam, devastate, revenge, and shockwave.

I am thinking of setting up my keyboard as:

Devastate- 1
Shield Slam- 2
Revenge-3
Shockwave-4
Thunderclap- 5
Cleave - Shift 1
Concussion Blow - Shift 2
Charge - Shift 3
Shield- block Shift 4
Shield Wall- Shift 5

It is going to be a difficult journey as I have always been a clicker. I clicked my way thru everything and I am ready to try something know. I will let everyone know how it goes.

Also, for you other tanks out there, do you have any good keybind tips?

Thursday, February 19, 2009

Sixth Picture of the Sixth Folder

My Hunter with my fiance standing at the Portal to Outland


I was tagged by Doc over at WTF Spaghetti to post the sixth picture of my sixth folder. Seeing as I am at work, I can only access the screenshots that I have saved to my photobucket account. As part of this I have to tag 6 other bloggers, so here we go:



Yakra at Mirror Shield

Miss Elf

Herc at Purplz 4 my Warrior

Kadomi at Tank Like a Girl

Occeleta the Altaholic

Fish at Gnome Warrior is an Oxymoron

Now that I have that out of the way, on to my night in WoW. Last night ended up being very busy for me in a way I did not expect. I logged onto my warrior and put myself into LFG for 25 man versions of Naxx, OS, and VoA. I headed out to Hodir and knocked out all of their dailies. After that I was in flight to Moaki Harbor to start my Kaluak dailies when I got a whisper if I wanted to start on a fresh clear of Naxx. I of course said yes and headed over to the instance. It was a mostly one guild with around 5-7 pugs sprinkled in (including a Warlock from my guild). We wiped on the very first boss in the Arachnid Quarter which got me thinking "Uh-Oh, here we go".

The problem on that wipe was the way they were kiting the boss. They ended up hitting people with the swarm and caused people to die which caused a chain of scarabs that killed everyone. They had apparently never heard of healing through the swarm on the tank, but we did it the next try with the tank not moving and easily took it down.

From there, we one shot every boss that we faced with no real problems. The loot rolls were one need main spec until everyone got something for their main spec, then main spec greeds after followed by offspec rolls. Well, lucky me, everyone who could have rolled on my 7.5 shoulders got something earlier, which left me the only person who could roll on them lol. I finally have me some the coolest looking shoulders EVER (I just wish the glow was still blue).

They called it at that point, and I headed back out to do my dailies. I finished two of the three Kaluak dailies when a guild buddy said I should start my own VoA 25 run. I figured what the hell. Invited him and another couple of guildies, then started grabbing people out of LFG. Before long we were all filled up and ready to go. We one shotted Archavon the Loot Pinata and the Druids made out like bandits. 3 Druid pieces and 1 Pally pvp piece dropped. Once we got going the instance we were done in around 10 minutes.

Afterwards, I headed towards my last daily and got a whisper if I wanted to tank Heroic HoL. I said "Of course, but I have never gone". I grabbed a DK from guild and we headed to HoL. Despite having never done the instance, I had two quests for it from the Hodir guys, and I had saved the regular and Heroic Dailies in the past so that I would be motivated to go.

I must say that I really enjoyed the instance.....except for the trash mobs. There were several annying trash mobs with stupid knock backs and charges and hunter mobs that would annoyingly dis-engage. The first boss (General Bjargin...or something like that) was very easy. He is basically a Warrior that switches stances and has a couple of adds with him. We took him down while he was charged with lightning and got and achievement for it! Next boss we took on was an Archavon wannabe who shatters gnomes or some such. We killed him super fast and got an achievement for not letting him shatter 4 gnomes.

The next boss was an interesting fight. It was a big elemental guy that would turn into some forked lightning spiders that you had to run away from. The fight was not incredibly hard, just a bit long with all the running back and forth. Then there came Loken. Loken really was not that hard, but we had people keep getting killed by the Nova. We wiped a few times as we got it down and then took him down to China Town.

There are now only two Heroics I have not done or completed. Heroic Occulus and Heroic Nexus. Occulus has not been done on Normal either.

I had originally planned for the evening to try and get into a raid and do my dailies. If there were no raids, I was going to either go ore farming or hit up Stratholm to try for the Baron's Deathcharger AGAIN. Nice change of plans if you ask me.




