When i was still leveling (pre-TBC) i was always looking forward to that next level where i got new skills and would become even stronger. My long term goal was being the best Hunter possible (as disgussed before). I got my fun out of Wow doing 5mans with my friends and later i would really enjoy going to MC with my guild.
This shifted to BWL and when i was tired of that i loved to do MC again with my Warrior alt. Zul'Gurub was also somewhere on this list, first with my main, later with some alts.
Time went by and Karazhan became the new obsession. While the mains moved on to SSC and TK it was time for my alt to visit Karazhan (as a more frequent reader of my blog will know)
So where do i get my current fix? SSC? TK?... well actually, in Karazhan. For some reason neither SSC as TK do much for me, not sure if it's the ambience, the creatures or the bosses.. it's just missing something.
What keeps me playing Wow atm? Strangely enough it's being able to do Karazhan with my alt Tank.
Not only does the instance appeal to me but also the change of pace, playing a different character for a change. Most of the week i look forward to Kara which we do on the Monday and now and then on the Sunday during the day aswell.
During most of the other days i prepare for this, grinding mats to get myself new gear crafted, pvping for again gear, instances for rep so i can get the factionrewards, that sort of stuff.
Yesterday we actually got a great group together. The last few weeks we had to deal with people who were after a few fast epics for their alt which resulted in an undergeared raid as most didnt take much effort putting good gems and enchants on their gear. Last week was the ultimate down, i had again managed toget myself better gear during the week and was ready to test them out in Kara... but loads of the people which showed had put less effort in it. We even figured we couldnt get past Moroes which was the truth at the end, we only managed to kill the Huntsman :(
I was happy to see people did prepare this time and we even had people too many. How frustrated i was i got outrolled on a spot after spending all that time and money on my gear and whiping on previous runs with underequipped people.... i lost the roll fair and square but i did feel cheated someway. Most of the bosses they killed didnt even drop (or had chance to drop) gear i could have used, it was mostly because i really enjoy doing that instance on my tanktoon and now was looking forward to a day of boredom.
Just the day before that i finally managed to get a pug at the end of the day for a regular run (everyone doing Heroics nowadays or what?) and this moonkin kept nuking the mobs before i even had one sunder on it (often before it even reached me) which was quite frustrating as i had to blow my taunt right at the start so i often don't have that emergency button ready. When the mage missed his sheep and i decided to tank it, as most mobs were dead anyway and i could easily tank the last 2, he decided to say "stop breaking my sheep ffs"... i didnt even bother with saying "stop sheeping my mob ffs" and typed: "I really don't like people saying ffs to me....", left the party and i hearted out.
Think the message was clear as they didnt even bother to whisper.
The rest of the evening i stood in Shattrah, bored to bits and nothing to do... but i didn't have the courage to find yet another pug.
Shouldnt i find a Karazhan raidgroup who actually needs a tank? Ofcourse this would be a short term fix as this will go boring aswell and what then? The next option i might have is Zul'Aman which would require a raidgroup with at least full Karazhan gear, rather better then that.
My current guild is up for that so i guess i just bite my lip and wait till 2.3 arrives, hoping to be able to make my tank usefull in Karazhan now and then untill then.
Or maybe there is simply a limit to the number of raids a person can do before quiting Wow... time will tell once again.
Monday, October 22
The end is near?
Friday, October 19
The Girly Tank
First boss we encountered was Hydross which requires two main tanks; one in full Nature Gear, the other one in Frost.
I guess like in most guilds there are one or two main tanks who often get the more difficult jobs.. and after a while they are the most experienced so the most likely choice.
Yesterday our Tank with Frost gear wasnt online, the one tank who had the required ammount of Frost resistance was my girlfriend. (she had chosen Frost as it was the prettiest set ^.^ )
She does her very best and pays a lot of attention to her gear but before Wow the most complex game she played was probably Patience.
So she doesnt have quite the reflexes of a born and raised gamer, she's one of those turn-key tanks out there but makes up for this with her enthousiasm and sparkling personality. (she's kind of the guilds mascotte i suppose)
Hydross is a tricky pull, we had many wipes before our regular tank had the pull right and requires some fast action and positioning... and i think our regular tank is quite skilled, more then my GF too be honest.
And yesterday she had to do that... the tricky pull, the pull which even our regular tank fucks up now and then. He even uses swiftness pots to make this go smoother, a lot of click-a-dy-click in a short period of time required.
I was worried when our Girly tank ran in but to my suprise it was the smoothest pull i ever seen! And on the very first attempt ever... the Nature tank even had to explain her before we started on how things exactly worked. But there it was, out of the blue: a perfect pull!
Hydross barely moved at all.
Sure some of us had to take care not to overaggro as her threat generation is slightly lower but besides that transistions and all went perfectly fine. She did great and i was relieved as proud that she did it so well. Even the Raidleader complimented her many times which surely boosted her ego. :)
We got lucky in the end tho as someone did actually overaggro and made Hydross run off. Our Girly tank had to start running after him but it started jumping from one dps to the other as she couldnt build up any more threat and dps kept nuking.
Instead of just standing still and paying the bill for overaggro'ing they walked backwards... starting the next phase early.
Luckily the other tank was quick to grab it so Hydross wouldnt step back again and start again a new phase, which would have resulted in 8 adds instead of 4 to grab for the offtanks, would have been very tricky.
Hydross down first ever try for our Girly tank anyway :D
Argh Crap Legit!
I was reading this guildname like something as Argh Cramp Leggings (where crap=tight as Krap is dutch for too tight/small), so i thought someone was just complaining about his pants... didnt make much sense to me either :P
Only later i found out i had to read leg it instead of seeing it as one word.... aaah!
Anywayssss, enough of my previous mistakes, let's focus on a new one... a Leg it moment :)
Yesterday i was back in Serpentshrine Caverns after missing out a couple of times. Either me or my fellow Hunter officer devides Misdirection assignements (altho the Hunters do it on their own when neither of us is there aswell) and we have not a set puller.
