Friday 30 November 2007

The Eye and Season 3 new Items...

So season 3 started this week, and i immediately rushed to the vendor in Area 52 to purchase a new set of Gloves!



As you can see they give me a nice boost to my Crusader strike (5%)
Lovely Jubbly!!

Last night in The Eye, Void Reaver was kind enough to drop this bad boy for me:


That helm was a serious boost to my AP and Strength but I'm faced with a dilemma!

Replacing both the gloves and the helm has meant I've lost my t4 x2 set bonus:


Is loosing 15% damage bonus on Judgement of Crusader a valid loss in the name of what I've gotten from the above 2 new upgrades??

I guess time will tell...

Any advice would be greatly appreciated!

My Hit Rating is currently sitting at 117, I've been able to drop all of my + Hit Rating gems now in favour of strength/ap type gems.

Here's a nice arty screenie i grabbed!


Big Update Coming Soon...

...Watch This Space....

Thursday 29 November 2007

Rising Damp...

What an evening I had...

So i hadn't been chosen for the raid last night, so just took it easy, did some arena, did my dailys as much as i could (be bothered) and the guild were in SSC.

They were clearing the trash to Lurker, and i got a whisper asking me to come help out with lurker as one of the raid members had to leave quickly due to RL problems.

I was right in the middle of solo'ing Scholomance!! LOL!!

I got bored and decided to run over to see if i could now solo the place!

I'd tried some time ago when i first hit 70 and got owned!

This time however was a different story!! I managed to walk in, walk straight past most of the mobs, took rattle gore down, took ras frostwhisper down, and the first of the 6 bosses before headmaster gandling! next time i'll take some more pots with me and water/food!

So i had to hearth out and fly out to Zangarmarsh, and head into SSC.

We quickly took down Lurker, and raid was over! Easy peasy!

That ring dropped that I wanted, I bid up to 25dkp then let the druid have it for 30.

At least I didn't have someone telling me i couldn't bid...

Tonight we head into the Eye, presumably to try A'lar and take void reaver again. I think there was talk of us trying High Astromancer Solarian - but we'll see!!

After the raid was over i logged and powered down my pc...walked into the lounge to play on Guitar Hero 3 for a bit and found that all the walls in my flat were soaking wet.

Damp everywhere, lots of my clothes and items are ruined. Mould is covering a lot of stuff.

*cries*

I've been on to the landlord and he's going to get a "damp specialist" to come and assess the problem.

Lets see what happens....

Wednesday 28 November 2007

Small Update.

As there were no raids scheduled for last night the girlfriend and i watched Shrek the Third which was pretty good actually! Quite funny in places!

Anyway after i popped on to my banker to check my auctions etc. I've just started playing with auctioneer and its brilliant!! I've made like 300g in a couple of day just from buying stuff people have listed cheaper than the going rate for them!

Anyway i do a quick "/who rage" to see whats going on as my banker is in a dead guild.

They're in Kara! the buggers!!! I wanted more badges!! Grr!!

So i logged onto Firelight and before I've even said "Hi" on the guild channel I've got the 2 raid leaders /w me asking me to come!!! Hehehe!

They had just cleared maiden and were making there way to Opera.

We got Wizard of Oz again, i don't need/want anything from that even anyway...then onto curator, i got t4 gloves as no-one wanted so I've got 2 parts of t4 tanking set now!!

That's 3 Ret Pieces of t4(helm/hands and legs), and 2 Prot pieces of T4 (gloves and head) now!!

hehe!!

We then one shot Aran, then pop back to Illhoof. Its 12am Servertime - raid over.

10 Badges for 1 hour's work! not bad really!!

I was hoping we'd stay on for a bit longer just to get chess event, and Prince, but I'll have to wait till later this week before i get in there again. (reset was last night - EU are 1 day after the US)

Season 3 of the Arena starts today!!

I wanna get home and buy my s3 gloves!! Grr!! Be a nice upgrade for me i think!

I'm gonna try and do some arena with another ret-paladin that wants to join our guild desperately, we tried a couple of matches last week before i had to raid and it worked really well. 4 stuns are quite a good way of nuking 1 person down while the healer/caster is stun locked!!

Guess i cant chuck my old season 1 gloves away as well then...

I've started collecting my epics that I've replaced so far in the bank!! Pretty sad really!! LOL!

Tuesday 27 November 2007

Hmmm

Need to update my piccy of Firelight there its a little out of date now!

New belt, new legs, new chest, plus i dont wear that god aweful tabard any more.

2 New Bosses Downed, 1 New Encounter!

Morning Fellow Warcrafters!

Much to my disappointment (sort of) we ventured into Serpentshrine Cavern last night. I was hoping for Gruul/Magtheridon as we've not been this week, and we're not going tonight. :(

Never mind....maybe I'll get a chance to go this week. Rather surprised we've lost out on a week going to gruul/mags....never mind...

I wonder if i can rally enough support tonight to lead a raid to Gruuls....Hmmm...

Worth a try i suppose!!

Anyway back to last night!

Into SSC again. Lurker and Hydross were down, so agenda for tonight was Morgrim Tidewalker and Leotheras The Blind.

Cleared trash to Morgrim first, and started working on the Murlocs....murlocs...how embarassing to be killed by mobs I've not seen since level 20 something!

So we got to Morgrim eventually after a few small hiccoughs and the raid leader explained the tactics to myself and 2 others who didn't know the fight.

1st attempt we had a problem with something - I'm not sure so we did a sacrificial wipe so we could start again. Divine Intervention FTW!

2nd attempt we got him. This is a REALLY long fight! I mean REALLY REALLY long! 12m 34seconds doesn't sound like a long time, but for a boss fight? that's a long time! Anyway he went down and i got a new belt! Its mail, but its a nice upgrade from the blue crap i had before:

-----------------------------
Girdle of the Tidal Call
Waist Mail
506 Armor
+35 Strength
+30 Stamina
+20 Intellect
Equip: Improves critical strike rating by 33.
-----------------------------------------------------

So then we moved onto Leotheras.

The trash leading to him is a bit silly I've decided...its just so easy to suddenly get adds which will cause a wipe. But we cleared them eventually.