Wednesday, February 18, 2009

Girls in Gaming

This seems to be a hot topic running around the blogosphere, and appears to have started with Larisa regarding girls in gaming.

From my experience, women do often times get treated differently. This is not their fault. They did not choose to be born female, and should certainly not have that used against them for any reason in game.

I have played with MANY women over the years in WoW. Most of the were very good players. In fact, during BC, three of our mainstay raiding healers were women, and we had a few others filter in and out during that time. One of them is now one of out top DPS as a Huntard. The fact that they are women has nothing to do with how they play.

I have seen women players who were very good and I have also seen the very bad. There are bad male players as well, but I think that when women are bad they stand out due to the fact that they ARE women. There are a lot more women playing games these day, but they are still seen as somewhat rare. Sometimes, when a male player knows that a player is female, they will be overly critical solely for the fact that she is woman.

As for me, I call the shots as I see them. If you suck, you suck regardless of if you are a woman or a man, and I will say as much. The former healer turned huntard used to be a pretty bad player. It was not that she did not know how to heal or even DPS, but she did not have situational awareness, and did not know of the resources outside the game. She would back into mobs, shoot mobs that we were not killing yet, and have her pet on aggressive which caused it to attack Magtheridon's Channelers and cause the event to start, wiping half of the raid (true story). A good dose of BRK and she became a much better player.

There will come a time when women are not treated like "ZOMG A GURL LULZ". That time is fast approaching. Women in my guild get treated exactly the same as the men. We don't act differently around them, don't hold them to a higher standard, and don't let the get away with any more than a male player. It is time that everyone else got with the time and realized that people are people regardless of reproductive organs.

Tuesday, February 17, 2009

Cooking and Fishing: Money in your pocket

Cooking is one of the best money making professions in the game. It may not bring in the huge numbers that JC can, but for the amount of effort, you can make some very easy money. This profession is best when paired with fishing.
Why cooking is profitable: The obvious answer to this question is buff food. People want buff food for raids and are willing to pay ridiculous amounts for them. Know which ones are selling the best. In my experience, you can make a killing selling Dragonfin filet from the Dragonfin that you fish up in Dragonblight (which is why cooking goes together with fishing like chocolate and peanut butter). I normally sold a stack of 5 Dragonfin filet for 42 gold.
Keep in mind that you will obviously need the Northern Spices to make these. In the beginning of cooking I was selling these spices for 12-14 gold each. Now they seem to be going for around 3-3.5 gold since people have been able to buy all of the recipes that they need. Doing the daily will net you almost ten gold along with a cooking rewards bag. In the bag you will generally find 3-6 Northern Spices and a chance at another Dalaran Cooking Award, Baby Spice, and Old Spice. Baby Spice and Old Spice is BoP and pretty much just something to use for fun so far. You also have a chance at another Dalaran Cooking Award in the bag. Dalaran cooking awards can be used to buy new recipes or more Northern Spices (one award gets you 10 spices). If you dont want to take the time to farm up some uncooked food, you can just sell the spices for a quick 35 gold.
Why Fishing is Profitable: Fishing is profitable because it goes so well with cooking. Cooking the fish that you catch saves you having to go onto the auctionhouse and buying those raw materials. While fishing, you can catch other items as well, including crystallized water and Pygmy Sucker Fish (who you can have an alchemist turn into Pygmy Oil).
If you don't have the northern spice, you can still make money off of the raw fish. On my server, a stack of raw Dragonfin Angelfish goes for around 70-75 gold. Another fish that may sell well are Glacial Salmon (which makes Firecracker Salmon, spellpower food).
One thing that is noticeably missing from the expansion a fishing daily. We had one in BC, but there has not been one implemented yet for this expansion (unless I am missing something).
You bring up Dragonfin Angelfish a lot....Why?: Because this makes strength food. With all of the Deathknights, Warriors, Bear Druids, and Ret/Prot Pallys running around, it is in very high demand as a raid consumable. Fishing these will most likely make you the biggest profit per hour out of any fish. Keep in mind that Ulduar will be coming out before too long. It may be a good idea to stock up these and sit on them. With a new, harder raid, it will be even more important for people to bring consumables. I would expect there to big a prett big spike at the beggining of patch 3.1.
We all know that fishing and cooking can be boring. Fishing can also be time consuming. Despite these facts, you must look at the facts. They professions can make you a lot of money. They will also save you a lot of money by being able to make your own food. If you haven't already leveled these professions, now would be a good time.