If the tank you are assigned to needs to tank the next mob, you pull it.
And there our story begins... i was dozing off a bit, checking out our forums on my second screen until my colleague poked me to pull my tanks mob. I quickly ran forward as i had no idea how long people had been waiting and just when i popped Misdirect on the tank, the mob turned around and walked away. I was still out of range so ran after him and by the time i was in range he was awfully close to this pack of mobs which caused the next dilemma: To pull or not to pull? I pulled alot of mobs, often been the puller in various instances from MC to Karazhan and even SSC and TK... so my guts said to me "They are to close Exa, don't do it!". But the Misdirect buff was already ticking and if i missed i would have to wait for it to be ready again.. causing a delay for the whole raid. Hmmmmmm.... so i pulled.... and wiped us. I felt my head turning red and was very annoyed with myself. One of those moments i'd rather just HS and log out, what a dumbass taking a chance like that. I confessed and appologized to the raid and they didnt give me any grief for it, that's the way things go in our guild. (/hug)
After a couple of minutes everyone was rezzed and buffed and the Raidleader spammed his "Pull please" macro. I ran forward to the mob, Misdirected the tank and just at that point the mob turned around and i ran after it to get in range. Starting to sound familiar?
This time i didnt pull however... a quick "Doh!" on Teamspeak caused some laughter and relief from the other side of my headphones.
So i did it the old fashion way when the mob returned, a simple shot on it and then legit back to the tank... hoping he didn't have a noob-moment like i did. :)
Thursday, October 18
Deathknight spree
But i'm not exactly worried about the DK's running around Shattrah or Northrend myself... i'm more worried what happens in my own little world: our guild.
I'm pretty sure some people will be trying out the new class, probably most will somewhere after or halfway leveling their main.. but there are already people not happy with their class and wanting to mainswitch as soon as the expansion hits us, not even checking out the new zone on their current main. This might seriously unbalance the raidforce we have, altho a new class will likely already make this happen.
Going on without a DK is not possible as Blizzard will make sure we need them in the new instances, there is little doubt about that.
So there is another fine task for the officers in the guild; how to prevent too many people switching to DK?
Not only will people switching to DK result in an overdose of tankingclasses (currently we have prot-warriors, feral-druids and prot-pala's fighting over the few tankspots in a raid, soon DK will join that fight) but also mainchanging will leave a gap and possible a shortage of other "old" classes.
I know for at least two people in our guild who want to become a deathknight and a third might be interested in doing so aswell. The funny thing (altho i can't seem to laugh about it) is those three are currently Paladins.. is that really such a bad class to play? o.O
For your information two are Holy and one is Ret so it's not just a matter of being sick of being a healing bitch.
It is still a long time before we see the next expension so perhaps things will be completely different by then, perhaps those people won't even be playing by then ór we have a healer abbundance and we will be happy to see them mainswitch... who can tell.
Still i have this nagging feeling about the whole situation which is often not without a good reason, let's hope my guts are just messed up this time from some bad Chinese i ate 3 months ago
Wednesday, October 17
I'm a Racist... sorta
I am a Night Elf Hunter, at least my main is.. which is one of two possible races for that class when playing Alliance untill recently.
And while Horde says: All NE Hunters are 12 year old kids, i have met many NE's who werent.
I admit finding a good Hunter out there is hard as i found out myself once again recently when taking applies from Hunters for our guild. Often i'm done in just a few minutes and direct them to tkasomething.com and tell them to go gather a bit more knowledge before appying to the next guild. The armory is a great tool to quickly indentify the bad hunters, while i have a chat with someone i often am already checking out their gear, talents and rep on my second screen. Just last week i had a Hunter with Strength gems in his gloves, not even achieving the gem-bonus by doing this >.>
When i ask people to tell me what their shotrotation looks like is another tool to cut these interviews short... nuff said; i met my share of Hunter-noobs both NE as Dwarves.
For some reason i have a hard time not losing my respect for a person when they play a dorf Hunter. Loads of other classes playing dwarves i have no problem with but Hunters...?!? I don't know why, some Dorf Hunter in the past must have ruined it for the rest of them or something.
I like to read BRK's blog now and then, i don't agree with everything he says (as i am a self thinking Hunter myself :P) but it's obvious he tries his very best to get to the depths of his class and does his best to be the best possible Hunter. I respect him for that as much as i respect the other main Hunters (all NE's) in my guild for paying effort, time and money to constantly improve their play.. but at the same time i need to surpress the negative feelings i get when checking him out in a few of his recent video's where his small legs are carying his out of proportions body around. All dwarves have this problem i know but where most classes are often static, dwarven Hunters tend to move around alot... even worse when they use Aspect of the Cheetah.
I know this feeling is totaly unfitting and just recently i met another Dwarven Hunter who is eager to learn and often asks me the ins and outs of Hunterness. This info is not spend on deaf ears either as i see him improving all the time and with some gear improvement i'm sure he could quite keep up with the rest of the Hunters in our guild (the dwarf i'm talking about is an alt).
Perhaps he doesnt know all the tricks yet or missing some experience which a Hunter who's been playing since the retail does have, but he's better then majority of the Hunters i've met so far.
So this Hunter is slowly turning this racist... it might take a while but i'll get there ;-)
Tuesday, October 16
No Pay, No Gai-n
Yesterday it was time for the Karazhan Alt-run which is was looking forward to all week (more then SSC and TK actually surprising enough).
I'm taking my alt quite serious, i'm even sticking him in Epic gear and working my ass off (aka getting my ass ganked) getting some nice pvp gear.
Our raid started at 20h30 and i had a major headache, but since i was looking forward to this, wanted to try out the new gear i had and didnt want to let others down i took an hour nap, hopefully to feel better by the time we got moving. My GF waked me up as invites had started and i dragged my throbbing head towards the screen. And there i was, in a unbalanced raid (4 warriors, 3 priests) with various people who didnt bother to enchant their gear or had crappy green gems. From the start we knew we couldnt get this bunch past Moroes which would be quite disappointing after last weeks result... but at least my head was happy with this.