The trash leading to Leo dropped a nice item for me which i got:

----------------------------
Pendant of the Perilous
Neck
+32 Strength
+24 Stamina
Equip: Improves critical strike rating by 23.
----------------------------------------------------

So 1st attempt on leo, this time I would be paying proper attention to the demons if i got on...but i didn't get one! typical!! I plugged away at him as much as i could. This fight is very frustrating for melee combat as when he's in elf form he does this whirlwind attack and melee have to get away from him asap, as he'll just cut us down really fast.

So i watched the enrage time ticking away on my Deadly Boss Mods addon, and as he was at 4 or 5% he enraged!! All DPS went mental i just popped my avenging wrath, used my chest that give +150 strength, and 1500 health and consecrated hitting him as hard and as much as i could slowly one by one he was taking down everyone...i think we only had about 15/16 people left when he finally went down!

Vent erupted with shouting and much rejoicing was had!!

Awesome!! 2x Mage, Hunter, Warlock t5 gloves dropped, so we watched the dkp bids rise to well over 300 each!! Nice work!!

What a result! We were really happy we'd managed to down him! its been a good few weeks of tries on the bugger.

So a nice night! Got some nice loot which is always nice! even if i did pay over the odds on the neck (16 dkp) but i don't mind! i still got some nice items!

Monday 26 November 2007

Zul'Aman - First Impressions...

Good Morning peeps! I trust you all had a good weekend!

Friday night saw my first trip into Zul'Aman. The first boss had already been cleared the night before, so we went first to the Eagle Boss.

The Gauntlet.

I'm not to sure where i read it, but i was pretty sure that someone said it was possible to crowd control the dude at the start of the gauntlet so he didn't run up the hill and start the event at all...

Now we tried sapping him, but he kept breaking early, and running up, and he wasn't stunnable either...very annoying! But we bought some time at least and were able to down the first 2 mobs then the eagles came...The first time we tried it we got right to the top when the last guy comes, and we lost one too many healers and the tank went down - annoying!

The 2nd time i made an effort to try and CC the eagles so they weren't killing off the casters too soon. This meant Consecrating a lot, chugging a lot of mana potions too!! But it seemed to do the trick - Obviously i had to have a lot of healing with 4/5 birds pecking away at me!!

Anyway we got up there and started the wipe-a-thon! Oh hang on! That was group 2!!! We took him down on our 3rd attempt!

Loot was very disappointing! Only 1 epic, and 1 badge! bah!! An epic caster ring dropped.

So then we started what was easily the most frustrating bit of gaming I've ever had to deal with!! Ever!!

We started clearing to Firehawk boss (is he that? i forget his name!!) Anyway the dude that spawns the 2 guys that crack open some eggs then the sunhawks come.

Anyway what a nightmare! He doesn't seem to take a lot to take down, but the birds cause all sorts of problems.

We went with the option of killing one of the bird dudes, then letting the other open a few eggs.

I was to consecrate in order to get the birds attention, but for some reason they just flew straight past me and i had to run after them. With no aoe attack available to me i just couldn't get them back. Then i died, and we reset the encounter.

2nd attempt i put on some more spell damage gear and it worked better, i used righteous fury as well to get more aggro. This worked but i wasn't kept up long enough as the casters let too many birds out. Then i died and we reset the encounter.

This seemed to go on for 4 or 5 more attempts and people were getting very frustrated.

I think the main thing is someone need to kill the dude cracking open the eggs quicker, but when the shaman and i were doing that we were getting shouted at by the raid leaders, even though i was still doing my job.

Eventually we called it a night and left the area. Very annoying fight that one.

Saturday i spent about 2 hours trying to stealth into Arcatraz normal to get a guildie his key fragment for kara! LOLATHON!!! we would manage to get through past the first boss (i was on gwindle, my druid obviously!) and we kept getting killed by the arcane robot thing that guarded the voidy room - we tried to kill him 4 or 5 times, with varying lack of success. eventually i /w a rogue who was in the area and we manage to get past the robot and get the fragment before one of the voidy's killed the 3 of us!! Would have been quicker to get a proper group into arca!! LOL!!

Then i respec'd Gwindle to resto as we lacked a healer for Black Morass, but it turned out we had to do Durnehold as well as the rogue had never been.

Gwindle proved her worth and healed through it all! I was very proud!!

I also bought Guitar Hero 3 for my PS3 later in the afternoon! This is awesome!! Although I'm very frustrated that Sony have not put the song pack onto the store, as i was desperate to get the Foo Fighters pack!!! Maybe it'll be on there later today!

Last night The guild took their first crack at A'lar in The Eye. they had 4 goes at him then moved onto loot reaver and got him down first time i think.

I wasn't there sadly.

Friday 23 November 2007

Oops!

I think i was a little over excited about the PTR changes yesterday and got my Seal of Command Confused with my Crusader Strike!!! /blush

Crusader Strike as it stands is weapons damage + some spell damage.

So with Blizz eliminating the spell damage portion, and adding 10% to the CS should mean that CS stays about the same.

Can anyone tell me how strength/AP affect the DPS of my weapon?

Thursday 22 November 2007

World of Warcraft PTR Patch 2.3.2

Just saw a post on BRK and went and had a look at the patch notes here for 2.3.2:

http://www.mmo-champion.com/index.php?topic=2506.0

Paladin Changes:

Crusader Strike (Retribution) now causes 110% of weapon damage and no longer gains any bonus from spell damage.

Righteous Fury: This spell will no longer cost twice the listed mana to cast.

Sanctified Judgements (Retribution) now returns 80% of the Seal's mana cost, increased from 50%.

OMG!!!

That's a 40% increase in damage in weapon damage for my Crusader Strike! I'm not overly fussed about the loss of the spell damage nonsense as i only have like 100 Spell Damage i think.

Then a Fix to RF - not fussed as I barely ever have to tank - so good news for prot.....i think....how many people activate RF in battle only to think - "holy crap where'd my mana go?"

More mana back from my judgements! Awesome!