Monday, February 16, 2009

Weekend Update


Another fun filled weekend of WoW (and Valentines day IRL). It really felt like I was doing a lot, but at the same time not doing much at all 0_0.

Valentine's Event: This event was shorter than all of the other World Events, but it was also the first one that I even attempted to complete. I ended up finishing the achivement the day before it ended, doing the final Pity of the Love Fool and mending the last of the hearts I needed. At the last minute, my fiance sees Peddlefoot and decides she wants one. Unfortunately, no Truesilver arrow for her (or any of my toons for that matter....what the fuzz).

I got my title and some little fun extras to boot. I got 5 picnic baskets and two black dresses. The black dresses will get sold in a bit when the Holliday is not fresh. They go for a very decent amount on my server due to it being an RP server. My fiance even got herself a romantic picnic basket!

Raiding: Raiding took a back seat this weekend to all of the other stuff. The only raid I did was Vault 25, and when it started, it was full of utter and complete fail. Great tanking, great healing, but the DPS was just not there. There were only 8 people breaking 2k DPS. Bringing up the rear was a level 80 prot warrior with 18k health doing 450 DPS.....WTF!!! He got booted by the raid leader after 3 low percentage wipes due to hitting the enrage timer (including 1 percent and 4 percent wipes). When he got kicked, about 4 of his guild members in the raid left as well. Damn emo RP guilds. If you cant be more than dead weight, dont show up. We eventually replaced the defectors and downed him easily on one shot.

Leveling: I spent a good chunk of the weekend leveling with my fiance. We quested in Nagrand until she hit 67, then I figured I would run her thru some instances. We picked up a couple of pugs and I ended up running Mana Tombs a few times and Sethekk Halls once. Before long, she dinged 68 and she headed to SW where I met her with my 73 Druid to go over to Borean Tundra. At first she did not care for leveling with my Druid because I am a "better druid" than her. Of course, she is still just learning the game, but she is getting better every day. By the end of the weekend, I had hit 74 on my Druid and she got to 70 on hers (and a whole bunch of upgrades from quests). She was not digging some of the quests areas in Borean (namely the Penis Rock Kaluak area), but that changed when we hit the Murloc area. The one where you get to where the Murloc suit was her favorite quest in the entire game so far.

Other Random Stuff: Not a whole lot else went on for me over the weekend as far as WoW goes. I got the emblem of valor tanking boots after we killed Archavon, which is a huge upgrade over my Titansteel Treads. I only did all of my dailies one day, so I still have a ways to go with both the Kaluak and Hodir (16500 of revered with Kaluak and 11500 of revered with Hodir). I spent less time making money over the weekend and did absolutely zero farming. I am sure that this will change since there will be no time consuming holliday events over the weekend. Anybody know what Holliday is coming up next?

Hope everyone had a fun loot filled weekend!

Saturday, February 14, 2009

Happy Valentine's Day!!!!

My fiance loved her presents and breakfast. 

She got my Lock Stock and Two Smoking Barrels, Flight of the Conchords Season 1, and some boxers!!!

We are playing right now, slaughtering wildlife in Nagrand in the name of Nessingwary. We are alsmot to the elite mobs so we should be getting some nice stuff. Also creeping forward to getting her into Northrend!

She loves her looting, and her bags are perpetually full.

Hope you guys are having as good of a day as I am!

Happy Valentine's Day everyone!

Friday, February 13, 2009

Weekend Plans

Well, obviously tommorow is Valentines Day IRL, so I have an elaborate scheme set up for my fiance to discover her present. I am going to put clues to different locations on a bunch of those little cards that lead her to her present. I got her a Douney and Bourke purse, a bunch of different kinds of Reeses (she loves Reeses) and a big ass bag of Jelly Bellys. I am also going to make her some omlettes for breakfast (thinking of trying out a Mexican style omlette with black beans, sour cream, pepperjack cheese, salsa and avocado.)