The Huntsman went down pretty smooth but Moroes was a bigger problem as DPS was too low and the healers ran dry before we got the boss down several times. After 4 tries we decided to call it and it was time for me to revisit that bed of mine, a disappointing raid i must say.
"i couldnt agree more :-)" a fellow officer who was along replied.
A 3rd officer stepped in and tried to piss us off with "2 jerks then".... upon which i replied "just trying to make you feel at home m8 ;)" (old skool quotes ftw)
Hopefully we have better luck next week.. we did make a statement there i think when we told people they need to invest first before they can reap the rewards.
In meantime i've found a new goal for my warrior. While i first planned to get exalted with the Sha'tar to get the shiled i changed plans this morning... i was browsing the net again for Wow related news and found this this article where they confirmed what i expected longer: Season 1 Arena rewards will be buyable soon with regular honor and tokens. As it is on the PTR at the moment we can expect this in patch 2.3. Altho it may take quite a while before it goes live, at least we can start grinding already.
I made my wishlist already:
[Gladiator's Shield Wall] for 15000 honor and 20xEotS tokens.
[Slicer] for 9000 honor and 20xEotS tokens.
Besides that i was looking for some other gear to replace my current blues;
[the chestpiece], [the helm], [the shoulders] and [the leggings]. I have to take care i'm not gimping other usefull stats as Defense, Dodge, Block and Parry by doing so.. so it is likely i can only choose one of these items to replace my tank-blues.
Perhaps i should get myself a big phat brutal weapon to make pvp'ing less frustrating... or even better; a nice OH as my current tank-spec improves damage from one handers by 10%.
Sooo much to do, so little time.
Monday, October 15
The Adventures of Prot-man!
For my Alt warrior i had my eye on some pvp boots: [Veteran's Plate Greaves]. I was gonna use them as Tank boots but as my previous boots didnt have any stats like defense on it i would only gain when getting these.
Simply said i gained 375 armor and 16 stamina, aswell as gaining some crit (not a very usefull stat for a tank but it won't hurt me) and resilience.
Resilience is actually not a bad stat to have for a tank as it reduces the chance to get critical hit (both by spells as physical) and reduces the damage taken from crits, it also dampens the damage taken from dots.
While defense already reduces the chance to get crit by physical hits (490 for level 73 mobs), it doesnt do anything for spelldamage.
So why not forget about Defense at all and just get to the sweetspot stacking resilience? Well, defense does some other things aswell: it also increased the chance you will be missed or block, parry or dodge an attack.. in the end it's better to avoid some damage at all then just soaking non-crit damage.
My conclusion (as flawed as it may be as i am still a beginner tank) is to forget about resilience, anything i get by chance is nice to have but it has a very low priority. A tank will mostly use it for limiting spelldamage crits and damage from dots which is not the majority of the damage we take... regular spelldamage hits will still ignore our full armour anyway and won't be reduced by resilience, better get some more stamina to create a bigger buffer for my healingbuddies.
34 matches later i managed to get the 40 tokens and a lot of frustration... but then i could at least move on to Alterac Valley.
In it's current form AV aint that much fun but at least it's pretty fast and gives a reasonable amount of honor. More importantly i can really do some good in there for a change, often i end up tanking the various masters and in the end Drek, which actually puts a smile on my face as people will at least see me standing there making a change.
Saturdaynight 2 o'clock i got payed and i was off to Stormwind to get my reward after a looong day getting my ass kicked and giving the horde easy honor.... and all was well. :)
Real life raid
Yesterday we had a little meet-up with a bunch of Dutch Guildies (we are an international guild actually) at my place.
It actually was my GF's idea which invited them and most of them didnt had other arrangements and told us they would come.
So this Sunday my livingroom was filled with 9 people who didn't had much more in common then an online game... and boy did we have fun!
They met at our place at 13h and till late in the evening (last one left at 24h30) we did nothing else then eat (thanks to my GF testing out the new kitchen once again), drink and talk about thé game.
Stories about ingame assholes, the guild, raidtactics, noob things we did, wishlists, specs, jokes, frustrations.. we could easily make this a weekly session without getting bored with it anytime soon.
How much fun it is to talk about your addiction freely and tell stories and jokes which are understood by someone who's not on the other side of a screen... we had quite a laugh and i'm pretty sure the neighbours know aswell. (and no.. we were all sober!)
Nine people aint that much to miss but when we found out we had 6 of the regular healers amongst us (guess Dutch are more of the caring types?) we figured we probably killed that nights raid.
We were giggling like little girls when we thought of the plan to log in one by one on my PC and ask the Raidleader for an invite followed by a "relog, brb"... ow how happy the little Gnome would have been with us logging in only to be the more frustrated when we would never return.
To not piss of other guildies aswell we never followed through on this plan but the idea alone for good for yet another laugh.
A couple of the Dutch Guildies i had seen once or twice before on a previous get together but still we were relative strangers you would say, but it was a busy chatter with not a single akward silence... like we had a meet up with a bunch of old mates. Probably in some way these people have become just that: friends.... you've playing with them for a couple of months or even years and while you often don't know their real names you do know some of the ingame history of those people, like you were around when they grew up and became part of their legacy.
Friday, October 12
I'm running dry!
My warrior alt is a Herbalist so i try to pick most herbs myself but still have to pay 30g for a crappy Fel Lotus, what the hell is up with that? Can't Blizzard upgrade the droprate of these bastard veggies a bit?
So how much does a raidnight cost me?
Repairs: 30g
2 Hour Flask: 31g
Arrows: 8g
I'm not counting the time i need for picking the remaining pots or grinding for food here, just the plain costs per raidnight. Some nights i have more repairs, some less.. will likely average on simething like this. But thats 69gold a night!