Other Changes that I'm interested in:

Quests
Blade's Edge Mountains: Players accepting the bombing run quests in Blade's Edge Plateaus will no longer cause other players in the region to stand up.


Do you know I've been wondering when we've been waiting to go into Gruul's and sitting down to eat/drink and i/we have stood up! I was always like WTF!!!

I bet it took blizz ages to figure that out!!

Druids

Ravage (All Ranks) - Damage changed from 350% to 385%

Nice! More DPS For Gwindle!

So some small changes, but nice all together!!

Hydross again...

Morning readers!

So last night we entered the depths of Serpentshrine Cavern again. I was hoping for Gruul/Magtheridon, so i could have a pop at the t4 shoulders again, but it wasn't to be.

So we cleared trash to Hydross - first 2 pulls i seemed to be made of paper, and died twice. Very annoying.

So then it took 3 or 4 tries to get Hydross down which was very frustrating. Seemed the healers were slacking during the phase transitions and the tanks kept going down. But we got him down eventually.

I won the really cool T5-look-a-like healing helm for my off-spec set!! which is really nice!

We then cleared trash to Lurker, and 1 shotted him! He's a walk in the park really.

In the trash mobs leading up to Hydross 2 Nether Vortex's dropped which i got both of for 20dkp total!

So i was able to upgrade my chest item again!! From Bulwark of Kings to Bulwark of Ancient Kings if my memory serves me correctly!

Just missing 2 red +8 Strength Gems at the moment (put +6 ones in for the time being as i couldn't find a Jewel Crafter to cut my +8 gems that i have ready)

Here are before and after stats - unbuffed of course!

Before:


After:


So the strength will go up to 651 and AP 1618 i think...?

As my Hit Rating has gone up 2 points i can nearly drop the last hit rating gem from my shoulders (+4)

Hm i think i got my figures wrong there...

Bah! I'll get the gems in tonight and do another update later!

Wednesday 21 November 2007

Dentists make me Sad!

So last night i was in the dentist chair with 2 pairs of hand poking around my mouth for 3 hours!

No that's not a typo i meant to type THREE!

After i went to my sisters for dinner, then came home around 10pm ish.

So no WoW for me yesterday!

I'm signed up and approved for tonight's raid though! So Probably Gruuls then Magtheridons. Unless we go to SSC again....

I've yet to experience the crazyness of ZA! Although i'm starting to see people with items from there all over the place!

I'm eager to go and check the place out! I've only been into the entrance hall, but there were only 3 of us, so didn't get past the door! Doh! Also i was kinda hoping they would have made Harrison Jones look a little like Indiana Jones!

Anyway I'm signed up for Friday nights trip to ZA so lets see if i get picked!!!

Righto that'll do for now i think!

Tuesday 20 November 2007

Pat on the Back!!

Morning people!!

So off to SSC last night to have another crack at Leotheras The Frustrating!

So this was my first 25 man Raid i'd attended since 2.3 came out!

Pressure was on!

Boy was i surprised! After 2 group of mobs, and a giant bog-lord patrol for some amazing reason i was TOP of the DPS meter! I was getting whispers left, right and centre asking me what i was doing!!! Obviously it helped that there was only 1 rogue, and he seemed to be inflicted with insta-death curse and kept getting 1 shotted on the pull for some reason! Obviously i was in the shaman group as well so had windfury as well! I was running with 2.5k AP before my trinkets popped or my libram. so when i got all my lovely battle buffs i was up to nearly 3.5k AP!

So anyway i was surprised! It didn't last, but i maintained 4th over all which was just brilliant for me! A real boost to my confidence and after the raid i was told that the Raid leaders were VERY happy with my improvements!

So onto Leo!

This was my first visit to this nasty bugger, but all in all He seems very easy once there is a little bit of discipline in the group.

So we started the 1st try - those 3 buggers seem to have some sort of cleave or something cos the rogue/shaman kept getting killed very early on for some reason before leo had entered the fight.

So after the 3 channellers were dead leo enters the fight, and out main tank (a paladin!!) grabbed him, melee had about 5 seconds to quickly run in and hit him a couple of times then run away before he whirlwinded. Dear god he's a loony that guy! Whoosh Whoosh!! At least one person was getting killed during each of his whirlwinds.

Then phase 2 started - our warlock in fire-res gear grabbed him and dps started - he seemed to be much easier to nuke down in demon form.

Then of course its time to face your demons!! First time i didnt get any! Phew! For some reason this was something i was dreading!

Basically in demon form - leo summons 5 demons and they are linked to 5 random people. If you're targeted by one of them only you can kill them.

During the 2nd phase 2 i was tagged. I pulled back from the fight with Leo and BOOM! 6x 4 digit numbers flashed up on the screen and my demon was dead! I was like "WTF!?!?!"

So back to the fight.

At 15% he splits into 2: His demon and his elf forms. The idea is you nuke the hell out of his elf form as its at 15% whereas his demon form is at 100%.

But his elf form is doing whirlwinds all the time, and as we got him to 7% we ran out of time and he enraged! Damn!

Attempt 2:

Same thing again, but at 17% we stopped all dps and waited for him to change to demon form then nuked him to 15% hoping that he wouldn't spawn his 2nd half. But sadly all this did was delay the inevitable enrage that wiped us.

Attempt 3:

Ok so this time we tried again, and I for some reason didn't notice that i had been targeted by my inner demon and had 10 seconds left when i finally did notice :(
So i was MC'd as for some reason i could kill him in time. I then watched helplessly as i started attacking one of our warriors, bubbled and nearly killed him. Then i was nuked.

The raid managed to get leo down to 4% before the wipe. We lost a lot of dps on that attempt. and if more of us had been alive then we might have got him.

It transpired that we some of the ranged dps were not stopping dps when they should be during the phase transitions.

So we res'ed looking at the respawn timers it appeared as though we might have time for 1 more shot. Sadly we had a group of mobs respawn behind us and wiped the raid again! Doh!

RAID OVER!

Just had time to do a 2 badge Mech run before logging off for the night.

So i think next time we'll get him!

But i was happy because finally I was recognised as a valid dps doer! I shocked quite a few people last night!

Monday 19 November 2007

Druid Changes!