As far as WoW goes, I have a lot of thing hopefully planned. Of course I want to finish the Valentines event since it is extra short and at least semi-interesting to me.

I will also hopefully be bringing my fiance into Northrend for the very first time. She is 1.5 levels away from Nothrend, and we may get that tonight (if we have time). She will be replacing gear left and right heading into Northrend since she is equipped in 60-66 blues and greens ATM. We are going to hit up Borean Tundra first.

Of course, I also have all of my stuff I do without here. I am hoping to get into some raids over the weekend as I have not done one this whole week. I would prefer to do a Heroic Naxx run, but I only need two more emblems for my boots which I can get from pretty much any 25 man. Mixed with that will be the annoying task of doing MORE DAILIES. Hodir is about halfway thru revered right now and Kaluak is over half. I am really hoping I will not be required to do them too much longer. I will probably get to exalted around the time my Druid needs to start doing Hodir 0_0.

Most of all, I just want to have fun. Playing with my fiance and online friends is where it is at. If I don't get all of those things done, no big deal. As long as I have fun, that is what matters.

Quick Tips for WoW Valentine's Event

Random crap is random. That is what this Holliday is about for the most part. I still have not gotten a single message candy from my gifts of adoration :(

Anyways, most people will be combining all of the different thing to make gifts for their capital cities which turn into a gift of the Alliance. The hardest ones to get seem to be the regular citizen ones, which consist of the bread in Stormwind, Brew in Ironforge, and the wood craft items in Darnassus.

The easiest method I have found for these is to farm the same person over and over. For Stormwind, from the trade district, run across the canal to the mage district. Go through the arch and to your left up the grassy ramp past the herbalism trainer. Towards the top there will be a man standing with what looks like either a staff or a fishing pole. Stand in front of him with your mammoth mount and wait for the heart to pop up for your bread pieces.

Next is Ironforge. The one that I found zero competition at was in the Battle Room where the different BG masters are. Instead of going up the ramp to the battlemasters, go under them to the back side where the steam tanks are. One of the tank drivers back there gives you the items you need.

In Darnassus, the location I farmed was in a building directly across from the Inn in the tradesman's terrace. This building is two stories. On the upper story are a skinning trainer etc. Next to the skinning trainer is a citizen who will give you the items that you need.

Remeber, this is a short holliday, so you may have to get underhanded (aka not waiting in line for hearts). May the RNG be kind to you over the weekend, and the loot drops be phat!

Thursday, February 12, 2009

Important Public Service Announcement




The Ice Stone has Melted.


Also..... Has anybody heard?
BIRDS THE WORD!!!!!





Fool for Love

I think that this may be the first Holliday event that I actually try to complete. All of the other ones have been kinda 'meh' to me, but for some reason I want this one. Perhaps it is the fact that I am a real life romantic. Also, the title is awesome and ridiculous.

Another thing I like about the Holliday so far is that it seems extremly simple to do. You run around, give out cards, and get stuff. I thought about doing the Elder ones, but the fact that I have to run all over the entire damn world was a bit of a turnoff to me.

Next reason I am going to do it is my fiance. She doesnt have any titles or anything yet, and I think it would be a fitting title, since it was love that got her into this WoW mess to start with :)

I can actually see a nice profit to be made off of all of the little pieces for the intant gratification people. Probably especially from the Darnassus pieces.

Have you guys and gals been running around during all of the Hollidays? I have one friend who I think has done all of the Holliday achievements up to this point (maybe two if Occeleta actually got around to finishing the elders).

Achievements are great for those times that you dont really have anything else to do (a.k.a raiding or leveling other toons), or you are just burned out on the mentioned activities (throw farming into that bunch as well).

Wednesday, February 11, 2009

How To: Get you significant other to play

I fairly recently got my fiance to play WoW. She was very much the WoW hater before this time. How did I get her to play. Im going to explain what I did so that maybe someone else can benefit from this. There are many people out there that have significant others who absolutely hate the game. They say "It is stupid" and "Why do you choose a game over me".

First thing, your significant other doesnt really need to have a background in gaming, but it certainly helps. My fiance loves Super NES as old as the damn thing is. If she was bored, she would sit and play Super Mario World or Mario Kart for an hour or two.