You have any idea how many dailies i'd have to do to just keep raiding? 6 dailies don't seem like much but i have to do this every raidday just to be able to keep raiding... and i rly hate doing the same boring quest over and over again, screw that rep! >.>
Maybe i shouldn't have spend that AH alt's money on that purple helm i made for my warrior, but he has a craving for Epix aswell... so now i have to start the grinding game like all the other big spenders out there i guess. /roll
On a lighter note; i was AFK'ing all of the time during yesterdays raid so i stepped out on backup at the start as i was afraid that was gonna happen. (Still some chours in the house and with the weather getting colder outside it was about time we got some windowscreens and curtains in the livingroom ;-) ) Anyway the raid started on Hydross which they 1-shotted and same did happen to Lurker. By the time i got back to the keyboard they were heading to Morogrimm and it was still damn early so it wouldnt surprise me if he went down aswell.
Good to see the guild making good raidprogress again after the summerbreak hit us that hard.
Thursday, October 11
Attunement... done!
Yesterday i helped a reallife friend get his Karazhan attunement. He was out of the running for a while because the dating scene but now his GF moved in with him ánd has her own account, he's back for the raiding game!
So it's time for him to try to catch up and get geared asap for raiding as so far he only got the T4 shoulders which he actually managed to get at level 69 as we were a lock short for the High King. But now Kara is open to him aswell, hopefully he will get some luck getting some loot.
Luckily getting my m8 attuned wasnt that hard as i could bring my warrior which made getting groups alot easier. Also BM was never so easy, our mage was bored to death dealing with those adds as they went down as fast as kids on a busted pinãta.
My girlfriend was along on her Hunter alt aswell which was freshly Beastmaster specced just 10minutes before that, after i hooked her up with a shotrotation macro she did at least 3x more dps then before... not even taking her pet in account.
(had no damagemeters but threatmeters showed she was cleary trying to get mobs pissed instead of scratching their itch like on a previous run)
There are some rumours about this whole attunement thing by the way, it's been said that if one toon gets attuned for a certain instance... all his/her other toons get attuned aswell! Now that would save us alot of trouble, i'm sure people dreaded the idea of doing the whole Marshall Windsor thing for their alt aswell. (even did it on 3 of my toons and helped various guildies, the horror!)
Not sure if this would count for keys aswell but i assume it would, besides perhaps the Heroic keys.
While some people feel people should do those attunement quests on alts aswell to learn the class properly, does those chains actually try to teach you something you didnt learn while doing any random other quest or instance runs? I think not.
My alt will likely never see Mount Hyjal (which is the next needed attunement) but for the next expansion "Wrath of the Lich King" there will likely be Kara-like instances which require attunements and are good targets for an alt, implenting this "attune-all" method would surely be nice :)
Wednesday, October 10
Fill in the gaps
This was mostly sorted by setting our raids on set dates but still we didn’t know in advance if we would have enough >fill in class here<'s, making it pretty hard to determine our raidtarget of that night in advance.. not much use doing Magtheridon if you have just 3 "tanks" online for example.
So we started using Wow Raidar, it's still being heavily developed and could still use a few more functions (and will get those hopefully soon-ish) but it's a good step in the right direction. People can sign up (once registered to site and guild) and the Raidleader(s) can then draft the needed people. Order of signing up is displayed as well so you can actually endorse signing up fast.
On nights we have too many people we filter people who didn’t bother to sign up and showed anyway, as long as class balance permits it of course. ;)
Ow how i remember the days in my previous guild where 60 people would show for a 40man raid, being a Raidleader back then was quite a nightmare... the worst part of the whole evening. I would try to select the right people depending on the raidtarget (needed classes but also better geared people for harder targets), but also try to give new people a chance or those who i had to leave out before.
More then once i got heavy shit and being a RL of 39 others already put me in quite a tellhell so that was something you really couldn’t use.
One person decided to make a case out of it and filed a sort of complain to both me and the TC (Set of Officers who took care of problems), a couple of messages later back and forth i actually got an apology and deep respect from that person as he didnt notice until i explained to him just how much work a Raidleader had to do and how hard it was to pick the right people in a fair but balanced way.
And i respected he dared to admit he was wrong, or at least ill informed. ;)
This aint the only example i have on issues like this.. i've been accused of many unfair things as people didnt agree on who i picked while i always tried to do it in the best way possible. I just hope a tool like wow-raidar can limit problems like this a bit as it puts part of the responsability back on the raider.
Tuesday, October 9
Dodge THIS!
To my suprise we one shotted here, previous weeks the healers had problems keeping me up.. but i guess the gear of both Healers as my own has increased, besides that people are slowly learning the tricks of their new class i guess.
Most of us never raided with their alts, let alone with the new bag of tricks we got offered at 61+. I myself was lucky enough to have tanked a bit in both MC and BWL on alt runs pre-TBC and when an other guild needed some help.
Nothing shocking tho... some MC bosses (those who didnt require resistance gear) . The best i did was probably Vaelstraz in BWL (apart from trash) where i was 4th in line (but as most of thosepeople didnt use KTM i ended up 2nd most of the time, as an arms warrior at that time).
Needless to say i'm still learning, but we managed to get our alts up to Aran (which we did not kill yet as we only had time for 2 tries) so i got to tank Romelo&Julianne and Curator yesterday aswell as 2 Arcane guardians because i was the only tank.
One of the things i found out was that Crushing blows make a healer's job quite difficult. I had to keep shieldblock up so i would get alot higher avoidance rate which is basicly a combination of mob miss chance, dodge, parry and block chance.
When i was browsing the net for more information on that i found the macro below.
Get HolyShield or Shieldblock up and then use this macro, the percentage being mentioned should be above 102,8%.
/script DEFAULT_CHAT_FRAME:AddMessage("Need 102.4 combined avoidance. Currently at:",0.8,0.8,1)
/script DEFAULT_CHAT_FRAME:AddMessage(GetDodgeChance()+GetBlockChance()+GetParryChance()+5+
(GetCombatRating(CR_DEFENSE_SKILL)*150/355+20)*0.04,1,0.5,0)
Again i have gained some extra knowledge how to play my alt's class to the best potential... sometimes i have the idea i do more effort playing my alt correctly then most people do for their mains, quite sad when you think of it. (but am i the sad one or the "slacking" main? :p )
Still i have plenty to learn, i've read about threatrotations and even know how they work, it's just pretty hard to keep to those rotations in the midst of a fight where you have to check if other people got their mob under controll aswell... or maybe it's just me wanting to keep an eye on everything.