Another quick note as i forgot to mention it earlier!

Druid Change form Changes!!

Wowweee!!!

Instance changes FTW! Love it!

Imagine this!

You're in cat form killing a mob, and you get jumped by a 2 man patrol! Eeek! Click 1 button and POOF!!! Bear form instantly! not damage while in elf form, no ah bugger it i miss clicked, just POOF!!!

Really happy about this change!

That and the huge buff her staff got to her AP!! Wowee!! DPS-Tastic!!

Oops Forgot to Blog!!!

Happy Monday Morning to you all!!!

You're probably wondering where I've been the last few days!! Let me explain!

Wednesday night i got home and got my teeth into the patch finally! Loving some of the new changes so far! The cooking quests are interesting, its good to learn some new stuff, and add some more money to my daily quest intake.

The Heroic dailys are good too, provided they don't want us to go somewhere hard! Black Morass for instance! wow that instance is insane on heroic!

On Thursday i had the day off work, Just spent the day doing odds and sods on WoW, ran a normal arcatraz for the daily quest, which descended into chaos as we seemed to have the most newbish tank I've ever seen in the party! Warriors are allowed to tank more than one mob right? I kept having to switch to bear form(went with gwindle) and tanking 3/4 mobs when the tank couldn't seem to hold aggro for more than about 10 seconds.

Friday i wasn't too well :(

Our landlord refuses to fix the heating in my flat and I've been suffering with a horrid cold for a few weeks now. It was pretty bad on Friday. So I didn't really do very much.

Saturday was brilliant!

An elite group from our guild descended into Karazhan. 3.5 hours later and the whole place was clear!

Every boss!! 22 Badges too! Brilliant! I got hold of Despair, that nice 2h Sword from Romulo and Juliet, which I'm going to put savagery on and see how it fairs against my Hammer of the Naaru. Even without an enchant its got more AP. (+52 strength) but has no stamina or intellect.

I was hoping gorehowl would drop, but i was out of luck!

After my Girlfriend and I went to see Beowulf 3D at the Cinema! Wow! what a stunning movie! It was awesome! Loved every minute! Definitely recommend going to see it!

Yesterday I didn't really get up to much other than doing some Christmas shopping. Dull!

Wednesday 14 November 2007

OMG!?!?!?

More patch to download! As if 230mb wasnt enough!!!

Gotta wait another 30 mins for it to get the last bits!! GRRR!!!!

/me is annoyed!

Waiting...

God! Just over an hour till i get home!!

Today has been the longest day ever!!

I'm really looking forward to the new stuff Firelight's gonna be doing!

That nice 6s CS Cooldown.

The threat reduction.

Lots of nice good stuff!! Love it!

Someone on the guild is arranging a triple heroic run for to get the "Champion of the Naaru" Title!

I've put my name down!! That'll be cool i think! plus I've never tried either of those instances in heroic mode so should be fun!!

Not to mention the new heroic quests, and non heroic quests! Means the money should start flowing quite heavily if i do my dailys as well!

I've got the day off work tomorrow which is nice! I need a break from work! means i can do some cool stuff - check out ZA Properly too!

I've been to the new area in ghostlands already on the PTR. So i know what I'm looking for.

I need to figure out where the Flight path is there though. and how it works if you're flying from IF? Is that even possible?

If not that's quite annoying having to fly to EPL then ride into ghostlands. It takes quite a while.

Our guild are talking about dropping Karazhan runs soon in favour of ZA...while i think its a good idea, as i don't really want anything else from there right now, and the guild are pushing 25 man content at the moment, we've dropped to 8th or 10th in server rank recently so we need to down a couple more bosses in SSC, and maybe even another in Tempest Keep.

We wont be doing Loot Reaver again for a while anyway, as since the patch you cannot bypass A'lar. (the beautiful birdy in the first big room) So we're going to have to try A'lar out first.

Some people say that being in an end-game Raid Guild is a lot of hard work, and you have to put in a lot of hours, I'm lucky that I'm not a healer or tank.

I don't get picked for a huge amount of raids, due to prejudices against paladins i think...

I'm assured by the Raid Leaders that they love to have me along for what i give them in terms of crit %age to the raid and +2% damage to my party, I've been taken out of the main melee group because the rogues want Windfury.

Personally i don't think all rogues need it.

Our Raid Leader is a rogue, and his dps is insane! So surely he could give up his space to let lil'old'me in the windfury group?

We need more Enhancement Shamans in the guild i think - that'll sort it!!

Well writing this has taken up 20 minutes! only 50 mins till work is over.

Patch Day!

So 2.3 Is out today!!

And where am I? stuck at work till 5pm! Doh!

7 and a half hours of sheer boredom waiting...

Meh I need to stop thinking about it!

Last night i only did a couple of things.

Got myself down to the southern Barrens and started killing Zehvra's.

Eventually got my 4 Zehvra skins, gathered my other mats and found someone to make me my Stylin' Purple hat for Gwindle.

Gwindle is the sexeh lady!! I'll post a pic later!! She's hotness!!

So i quickly pop to the Cenarian Expedition's Quartermaster to grab the head enchant then my arena partner whispers me. He wants to do some more arena on his warrior.

Well what a combo!! We went up 150 points in 12 matches!! Was brilliant!

Azaloth will ride around on his mount and I'll stealth to make out who/what we're up against.

We decide on a target then he'll Run in and start plugging away at the target.

I'll sneak up behind, pounce and start my combo's.

Locks/Rogues are now not the problem i used to think they were! having a warrior doing Mortal Strike on mobs is awesome! no amount of healing is going to save them from a severe beating!

Then I'll throw a few heals if needed, or pop up my Aoe heal which will heal both of us. Usually making me the target of the remaining player.

Awesome I'm really optimistic about the team. But I'm worried that we'll throw away a lot of points when we have to play with the shaman. for some reason he seems to go down really quickly as he's usually seen as the healer. Not really sure. Maybe we'll just do the minimum amount of games with his shaman.

I get really worked up when I'm playing in arena matches!! Usually swearing and beating on my desk! Its quite funny!! And i love it when we win, but the determination that sets in if we loose and both of us wanna get back in the ring and take them out!!