Step 1: Let them know that it would be a lot of fun to play with them, and a nice way to spend a little extra time together. From the beggining, make sure you let them know that after they have played a bit, if they are still completly not interested, that you will drop it. They do not want to be badgered constantly about it.

Step 2: Free trial account. This is a much better bet for getting them to play. Letting them know that they can play the game for free while they decide if they like it is a plus. If they are already apprehensive about playing, they will mostly likely scoff at paying 20 bucks for the game and then the possibility of 60-70 for the expansions and 15 bucks a month after that. You can do RAF which will make both of you level faster, which will also be a nice selling point.

Step 3: Introduce them to something they find entertaining or interesting. So far, my fiance loves pets and the achievements. She also rather enjoys all of the shiny numbers that pop up when she hurricanes a group of mobs. For some people this may be picking flowers and for others it may be PvP (probably not right off the bat unless they were some pretty harcore gamers previously). Making them laugh in game is also a plus as it adds to the entertainment. Some of the things that made her laugh for me were:

a) Aggroing a bunch of mobs when I ran thru an area. It looks silly having a train of 5 mobs following you, but it servers more that this reason. It also keep them from aggroing mobs, getting knocked off of their mount and killed. This would certainly be a damper on their fun.

b) Using my mouse to spin like a mad man when I jump on my mount. It looks absolutely ridiculous, and she still asks me to do it till this day.

c) Emotes are also fun. Assuming that the person is your significant other, you can do your own personalized emotes by typing /emote and then the description. Depending on the emote, you may also make them blush 0_0

Step 4: Dont stress them out. Regardless of how good you are at the game, they will not be nearly as good. They are going to aggro thing, die, and possibly get you killed. It is all part of the learning process. It will be frustrating at time, but remember back to when you were a noob and how hard it could be at times. I would not recommend doing 5 man dungeons depending on their class/spec. Healing and tanking can be cause stress. Especially so for someone who does not really know what they are doing yet and have strangers in pugs being rude to them. Yelling is BAD.

Step 5: Let them know that you guys are a team. This seems corny, but people like to feel important. In my case, she actually is important in game. Not only does she help kill stuff, but she heals us and my pet when it is needed. This leaves very little down time, and makes things a lot smoother.

Step 6: Let them get the sparkles. Let them loot everything. If you need quest items, you will eventually both have to get them and once they have all of theirs, they generally can't pick up anymore of them. There is something fun about looting, and it can help add to the enjoyment of experience.

Thats is it for now. If I can remember any tips, I will post them up. Hope this is helpful for someone!

Tuesday, February 10, 2009

Prot Warrior and Resto Druid Glyphs

Since these are the only two toons I have really glyphed, I am gonna go over which ones I currently have on these toons.

Prot Warrior

Glyph of Blocking: This one is hot. Every time that you block, your shield block value increases by 10 percent. This is a must have for prot Warriors.

Glyph of Revenge: Glyph of Revenge is another one of those must have tanking glyphs. Every time that you use Revenge, your next Heroic strike is free. This is a big threat booster, and since you should basically be spamming HS on bosses at this point, you get to spam even more HS. I got a feva, and the only cure, is more Heroic Strike Spam.

Glyph of Sunder Armor: The third gyph is a litte bit more iffy. This Glyph sunders another nearby target. This ability is obviously more for trash, which is why I will probably be switching to Glyph of Devastate. This Glyph puts two sunders up on a mob per devastate. Very nice for boss fights as you only need to devastate 3 times for a full stack.

I cant think of all of my minor glyphs atm, but the one that I KNOW I have is:

Glyph of Thunderclap: Increases the range of Thunderclap. This is very nice for multi mob tanking.

Resto Druid Glyphs:

Glyph of Regrowth: A very nice Glyph that increases the amount healed by your Regrowth by 20 percent when you already have the Regrowth Hot rolling on whoever you heal. I would say this is pretty much a must.

Glyph of Swiftmend: Absolutely required and quite amazing. When you use you Swiftmend, it does not consume the hots. I repeat, IT DOES NOT CONSUME THE HOTS. This make healing even easier and is essential for any resto druid.