One thing that helps me while doing this in Intervene (small sidestep) which is basicly the Tanks charge which is only useable in defensive stance and even catches the next blow of the targeted mob (assuming he's targeting a friendly).
I made this brilliant macro which i bound to the F-key, depending on stance it uses Charge, Intervene or Intercept (even dismounts if needed) and it makes movement while tanking so much faster. Will share this with you later if you're interested.
Ok enough of this tanking mumbo jumbo... back to work now, chop chop!
Monday, October 8
Nonsense
Bah.. i'm taking another day off at blogging, it's not like this is a highly visited blog anyway. I tried to advertise it a bit, swapped some links with other bloggers (altho all but one never put their link up in the end and i don't want to be a winy little bitch so i'm probably just gonna take their link down in return) and added my blog to a couple of search engines.
For some reason visits have it's ups and downs but in the end its just a handfull... at least, if i trust my sitemeter. It could be just random hits from search engines and the people who arrive on this site don't actually bother to read this stuff. (and who can blame them?)
Anyways, i'm quite busy at the moment.. i have barely time to read up on wowinsider and my guild's website, let alone do some serious blogging. Altho, could it ever be called serious? Which reminds me, need to read up on tactics aswell. Managed to miss the guild's first on Morogrim (gratz guys, sorry i couldnt be there) and while i took a glance at most other boss tactics in there, i need to have it fresh in my memory before tomorrownight, preferably view a few films aswell.
Guess i'll do that before tonights Alt-Karazhan run, hope there is a spot for me as it is good fun tanking in there.. nice change from my usual Hunter tasks.
For someone who didn't have time i wrote quite a lot of nonsence again, how i amaze myself at times :)
But let's end this one with a small request; drop me a note if you managed to read up to this and let me know you actually read this junk... perhaps i'll do some more effort keeping my postcount up even when work is crowding me. ;)
Friday, October 5
Alting a waste of time
Some people can play his character endlessly... i myself love to play a different character now and then, often called my alts.
Even without new content im sure i could play WoW for quite a long trying all different kind of classes before getting bored with the game.
So at the moment i'm playing my warrior which i specced Protection to run our Alt Karazhan run and spending quite some time on gearing him up. Not just gathering materials to get myself some nice stuff crafted but also running instances (mostly pugs) and even doing some PvP. (which sucks major as a prot warrior i can tell you... but with just 33gold left respeccing is out of the question :( )
Maybe spending time and more importantly gold on a character which is not my main may seem like a waste i beg to differ, this game is about fun and if i have more fun on an alt.. why not spend some on it?
But i have an other problem aswell: Leveling!
My warrior alt is level 70 but my shammy alt is 36 (or something around that) which i liked to play alot aswell. A few weeks ago i read that Blizzard was planning to make leveling easier and since then i haven't dared to play my Shaman anymore... i'm in the dreaded STV level-zone at the moment and i would feel cheated if i could have limited my time there and i didnt wait for it.
So i'm not leveling any more alts in the 10-60 zone, which the change will effect.
In meantime i've read (think on wowinsider) that they expect to implent this in patch 2.3 so it won't be long anyway. Not just xp-bars will be shorter, also quests will grant more xp is the current plan i think
I already gave out the title "Worst PUG 2007" but perhaps we'll have a new titleholder soon.
Storm in a glass of water?
When we looked at our raidforce we had a pretty good group going, loads of skilled players (few a bit less but we can't be picky all the time im afraid) and most people are geared up nicely... but for some reason the new bosses didnt go down.
This was greatly our players faulth as we start late due to not enough people showing on time and leaving us too little time for some serious attempts on new bosses. Before we reach a boss its often 21h30-22h and often the raid stops at 24h because of too many people leaving, just enough for 2-4 attempts which is not enough to get a good feel of the event.
So in my last post i was thinking if it was just a motivation issue or something bigger was going on.
Just a day later, i was home later after a long day at work (and a very early morning aswell... getting up at 5h30 ugh..) and went to bed early, there was another raid to Serpentshrine Caverns.. my Girlfriend who was along aswell shouted to me from the other room "Hydross is down!".
Well i'll be damned, i go to bed early for a change and they get a guildfirst. And there i was wondering what was going on with motivation just the day before that. I must say i was quite relieved and hoped this wouldnt be a temporarely high.
Yesterday was the first day of a new week and we started out with SSC again, with the set targets Lurker and Hydross.
It started out pretty good, we actually had 30 people to choose from to fill our 25man raid where we usually had to start out with whatever we could. We had enough people for me to go AFK for a while (as i had an headache) but was requested to come back when they started on Hydross.
Shortly after that they managed to kill Lurker (2nd attempt as they had an add-tank die due to a healer paying no attention so they reset the event, aka forcefully wipe) and i was brought back in for Hydross.
The first attempt we lost some dps as an add that spawned killed a couple of people so we again had one of those painfull resets. (got to love Feign Dead :p ) The seconds attempt was our last one as Hydross went down smoothly with just 1 dead (someone who doesnt pay attention to threatmeters so didnt surprise me anyway).
We had even time to spare to do another boss which would be Magtheridon... oh my, we actually are seriously raiding again! :D
Guess we've had enough downs, time to live the good life again.
Monday, October 1
The ups and downs of a Guild
The current guild i'm in is quite stable.. we have highs but the downs are more semi-highs then lows as the mood is always pretty good and we have fun together wheter we kill a boss or have a wipenight.
These "downs" happen each summer it seems where people go on holiday and the remaining people try to struggle on and often won't get too far (due too raid unbalance or simply canceled raids)... which is understandable ofcourse.