We had a warlock/paladin team last night we got about 4 times in total. I think the warlock was getting really frustrated at being killed within 20 seconds of the fight starting. One fight with them Azaloth was killed at the same time as the lock, and it meant it was just me an a holy paladin. Very annoying! He knew he was going to die so all he did was tickle me with his healing hammer then use Seal of Vengeance on me! LOL! Took me a couple of minutes, but he went down.

That's all i did last night, the 2nd Kara team went back to kara to finish off the last bosses from curator to prince.

I'm going to be doing some of the new dailys tonight and playing around with what my point build on firelight.

Not sure what i wanna go for really. I'm going to be looking at some other retri paladins on the armory and see what they've gone for.

Tuesday 13 November 2007

What is Blogging..?

So I've been at this blogging malarkey for a few weeks now, and I'm beginning to ask what it is that I'm waffling on about...

Lots of blogs that I've been reading since i discovered this whole blogging thing are filled with useful information about instances, or raiding tips, or even class help.

All my blog is full of is "What i did last night".

Is it entertaining?

I guess it doesn't matter really. I enjoy writing it and i suppose that's what is interesting really.

And I seem to have a lot of people looking at my blog-site - I'm over 800 visits so far in just a couple of weeks!

Which really surprised me! When i initially got the counter i thought I'd be hard pressed getting to 100 visits!! And here i am getting close to 1,000!!!

So i should ask a question!! Lets make my Blog Interactive!!

Who Enjoys Reading My Adventures in WoW?

Monday Night Nothingness..

Hey people!!

A later than usual post from me today..

Not much to report on for the evenings antics really.

While the rest of the guild had another crack at morogrim Tidewalker i did some farming herbs/money/cloth with gwindle.

While i was in Shadowmoon Valley someone posted in General Chat looking for a group to complete a quest at Ata'mal Terrace.

Its the quest to that Akama gives you to go get the heart of something or other.
Anyway i remember doing this quest with Firelight a few months ago, but the difference here is i would be tanking with Gwindle.

Now i don't know how they expect to have a 5 man group survive what appeared to be about 30/40 mobs spawning on you while you're killing 4 elites one by one i don't know.
Slowly one by one the team went down...

Hunter...Dead.
Rogue...Dead.
Mage...Dead.
Priest....Dead.

Gah! that left me to kill the last elite and 5 remaining adds alone!!
The priest was doing that angel thing they do when they die so i was at least topped up with health when she finally kicked the bucket!

Swipe is really useful! I managed to survive somehow and then res'd the priest and we all got the quest completed!

I was the hero for 10 minutes for being able to tank what is essentially utter utter chaos!!
That was a nice little quest line finished got me a fair bit of gold from running around for 5 minutes from SMV to Shattrath.

After that i logged over to my Hordie to check on prices at the AH for Primal Shadow.

Wow what a difference! there's bags of cash to be saved Horde side!

The primal shadows were 50-70% cheaper than on the Alliance Side.

So tonight i should get my new hat on Gwindle!

Also I did some Arena with gwindle last night also.

One of my guildies is a Shaman, but has a pvp spec'ed Warrior as well...
We tried the shaman first, and it was horrible! he would get nuked really fast - usually before I'd even popped out of stealth so we tried it with me in healing gear keeping the HoT's up on him all the time. We won a couple of matches this way. But it was not good!

So he logged his pvp warrior..and what a difference!! Everyone seemed to think i was a healer for some reason, and nuked me down first then tried to kill the warrior...But they couldn't!! He was amazing!! We faced up against a rogue/paladin combo a few times..and all but 1 time my warrior mate nuked both of them down without me!! i felt a little useless!!

I still think i need to work on my damage dealing on Gwindle - i need to give her some enchants as well. she's missing some key ones, like shoulders/head/boots.

Think i need to find an attack rotation for pvp that works.

Some more arena gear would be helpfull also. She's only got 2 pvp spec'd items so her resiliance is rather low. (Bracers and Legs)

Anyway i totally got side tracked there!!

I was on my Blood Elf Mage and was flying over Crossroads and it looked like the Alliance were attacking it again, so i flew back to see what was going on!

A level 70 Druid was there killing random mobs, but he was alone!
It turned out to be a member of Gwindles old Guild: Thunderblades.
He was one by one killing all the NPC's in the area, and a few level 15/20's were plugging at him also, so i joined in. Then a 70 Tauren resto druid arrived and started attacking him in his healing gear!!! WTF!?!?

My guildies had a laugh about that as slowly he tried in vain to kill this Alliance druid. I thought i better leave quick before he decided to kill me!

I'll be having words with him tonight to see what he was doing!!

Anyway i made my way to ratchet then onto Booty Bay!
Once there i got my mate on the alliance to buy my primals and post them onto my Druid.
Sorted!

Anyway that's all for now!

Monday 12 November 2007

Week Off!

Ok yesterday marked the start of my week off raiding!!

I have to make some money this week!

With the onset of the newer daily quests implemented this week in 2.3 I should be in good shape to start making some serious gold.

I've not done any daily quests for a few days - I'm so bored of doing the same thing for an hour twice! I need to find a regular questing buddy for them i think.

But 2.3 will bring in daily quests for instances! This will be good cos at the mo I seem to only be doing the same instances over and over.

Gwindle still needs exalted with Cenarian Expedition so she can buy herself that nice 2h Mace they sell, but its a long grind! I've been doing heroics in there, but really i should do some nice easy normal Steam Vault runs as they are easy peasy! Just need to find a few PuG's and off we go.

Oh and the Darkmoon Faire is gone today! Bugger! I managed to snag some nice gems from there over the weekend but it would appear that quite a few people cottoned onto the fact that they were selling gems super cheap at that vendor. I should have saved the gems rather than sold them then i could have re-sold them again when there were less on the AH from people doing the same thing.

I have found a nice place in Shadowmoon Valley to grind netherweave cloth and Sunfury signets(those Blood Elves are so squishey!!) takes me 5-10 seconds to kill 1 in cat-form, or 20-30 to kill 3 at once in bear form! (Swipe FTW)

Feral is so much more versatile for grinding than anything else I've experienced.