I am only level 73, so I have not gotten my third major glyph yet. When I do, it will be either:

Glyph of Lifebloom: This makes the Lifebloom roll longer before it ASPLODES.

or

Glyph of Innervate: Basically, for what it looks like, when you cast Innervate on somebody else, you get the innervate effect as well. This will be wonderful for longer fights and if you are having trouble with mana.

My minor glyphs atm are Glyph of Rebirth: No reagent for my battle rez, Glyph of the Wild (think that is what it is called): Reduces the mana cost of Mark of the Wild etc, and Glyph of Thorns: Really not great, but 1 hours thorns in nice when leveling and questing.

Monday, February 9, 2009

Weekend Update

It was a fairly busy weekend in WoW, though once again I did not get near as much raiding in as I would have liked. I am hoping to get into an Archavon 25 when I get home, but I am not going to hold my breath on it.

Raiding: Over the weekend, I did all of two raids. I did an Archavon 10 man with my old guild. Nothing really to report here as Archavon is a giant loot pinata. Got my two emblems and LOLed at the two pieces of Warlock gear that dropped with no Warlock present.

The other one I did was a pug raid of OS 25. Not a lot to report here either. I got my 4 emblems, we downed everything with no problem, and I got out.

Questing: As far as questing on my main, it was all about the dailies. Cooking daily, Hodir Dailies, and Kaluak Dailies. I am about a quarter or so through revered with Hodir and over half way through revered with the Kaluak. Woohoo for grinding. By the way, the Sons of Hodir are dirty. Not just because they look like a giant version of everyones pervy uncle Frank. Among their quests are Thrusting the Spear, Polishing the Helm, and Blowing the Horn......yeah....dirty.

Leveling: I was very glad to get in a bit of leveling over the weekend. My Druid has now hit level 73. Most of the experience for the last level was from Dungeons rather than questing. Most of them have been pugs, but all have gone pretty smoothly and I am really enjoying healing. Questing with the Druid feels slow, but it honestly is going as fast as on my Warrior. Just feels like it takes a while to kill things. I ran into another Huntard while doing the instances on my Druid. In our first group, he was just a fill in when we couldnt get a fifth person for AN. Despite being 3 levels higher, he did about 400 DPS less than our other Hunter.

After our successful run (and the last boss which consisted of said Hunter standing on every spike he could), I went into LFG for Nexus. The same Hunter invited me to group and then starts inviting other pugs. After we fill out the DPS, I mention that we just need a tank. The Hunter replies "And a healer". To which I reply "I just healed you in AN 2 minutes ago....I am a healer 0_0" He replied with "Oh, LOL". By the time the group actually filled up, I left because it had fail written all over it. The Hunter also didnt know where Nexus was.

Over the weekend, I did some more leveling with the fiance, which leaves my Hunter and her Druid sitting at 66. She wants to get the Wrath Expansion and head to Northrend at level 68. Of course the reason she want to do this is so that she can go to Dalaran and buy the Toy Train Set. She is becoming a decent healer and is a lot of fun to level with. Possibly the highlight of the leveling came in Nagrand at Telaar. I was crossing the thin bridge on the east side of Telaar with her behind. Well, she lagged and flew off the bridge and into the abyss :) I had a good laugh at that and showed her how to get back up.

Misc Stuff: I earned some more pretty useless achivements over the weekend. One of them was the 100 Dalaran cooking awards, and the other was "Tastes Like Chicken" for eating 50 different dishes. I rather like the Achievements as it gives you something to do when you have nothing to do.

I also tried fishing up that damn sewer rat again. No luck.....again. I seriously hate that damn thing. I really dont want to dedicate several hours in a row to trying to catch the little bastard.

Well, it was another fun filled WoW weekend. I hope everyone else had their fill of loot.

Sunday, February 8, 2009

What...the....F@CK

I mean seriously........check this out. Melee Hunter for the win?

This goes well following my previous post. It has not been updated in about 6 months, but COME ON!!!!

Who would let a Hunter go into BT and melee things?

What kind of Hunter would actually think that is acceptable????

If you want to melee things, roll a rogue....Hunter shoot stuff.

Humanity has officially gone down the toilet.

Im tired...Im going to bed.

Friday, February 6, 2009

All other classes the new Huntards?