For some reason this time the summer state of mind didnt leave some people, loads still come and go as they please and leaving their guildmates hanging which results in frustrated people who take a break and by that make things even worse. It's kind of a Domino effect.
We have good nights where we make some serious progress on bosses and 1-shot bosses on farm, but we have to cancel raids aswell or just wipe endlessly on the boss we killed on the first try the week before. Still we have fun on those wipe nights (its not just about epix) but there should be some achievement aswell as people aint paying for 20g repairs and 40g pots every day for this kind of fun.
I must admit i'm getting frustrated with this at times aswell... as i am just 1 councillor of a bigger group i can't make decissions on my own, majority have to agree with me. Yesterday i got so fed up with things i suggested we just take a weeks break of raiding and to tell people to get rid of that holiday spirit and pick up their pace, kind of a shock and awe effect i was hoping.
While one councillor feared some people might leave due to this i wasnt so scared of this, an other councillor said we would at least know where we would stand. Doing something like this would at least show we (the officers) are taking things seriously.
Another idea was to reevaluate ranks, we have Honored raiders which are our Raiders and Friendly which are our backup-players. (besides this we have Neutral which are casual, Revered for our Classleaders and Exalted our the Councillors.. funny side-step: Ex-ALT-ed are the councillors alts :) )
Anyways.. taking a look at people's ranks might be a good wakeup sign aswell, getting people to pick up their act to keep their rank or get a better one. This is what we are discussing now, shall we look at the next 3 weeks (and warn our members) or simply look at the previous 3 months (including the holiday) and base the ranks on that.. at least rewarding those people who díd show effort.
Being a councillor/officer is a crummy job.. did i mention that before?
Thursday, September 27
Grinding vs Luck
After that i still had a good drop every now and then, even more Epics. Think i've experienced 8 Epic BOE drops (before TBC), 3 of them while solo... the other 3 while with a m8 or my GF, which rolls i all lost... the other 2 we split the cash. I guess my luck rubs off a bit aswell ;)
I'm a crappy roller actually but on when it really mathers i seem to win.
As i am dutch im a tight bastard aswell so when equipping an alt i always invented "projects" to grind the needed items to get an Epic crafted.
Grinding still wasn't fun but i had set short term goals and something to reward me at the end.
At the moment i have just started on the first new project since TBC came out, an Epic helm for my tank;
[Helm of the Stalwart Defender]. (no worries.. helm graphics will go off)
So far this has been an unpleasent grind and i still can't get it 100% free as i will need to find someone to supply the Nether and more importantly; who can craft it aswell.
What is so unpleasent is running around Nagrand on my Druid alt which is still just level 64 and only has a regular mount.
Not only does it take me forever to run around that zone, i also get ganked quite abit by mobs... but that aint the worst.
I spot a vein on my map and try to get there as fast as possible, trying to avoid mobs as much as i can.. but often i'll have to clear at least 1 at the vein itsself and then it happens: a jerk comes flying down and without giving me a look takes the bloody vein!
When people dont even bother to answer a whisper ("Thanks loads m8") i'm sure they know they are doing something that is nót acceptable!
Damn that pisses me off beyond believe, i hope they apply at our guild sometime in the near future... i'll be sure to take their apply and mess with them good, how sweet my revenge will be! /chuckle
Maybe not that nice and not very likely to happen but it's the only thing that can give me some slight hope to teach them a lesson.
Ok.. i'm okay now, relax... breathe..
Wish i had a lucky drop again so i just could buy the needed adamantite, seems my luck has stayed behind in Azeroth >.>
Wednesday, September 26
Ow noes!
Busy at work so i haven't been able to blog much sofar... didn't even have much time to browse forums or read up on the new patch (2.2).
What i dó know is that The level 70 Ravagers are tameable now which might be a nice alternative to my Cat. The Scorpid is useless so that frees up a stableslot to try that one out, or i could go for a Raptor but i still have to check out Petopia on what skills they have.
I seem to remember they were "jack of all trades" so medium health, armor and dps so if that is (still) the fact he won't get a spot in my compfy stables sadly enough.
Maybe i should ask my GF to write some WoW stuff the next few days while i go boost Masterchief to level 70 ^^
Monday, September 24
Help, my GF is an wow addict
Probably the dream of every guy... to have a girlfriend/wife who plays World of Warcraft aswell. I must say i welcome this most of the time, certainly in the beginning of WoW where liked to spend each and every minute playing thát game.
But when looking back at it, we went kind of over the top.
You're playing WoW, running an instance or something else which "can't" be interupted... your GF is making dinner already and you fear you will be in trouble soon, either upsetting her or disappointing your party with some "my ass got powned by the wife" excuse.
Dark clouds seem to gather as the smell of a ready meal approuch you... but suddenly those clouds spread, a beam of light shines down from above and you hear an Angelic voice speak: "Do you want your dinner behind the PC?"
Pretty great huh? I consider myself blessed with this ofcourse ;) Who hasn't had his meal behind a PC before, but your GF suggesting it?
But the reason is not her unending love for me, it's her love for the game... she will surely join me on the PC beside me with her own plate, beating on mobs with the mouse in one hand and a fork in the other.
Ofcourse it's not the reason that matters.. it's the result ;)
It was me who canceled our Internet subscription a month early so i would be sure we would started packing before we got our new house, i'm quite sure we would have been raiding on the very last day before we got the new key. I admit.. it was a brief moment where my willpower was stronger the my need for a wow-fix, but that was enough. :)
The day we got internet in the new house was the first day we booted WoW again, even tho it was for a brief moment as we had many chours to be done.
We're pretty much settled now and picked up the game nicely, we're playing a bit less then we did before (altho not much) which is still enough to be called an addict. But at least i'm not the only WoW addict in my house... Kalli is the other :D
Friday, September 21
Ow it's On!
A raiding night once again... to kill time the Paladins and Hunters start lovingly insulting each other again. I die on a pull as i managed to misclick my misdirection button and get aggro myself and after i'm back from a reboot (sounds was messed up) a Paladin (the infamous Big gay Al as i will call him again) comes rez me.. or so it seems. He takes a seat on my head so i have no choice but whisper him some fresh insults.