A lot of people say that prot-paladins AOE grinding is quicker...i suppose if the mobs are closely positioned or in an instance, then you can do that, and I've seen a Prot Paladin in our guild gather all of the adds in Black Morass and then get the group to AOE them to death, and its amazing to watch...but for solo'ing its just not mana efficient. You're having to take breaks every time you've cleared up the mobs to regen mana.

Cat-form i just move from one mob to the next..no stops, no pauses, occasionally jumping out of cat-form to throw myself a quick heal, then back to the grind.

I'm going to try to do all my dailies everyday and then spend at least an hour in SMV grinding cloth, signets and gold from the mobs, or flying around picking herbs (which is just dull at 60% flight)

I really look forward to when i can soar at 280% just above the ground, buzzing lower level guys on ground mounts...brrreeeeeeeewwwwwaaaaaaaaarrrr da da da da da da da!!! Damn i wish i had cannons in flight form!!

5000g isn't that much is it..?

Yeah it is! Who am i kidding!!

Maybe when 2.3 hits I'll level my Clown (Warlock) and then that'll help a lot! As he has no money spending profs. (herbalist/skinner)

Oh if anyone can tell me what mobs drop Cobra Scales that would be very help full!

One thing i noticed lately is the price of Primal Shadow has gone up loads on the AH! and i mean a LOT! from about 2-3g a primal to 20/30g! Someone said that Blizzard reduced the drop rate.

Typical really cos i finally find something i need for my Druid and i need 6 Primal Shadows to get it crafted! [Stylin' Purple Hat]

That was something odd as well, that Hat requires some Zhevra Leather from some mobs in the Barrens! Odd!

Anyway enough waffle from me for now!

Saturday 10 November 2007

My Warlock.

So i've got a level 41 warlock that i play with from time to time..in fact he was my First ever WoW toon, but got shelved when i created Firelight.


So about a month ago before they announced the changes to leveling in 2.3 i decided to play with him for a bit. Got him from 31 to 41 in a couple days and got his mount! Awesome!


So then i think to myself, my gear is really lame!!

So i go shopping! And i go instancing! Scarlett Monastary!


And when i get back i log out and i'm faced with this image.....


(Click to enlarge! If you Dare!!!)

Dear god...not exactly menacing as most Warlocks look is he!!

This reminded me of a post i read over at Blessing of Kings:

http://blessingofkings.blogspot.com/2007/08/cosmetic-vs-impact-decisions.html

He pwn's! But he looks like an idiot!!

Your comments welcome!!

Friday Night Mayhem!

Look at this!! A Saturday Post!! OMG!

Did i have a stressful night or what!!

Fun, but stressful!!

We were all lined up for Kara and there were 3 groups going, i was signed up for team 2, but ended up being moved to team 1, as they were short a tank.

So i took gwindle in there and was the Off Tank! Oh dear! I was petrified of screwing up!!

I'd not tanked in Kara before! Certainly not with my druid!!

Attument - 1 Shotted!
Moroes - 1 Shotted!
Opera - 1 Shotted!
Maiden - 1 Shotted!
Nightbane - 3 tries - then we moved on - we were having problems with the skelly phase.
Curator - 1 Shotted!

Then after the big robots past Curator i asked if i could switch to Firelight for Shade of Aran so i could complete my quest. No problem! On we went!

Aran - 1 Shotted!
Illhoof - 1 Shotted!
Netherspite - 1 Shotted! (my first time even seeing this boss! let alone tanking him!! eek!)
Chess Event - Too easy to fail!
Prince - 1 Shotted!!! (whooppeee!! Another t4 helm! Got the tanking one this time!!)

Then we went back to Nightbane and 1 Shotted him! I got myself that awesome Shield he drops for tanking!! Brilliant!!

I also hit exalted with the Violet Eye, so i was able to swap over my ring and change it for this bad boy:


Look at all that lovely Hit Rating!!!

So i finally got to my desired 95 hit rating! and then some!!


Awesome!! (those are unbuffed stats btw) Whats even better is i can afford to drop 16 Hit points to get more Strength or Attack Power.
Looking much better! and hopefully when 2.3 comes I'll be set!!
What an awesome night!! The whole of Karazhan in 5 hours! Brilliant!!

Friday 9 November 2007

Alts...

I beginning to feel anxious about my alts!! 2.3 is around the corner and i want to get at least another 2 of my toons to 70.

My Warlock, Starslayer, will be first. At the weekend I'm going to do a post about him, i guarantee you'll laugh out loud when you see him!!

Then if i can bear to listen to his voice, Poobah, my rogue will be next. ("Not enough energy!"AAARRGGGHHH!!!! Pounds his stupid gnome face into the ground!)

I've also got a level 20 Draenai priest and a level 13 Draenai Shaman I'd like to level as well.

Both my Warlock and my Rogue will have full rested bonus's when i decide to start leveling them again so that'll help out quite a lot, and being able to level them close to 30-50% quicker will be good too!

Basically i want some more money makers! My warlock has herbalism and skinning as his Trade Skills, and make me money to level! My Rogue is a skinner/Leather worker. So again his trade skills compliment themselves.

My Priest is Alchemist/herbalist so i'll have a pot maker for my toons.

My Shaman is a Miner/Jewel Crafter. Prospecting makes Wods of Hard Currency!

I'm tempted to drop skinning on my warlock and pick up alchemy so i can start making pots a lot sooner...hmm...as he's 41 he can get to 300 pretty quick. Not sure if you need to be a specific level to get to 375 though (obviously Gwindle will be farming the mats he would need to level past 300 in outland as she's 375 herber)

Firelight is a Miner/Armoursmith 375/375 - I very rarely craft anything. I have 1 BoE Plan for tanks (Bracers of the green whoosamajig) which are very nice, but I'd need to farm some primal nethers to craft them.. I've seen them go on the AH for quite a bit.

Gwindle is 375 Herbalist and 375 Enchanter. She has Mongoose! the coveted Super Melee enchant! I was told this would make me super rich...i was told I'd have requests every 5 minutes from people wanting this enchant.....