Obviously this is not the case, but I have been running into increasingly more Mages (and other players) that make you say, huh?

The last few mages I have run with have done the following:

1) backed into mobs we purposely missed, getting himself killed
2) Got me saved to a cleared 25 man raid instance
3) Got killed 15 times in a Naxx 10 man. About double the next closest and triple the next one down from that.
4) Pulled the next group of mobs with a frostfire bolt
5) Pulled the next group of mobs with their face
6) Stood in the fire in every fight that had fire

This is just a few mages, but COME ON!!!! The mage class has usually seemed to be the smart DPS class. The one who had to keep up CC and do a good amount of DPS as well. Have also classes gotten dumber since CC went the way of the Dodo?

This doesnt just apply to mages obviously. There are plenty of other noobs out there doing stupid things such as:

1) The Rogue who stealths into a group of mobs only to realize he isnt stealthed at all.
2) The Warlock who opens a pull with mutiple seeds of corruption before the mobs get back to the tank.
3) The Hunter who lays down an immolation trap rather than a freezing trap.
4) The Holy Priest who thinks it is ok to pull mobs for the tank with SWP.

It is like when CC was basically removed, it caused everyone to become a lot dumber. This may be a bad sign for when Ulduar comes out if it is indeed much harder. If people need to start CCing again, this may be a pretty steep RE-LEARNING curve.

I guess that is what I get for mostly pugging 0_0

Thursday, February 5, 2009

Change of plans can be good

Yesterday, I played a bit with my fiance, questing in Terrokar forrest. We both dinged 64 and she is half way to 65 at the moment. She is having fun and getting better. We did not die once despite the fact that I was chain pulling multiple mobs. She enjoys healing, but I really think that she will enjoy balance due to the fact that her favorite spell is Hurricane :).

After we were done playing and I put her to bed, I logged on to my warrior to do dailes and see if there were any heroic raids I could get into. Before I really even got started with my dailies, I got a whisper asking if I wanted to tank 10 man Naxx. I said sure, and off I went.

As I checked the raid, I noticed the mage that saved me to a cleared Heroic Archavon the week before was in the raid. I think that his actions thorughout the raid possibly proved that he is just dumb and was not thinking when he saved everyone to that cleared instance.

This run ended up being my first one night clear of Naxx 10. Everything went pretty smoothly, and I main tanked several encounters for the first time. When we killed Thadius, I got the achivement for clearing the Construct Quarter as well as regular "The Fall of Naxxramas".

All in all, I got some emblems as well as a sidegrade tanking weapon (Slayer of Lifeless) and my T7 DPS shoulders. Unfortunately, most of the items ended up being sharded. There were a ton of drops that nobody wanted including some weak DPS gloves that dropped off of Grobbulus and Gluth consecutively.

Overall, it was a good night as there were not too many wipes. We never wiped more than one time on any boss. We had two interesting attempts on KT at the end. The first one ended when the DK got iceblocked and chained it to me, killing me. Several raid members died before the offtank picked him up and it ended up being a wipe.

The next attempt, the offtank DCed....and then died somehow. This left me picking up all of the adds as they came out. It ended up going just fine as we downed him on this attempt.

At this point, the only reason I really go into Naxx 10 is for some emblems and for the chance to upgrade my DPS set. I hope to get into some 25 man action this weekend (I still have not done Archavon this week). I am still 8 emblems short of upgrading my tanking boots.

Wednesday, February 4, 2009

Warning: Dense Vegetation Ahead

Well, this is a rer post that is not about tanking. This one is going to be a bit about healing. I have been playing my Resto Druid lately and have run a couple of very successful pugs. Both of the groups had Druid tanks in two very different situations. One was a level 80 balance druid that was bear tanking Utgarrde Keep. It worked out OK, but we actually had to use crowd control (which was actually a kinda nice change).

The second one was with a pretty well geared Druid tank that was level 71 in Nexus. This one actually went a bit smoother depsite the level difference.

Anyways, on with the healing mumbo jumbo. I have noticed something about healing. Somethimes it is better for the fate of the group to let somebody die. As hard as it is to not heal someone has a healer, sometimes it has to be done. This takes great situation awareness. I have a great of example of this from the second pug.