We end our destination and the Pala-Hunter discussions continue: They call us smelly, we call them gay and compliment them once more on their dashing Pink shoulders.
Insults and mockery go back and forth till i say: "before this night is over my kitty will use you for a litterbin!" That might not have been a smart thing to say... "Ow, its On"
So we start on a boss-event: The Lurker Below in SSC. We've killed this guy before, one-shotted even but we have some new people today and are low on healers. At 60% or something some healers pay a bit too much attention to people's healthbars and get killed by a spout or something. I prepare for the kitty-litter action, dismiss my pet and find myself a good spot to Feign Dead. All of the sudden i see a shitload of mobs comming my way lead by a bubbled pala who starts dancing on my now fresh corpse.. the bastard!
Quite a challenge i've gotten myself into.. i do appreciatte his creativity tho. He manages to do this the next 2 wipes aswell (yeah we had a crappy night for some reason /blush) and tells me he has won the bet on which i replied: The night aint over yet!
We go to Magtheridon and we get some bad luck and a tank gets feared a looong way and pulls another pack and most of the raid meets it's end (the next pull we manage to pull a second pack again but deal with it without losing too many btw).. a few of us make a run for it and heavily dotted and low on health i reach the outside. I start eating food quickly and manage to stay alive for two more ticks but the next one was surely gonna kill me.. when all of the sudden i get a huge heal, i'm alive! It was a Paladin who healed me, not Big gay Al but still quite funny as he was gonna help me achieve my promiss.
I walk in and it takes me a minute before i remembered the oath i had taken, a quick /target Big Gay Al shows me that i'm the one who is still standing this time. I start searching among the corpses and time runs short as i see he already released and is running back.
But then i find him and park my kitty on top of him and take a screenshot, just seconds before the body turns into a Skelleton as he enters the instance.
[Exanimo]: I got such a niiiice screenshot ^^
[Big Gay Al] Fuuuuuuck! :(
Ofcourse i had to post this highlight on our Guildforum eventho he threatned to post a simular one.. but i've held my end of the bargain ;)
Wednesday, September 19
Todays n00b: The raidleader!
He's one of those people who wants to do éverything, instruct each and every person personally and explain tactics till our ears start bleeding.
While he is so busy he often misses a few kB of attention which results in a noobaction, which resulted in death to himself or often even for the complete raid.
Strangly he has this most of the time with Giant type creatures/mobs, so it's not like it's easy to miss them. This resulted in us blaming him to have a Giant fettish, him being a Gnome makes that a unlikely match at least. It began with a Golemag affair where he managed to pull it from top of the stone bridge in MC, (multiple times i believe) but he had multiple experiences with other Giants after that.. he even experimented with a Dragon (blinked into Vaelstraz) but that ended in a 1-time affair.
But it's a cheeky little gnome who likes to experiment it seems so just this week he went for a gangbang and pulled a whole pack in SSC while visually explaining tactics. (beasts in that pack aswell btw o.O)
Do we blame him? Sure we do.. but not in a bad way. He'll surely hear about it many many times but it's just for the tease.
Anyone who does that much does for the rest of the guild is afforded to fuck things up every now and then, however stupid it is.
The fact that he laughs at our (often over the top) jokes and insults makes it only more fun, the added selfmockery makes the show complete.. he knows it's all play and no harm is ever intended.
I must say he tends to find new creative ways to wipe us quite often and that alone is worth those repairs. (altho i do try to Feign Dead in a safe spot when possible ^.^ ) Doesn't every guild need a n00b? Even if it's your raidleader... (okay, okay i admit.. we have quite a few, some Guilds just have a bit more luck it seems :P )
Tuesday, September 18
Invest and thy will receive!
Monday is Alt Karazhan run nowadays which offers most people a welcome change from playing their usual toon and some it gives a second chance to get their main some loot from there.
I can imagen it's a real pain running with a bunch of alts as progress is alot slower and the chance on death quite a bit higher.
I spend some of my week running my warrior through some instances hoping for some good drops but i wasn't too lucky, i did get myself a nice new cloak crafted
[Cloak Of Eternity] and fitted myself with a few more enchants and gems. This combined with some more tanking experience (i was a bit rusty as i hadnt tanked much for quite a few months) resulted in very few deaths, also for my fellow tank who also worked had on his gear (and had a bit more luck getting drops).
Smoothly we cleared to the Huntsman, the Huntsman himself, the adds to Moroes and then Moroes himself. I don't remember dieing there once, think we did lose someone at Moroes which was soulstoned tho. Moroes was kind enough to drop a plate belt and since my tank "buddy" stepped out for a main to get some loot (which dropped for him the lucky git) i got myself
[Crimson Girdle of the Indomitable], quite an upgrade even without gems.
We were on a roll so we steamed on and shortly we were in front of Maiden, even pulling some double packs by mistake here and there which we downed flawlessly. It didnt take long as Maiden was down aswell, we lost a few people along the way but managed still.
Again some nice plate loot on which i passed for the re-entered tank as i already got some Epic loving that evening.
It was still early and we went on to the Opera, we got one of the more simple events: The Big Bad Wolf, but for some reason we managed to wipe twice on him. The tank didnt manage to get enough aggro on him while chasing him, chasing Red Riding Hood and DPS kept on going strong... so Wolfie ate a few people before the tank got him again. Same problem second try so we decided to step a bit back on dps to get more control which seemed to work, aswell that people got better in the running bit. I myself focus on threat instead of debuffing + some damage so i would be 2nd on the aggro list in case the tank died, which he did as he got himself a nice little red cloak.
Things were under control that time even after that and we downed him dropping a nice healer trinket. :)
Because of some people investing in their gear things went alot smoother this run, even had some time to spare (not enough to reach Curator tho). So it shows that a little bit of effort (or in my case spending quite a bit of cash on gear, gems and enchants) can pay off.