I was lied to!

I've done it a lot for guildies, obviously i don't charge for the enchant, but don't provide mats.

I think since I've had it (a couple months) I've maybe made 300g total from it...

I just hate to stand around Ironforge spamming the trade channel with /2 WTS [Mongoose] then having to reply back to 5 people all who end up saying "no thanks mats are too much for me"

I've moaned about it before, i know, but it really grinds my gears!!! (thanks Peter Griffin!!)

So slowly the money should start rolling in.

At the moment all i seem to be doing is logging in to raid with maybe an hour before hand to do some dailys or sort out my auctions from my banker-alt.

Gaahh!! Sometimes it feels like such a chore!!! All i want is to have enough money to give one of my toons Epic Flight.

I think I'll end up giving it to Gwindle first, as I'm keen to get epic flight form, and do that quest in Achenai Crypts (or whatever instance it is) to face the Raven Lord.

A few people on our server have his mount, and its really awesome! The funny thing is *NONE* of the people who have the mount are druids...

Its such a cool looking mount!

I should do a post about Firelight's mount obsession...he's got a *few* you see!!

Quite a contrast to Gwindle who only has 2! (3 including flight form i suppose)

Since I took up herbalism I've made a bit more money than i used to, Gwindle was a tailor for some reason(?!?!) and it was so easy to level herbalism. Only took me a weekend. Job done.

I sent all the mats either to the banker for selling on the ah, or to my priest to level her alchemy(she's level 20, with 225 (Maxed) alchemy till she gets to 35 anyway)

One of the reasons i want to get gwindle her flight form first is herb farming. The amount of times I've got to the little yellow dot on my map only to find someone with epic flight has beaten me to it by 2 seconds...very annoying...

Anyway I'm bored and rambling on! The joys of friday afternoons at work...its dead in here!

Serpentshrine Cavern? No?

Good morning all! (or evening i suppose to some people!)

So more drama to report on from last nights antics so lets get started!

So raid time came around and we all descended on SSC and entered the instance, ready in front of the first group of mobs...waiting...waiting...

While we were waiting I asked the shaman who I had a run in with the previous night if i was ever going to get my gold back that I'd lent her a few weeks ago to help her get her Flying mount. Well i cant repeat what she said to me lets just say it started with "F" and ended in "Off!" I was not pleased, she basically had a go at me because I'd made her "burn" 230 dkp on the shoulders instead of just letting her have them for 7 dkp like a good paladin. So i told her i bid her up so that i would get the legs if they dropped. She then said that the truth was out. ??? I had already told the raid leaders why I'd done it and that i had a valid reason for bidding.

Due to all that the Management decided to amend the rules of the guild.

"NEW as of 8th Nov: Ungrounded complaints, bad whispers, indirect pressure during bidding for items will result in a -50DKP penalty. Raidleader is supreme if any decisions are to be made that differs from our ordinary DKP-system. "

So there we have it...

So anyway the Raid leaders announced that we would be moving to the Eye in Tempest Keep due to the fact that we were missing some key people for a while.

Wow! Our first trip to the Eye!! Weee!!! Griefing aside i was quite excited!!

So we all flew over and went in and buffed! Man the trash in that place is annoying...

Those effing birds are really really annoying!! Gah!! Silence every 2 seconds...i was just standing around like a lemon most of the time waving my mace every 3.6 seconds and hoping i hit something! We wiped on 1 group of trash, cos the belf in that group didn't come into the hallway for some reason but it didn't hamper our progress!

So entered the first boss room, Al'ar. Wow what a beautiful looking boss! Sadly we weren't attempting him/her/it today we went into the left door way and worked our way to Void Reaver!

The trash in Voidys room is a bit of a pain! I ended up having to heal as the robots were doing a lot of damage to the melee and i kept getting killed!! Was easier for me to just don my Healing gear and keep the melee group up! Worked well! was a bit hectic healing again, not done it since January! But my gear is ace! i scab what i can from kara/gruul so its mostly epics!

Anyway we got all the trash down and it was time for our first crack at VR.

Ok the 1st attempt was messy, a lot of the healers were not moving away from the arcane balls and subsequently we wiped.

2nd attempt we lost 2 of our 3 tanks early on due more ball havok!

3rd attempt.....sweet as a nut! Easy!!

Loot Reaver went down like a stone! Main Tank got t5 shoulders, as per raid rules, and the other set was Hunter/Mage/Warlock the bidding started at 225, and ended at 300 one of our Hunters won so grats to him.

Other loot was a rogue trinket.

On a side note the shaman I've been having problems with logged mid way through trash clearing in the last room before VR. This was right after I'd explained to the Guild Leader what happened yesterday as he was having connection problems most of last night so kept missing parts of what was happening. I found out that no blame was being put on me, i was well within my rights as a raid member to bid on whatever i wanted (provided it was for me in the first place obviously!!)

So a good night for the guild! Not such a good night for me. But happy we tried something new when i was there.

I've got Karazhan tonight i think, I've signed up for both my toons - lets see who gets picked!

Thursday 8 November 2007

Gruul & Magtheridon Perfection.

Hey Peeps!

Last night was Gruul and Magtheridon night!

What can i say! the Focus was amazing! Even though the odds were against us!

Gruul First!

Got to gruuls, again i was ommited from the DPS group, and after moaning to my Class Leader the raid leader did nothing. There is no need for 3 rogues to be in the dps group just to get Wind Fury. Their dps is so high that they don't need it. Me on the other hand.....anyway I'm not complaining about it any more.

So first try on High-King Mulgar we lost our mage tank early on so we ran out and reset. HKM downed quick!

T4 Shoulders dropped, and i knew that the shaman in the group would be bidding, so the bidding war commenced, i passed at 220 dkp, and she won for 230. I then had the RL whispering me and saying "WTF?!?" "Why are you bidding" "You have better"...etc etc...not to mention the b*tching i was getting from the shaman. All i was doing was trying to win the shoulders, and making sure that i had more dkp for the legs if they dropped from Gruul.