We had just finished the caster boss in Nexus and we getting ready to move on. We skipped the group across the doorway and went down the hallway. As the Druid tank was pulling one group, the mage backed up into the second group. What do you do?

a) Try to heal the mage who has pulled the group
b) Let the mage die

I let the mage die. In  a split second, I typed "ADDS" in party chat and let the mage die. I let the Druid pick up the second group and I kept everyone else up during the overpull no problem. Had I healed the mage, he would have likely been killed anyways, followed by the adds smashing me to bits and ultimately causing a wipe. Sometimes it is hard to not heal someobe, but sometimes it is neccessary.

Healing, just like tanking takes situational awareness. Just like when the tank diues, if the healer goes down, the group will go down as well (more times than not).

Have any of you had a situation like this? 

Tuesday, February 3, 2009

What do you do with limited play time?

I know a lot of you out there have limited play time due to work and family much the same I do. What do you do with the time that you have to play?

The order I usually do things is look for a pug raid, then see if anyone needs anything from the guild. After that I will either farm (for money or for a rare drop aka the Baron's mount) or I will log onto an Alt to level. The thing about having limited time is that you cant just do what some people do with their unlimited time. I cant just sit around in trade channel and tell Chuck Norris jokes. 

I play this game for fun, but I have a very clinical approach to it. If I am going to be wasting my time, I want to waste it in a productive manner.

How do you guys manage your time in game?

Monday, February 2, 2009

Weekend Update

Well, the weekend has come and gone again. As always, it was much too short and I certainly didn't get all of the WoW related stuff I wanted done finished.

As in my previous post, my entire raiding weekend got completly screwed. I got saved to a cleared Archavon 25, and couldnt manage to get into a Naxx 25 at all. It seemes that all groups are always looking for a healer or some DPS for Naxx. Good thing I am bringing up my healer next I suppose.

Much of the weekend was actually spent running Heroics and doing dailies. I did all of my Hodir Dailies, Kaluak Dailies, the cooking daily, and usually some of the Ice Crown Dailies as well. I really dont mind doing them as it nets me a decent chunk of cash and get me rep towards something I want.

As far as Heroics go, I ran the same two instances twice a piece. These consisted of Utgarrde Keep and the Culling of Stratholme. As always, Utgarrde Keep was a complete cake walk. We one shotted everything both days. I rather enjoyed CoS. The first time thru was my first time completing the instance. It is a pretty fun instance, and one where the healers especially need to be on their toes.

Our second time in there I got the Culling of Time achievement and the Bronze Drake!

Over the weekend, I also got to exalted with the Argent Crusade, which means I am now Darraxus the Argent Champion. This probably isnt a huge deal to a lot of people, but my only other title is Private from some old school PvP. On a side note, I ran Strat dead once more with no luck with the mount dropping. Despite the fact that I can run the whole thing in less than 15 minutes, I just cant bring myself to do it more than once for some reason.

Tonight I will be playing a bit which will probably consist of doing my dailies, followed by possibly trying to unlock the Ebon Blade Quarter master. It kinda sucks that I actually have to do a quest line to unlock the damn guy. For anyone who stopped questing at 80, I would recommend starting it up again. There are such epic questlines and they deserve to be seen. One in Icecrown involves you looking for help for a fallen crusader who has become plagued. You go to Remulos, Alexsztraza (sp?), and Adal to try and find him a cure.

Anyways, hope you guys got fat loot and had lots of fun this weekend.

Sunday, February 1, 2009

Amazing Stupidity

It is amazing how stupid people can be sometimes. It doesnt matter if it is complete ignorance or just being an asshat. Last night, I logged on and saw that Wintergrasp was ours and figured I would do Heroic Vault. I get an invite from a mage and before long we have a full group. This group consists of many pugs as well as in game friends and guildies. We get to the end of the trash and Archavon is not there.

The dumb ass raid leader was saved to a 25 man vault already and got the rest of us saved. For those of us that dont get to raid all the time, something like this is a big deal. That is two more valor token towards my boots and a chance at some 7.5 gear. 

I dont know if it was intentional or accidental (how on earth could it be accidental?), but I reported him to a GM. Unfortunately, they are not clearing my raid ID, so I was saved to a raid that was already cleared. How lovely.