Oh my god what a fuss. So after the raid leader made it clear that i shouldn't have bid, i then said in Raid chat that i withdraw all my bids and that she can have the shoulders for 7dkp, her original bid, and that I'd been told i wasn't allowed to bid. I then had half the raid asking me why and who had told me that. So i made it clear to them (mostly officers) put the shaman on ignore for 5 mins till she calmed down. She's been doing this a lot lately and has the Raid Leader wound round her finger from what I've been told.

Its funny how a small totem can cause such a fuss...

Anyway i then had the raid leader whispering me again apologising for his shortness with me and that the shaman in question would indeed pay 230dkp for her shoulders.

I do want the shoulders, for the 4x Set bonus which is great. This is why i bid.

And we moved onto Gruul.

One shotted that one-eyed monster and the legs dropped. I won for 127 dkp (1 dkp more than the shaman had!) I'll not be using them till i get the shoulders. So maybe next week... Who knows. I want to look like a paladin, not a warrior! although those shoulders/legs i have a really nice. Maybe for solo'ing/trash mobs they're fine, but for bosses i need the added intellect that the legs/shoulders give me.

So we ported out to Shattrath, repaired, i picked up my legs from the t4 vendor, and flew to Honor Hold to get ready for Magtheridon.

I was on cube clicking duty again. Which is always a real pressure point!! i like to get to the cube a lot earlier than i should mainly because one time i was on it, i got earthquaked in front of maggy and was cleaved and killed. Then i was told about jumping to get out of the earthquake thing. Meh...anyway we one shotted him and more T4 dropped for our group. I was hoping for him to drop his plate belt, but he didn't drop it!! Git! Anyway the first bid for the chest was from our raid leader for 275 dkp! LOL! The Bidding went up to 330 or so i think. Way out of my league! I don't want the chest anyway. Certainly not paying over 150dkp for any t4! lol

Anyway that's what happened last night! I did a normal Botanica run on my druid afterwards. Its amazing how hard that demon boss is in there on heroic compared to normal. I mean he is so easy on normal its ridiculous!

Gwindle got a nice new dps cape and a necklace, but not sure what to do with them.

Anyway i picked up some more blue gems from that Darkmoon Faire vendor, and I'm making quite a bit of money that way!! I wonder if he sells the same things when he's in Elwynn..Hmmm....

Anyways that's enough for now..an interesting evening to be sure...

I'm signed for the raid tonight, which will likely be SSC first 2 bosses, and maybe 3...depends if we wipe 3 times on Hydross as normal.

Or we might be doing Void-Reaver...who knows!

Wednesday 7 November 2007

Karazhan Progression...

Morning Folks!

So last night I had some time to quickly finish off my dailys on firelight, then quickly do 2 on Gwindle, and try something in Skettis.

I read on someones blog a good way to make money if you're a herbalist is to kill the 71 Elites in Skettis (the big tree dudes) Now i'd tried this in Balance, and was killed a few times, but managed it in the end. But as Feral, its awesome! I go cat form till either he's down to 50% or I'm taking too much damage, stunning/healing in between, the go bear form to finish him off!

Easy money!

So I'm going to spend some time doing that, the herbs and motes are worth a bit!

So onto Kara!

We had a tank that was new to a couple of the fights (nightbane included) so the start was a little disheartening. 4 wipes. So we moved on to Shade of Aran. I was a little annoyed as this was the first time I'd been invited to the 2nd day of a kara run since our kara full night runs over a month ago, and i wanted to clear the mobs before aran so i could pick up the quest to kill aran and get the book from him. Raid leader said that we'd wasted enough time on nightbane, so we couldn't kill 3 extra groups of mobs. Which meant i had to come back after the raid was over so now i have to wait again till we do the 2nd half of the instance again.

1st attempt on Aran was rather messy! Everyone went in DPS as its impossible to tank him, our feral druid died pretty early on, then when he was combat res'd he was killed again as the RL forgot that if you res during the rings of fire phase that counts as movement. So on we went..one by one the group were going down until only I was left! talk about pressure...2% left on aran i needed to pull 8k damage out of somewhere, oh crap!! no health...popped a pot, popped a healthstone, and as my mouse was clicking divine shield he crit me! Boom dead! wipe! Annoying!

So we got him on the 2nd attempt nice and easy.

Then on to Illhoof who we one shotted.

Chess was easy as usual.

Then time for the Prince!

1st attempt we were at about 55% when an infernal landed where the tank was, so all melee dps(myself and the extra tank) ran back, i switched my weapon/offhand and libram, cast blessing of light on the druid tank, and started healing. Tank got really unlucky with 4 crushing blows in a row, no amount of healing could get through that so we wiped.

2nd attempt the tank got enfeeble!! W.T.F!

3rd try same thing happened with the infernal again, but we managed to heal through it this time, and at 10% the infernal despawned and we ran in and nuked him! Prince Down!

It seems the best way to do this fight is for the bulk of the party to stand at the door, and for the tank to stand just infront of us up against a wall. No moving around, no fuss! and if things get like that with the infernals then we can just wait it out and heal through it.

So I'm really close to exalted with Violet Eye now. 1 more run and I'm done with that. Still a few things I'd like from there in the way of drops but we'll see if i ever get lucky.

All i snagged from last nights run was a healing mail legs item from the Chess event.

So after I'd gone back to kara 30 mins after we ended the raid i popped back to Shattrath and saw a huge cannon outside the aldor bank! LOL!

I jumped in and saw that the Darkmoon Faire was in town! (well just outside town)

I talked to a few of the NPC's there and i found one selling scrolls! I quickly grabbed all the useful ones, as they were super super cheap compared to AH prices! Strength, Agility lovely lovely!

So this morning i quickly logged on and did one of my skettis dailys on Gwindle, and killed 2 of those tree giants as well, then logged back to firelight to pop to the faire again for more scrolls!

Wow! he had a couple more scroll, but he also had some blue gems!! for 12g each! I snapped them up quick as i know they go for 4 or 5 times that at the AH!! Brilliant find!!

/cheer

So I'm going to see how often he restocks his supplies and pop back there as much as i can in order to snag a few juicy items!! ^_^

Anyway that's enough from me for now!

Bye Bye!! *waves*