I'm happy spending more money on my new belt's gems and looking forward to next weeks alt-Kara run.
Monday, September 17
A RL/WoW mate
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When i started World of Warcraft i wasn't alone, one of my best Reallife friends (a true gamer aswell) started with it the same time as i did.
Ofcourse my Girlfriend started WoW aswell (2 days later as i bougth her a WoW copy... the sollution to all possible problems i could have had playing too much games ;) ) but this friend was there from the very start.
We leveled together (i was often 4-5 levels ahead so i did most quests twice) and probably did 98% of the instances together.. even the raid instances with our Guild(s).
When i left my guild we grew up in he quit it at the same time and we joined the same new guild, my girlfriend was in the same guild aswell but she stayed in the previous guild for a couple of weeks longer as she knew so many people there (in RL aswell as it was a total Dutch guild which has RL meetings). She joined us later as it was a bit difficult that she had different raidnights as i had.
Doing an instance was often easy for us as we already had 3people to a 5man; a Tank, a Lock and a Hunter in case you want to know.
But then this mate got a GF which did not play WoW (Oh the horror!) and he went completely out of sight. Not just in WoW but also in RL. (talking about cold turkey..) But recently he got some free time all of the sudden and he gets time from his GF to do his own things aswell, often because she's doing stuff of her own at that time but let's not get picky right?
So we had some gaming sessions again (on 360) and last week he suggested to play some WoW together again... it seemed he had re-enabled his WoW account aswell. He managed to get to level 64 before he logged out for the last time and we planned to pick that up again on a Sunday. He brought his PC over (which he used to do at an average two full weekends a month before he got into the mating thing) and i ran him through a bunch of instances using my Warrior if we needed a tank or my Moonkin (level 63, dinged 64 that day) when we needed a healer. (a crappy one i might add)
Zeven hours later our time was up and it was over within a blink of the eye it seemed in which we managed to do 4 instanceruns. Not thát much xp or loot but i didnt push him through a 7 hours xp-grind just yet fearing he might be bored with WoW too fast again.
Eventho i did not gain much that day when looking at virtual gain, (some xp + some loot for my inactive druid and repairs for my warrior) i did gain a serious dose of RL reputation and had fun while doing it.
It's nice to have a m8 who shares your passion for a certain game doesnt it? Sure hope he can clear up some evenings again and can play the game he loved so much before, maybe even join us on a raid once in a while... time will tell.
Friday, September 14
/Target talent points /Cast Blender
So for the first time in my warriors carreer i went full Protection, always had some points in Prot but never all the way down.
All of the sudden i lost some usefull skills, a shitload of dps but i gained some health, stamina and a couple of new nifty skills.
I am one of those people who reads up on different classes aswell, quite helpfull when i need(ed) to lead raids... so i read about most skills and i know how they can be used. Still, which skill gives the most aggro? When i was armes and i tanked i used Sunder and Revenge and when i had rage to spare Heroic Strike, while sunder only stacks to 5 times it still gives its threat when maxed so i'd spam that if Revenge wasnt up as it has a better Threat/rage ratio then Heroic Strike.
Now i had Shield Slam and Devastate all of the sudden aswell and i had no idea how a good threat rotation would be, sure i read about it and played with threat rotation but i didn't have these skills before.. and i have the memory of a drunk hamster.
How did i tank then? Sunder the mob 5 times (revenge when up) and then start tapping Devastate. When i had enough rage i'd use Heroic Strike aswell. I had no good idea where to use Shieldslam and it seems its a superior threat builder compared to Devastate.. at least i know now and looking forward to try again next Alt-run/5-man.
Despite of me not fully using my rage to it's fullest potential i still feel i did pretty good, i was able to stay ahead of most people most of the time (had a Epic geared lock along who could be a bit of a pain at times but at least the DPS-happy Hunter found the threatmeter on his screen as he proudly told me afterwards).
I guess the 300g on gems i spend just before we started helped keeping me alive aswell... good thing this alt farms me herbs in return so my Main can pot up cheaper.
This weekend i'll have to take that dreaded blender once again i suppose if i want to achieve anything in the Arena. :S
Changing guilds
I'm defo not planning to as i have a great guild but i thought it would be an interesting subject. I myself am a very loyal guy i suppose, i started in the open beta and have only been a member of two guilds in my whole (mains) carreer.
Every time i start an alt tho i stay unguilded for awhile, sooner or later the quietness drives me mad and then i ask for an invite from a random noob spamming in General. Most of the time these are Guilds run by a 14year old, proud of the 3 level 70-players they have in the guild.
In guilds like this there are often a few good players hiding on their alt with which you can run an instance later on.
Often i find myself quiting in 2-3 days and going on solo again, sometimes because of the silence, other times because of an overdose of n00bness or players with too much testosterone.
After a while, mostly somewhere between level 20-30, i join my own guild again.. which helps me appreciate them more once again.
I ran into a beginning player into Westfall once which had no idea how everything worked in Wow and i had fun helping him out a bit as he almost talked to me in a roleplaying way. He was trying to sell some gear using /say, adressing me politely (and with no clue about /w) explaining how good the gear was he had crafted. I went along with it and bought some white items of him just for fun (vendored for the same price as he sold them :P) and made him some green items which he insisted to pay for, so i sold them for half the vendor price.
He wasnt in a guild i joined so i'm going a bit offtopic here but hey, it's my blog aint it? ;)
Back to the changing guilds topic then.. surely everyone thinks about how it would be in a different guild sometimes? When things go a bit bad, you want to change your own playstyle/time, want to be with (ingame) friends, plenty of reasons i'd say.
What makes me wonder is my curiosity i suppose. I just changed guilds once on my Main and i don't see a second time coming any time soon. Sure i've been thinking "what if i joined a Hardcore raidguild", i could see the new content much faster then i do now... but at what price? No flexibility, people who get recruited because of skill not because of personality (that seems a great way to meet some jerks), a strict hand on my raidtime, nothing to say about how things go. Well i'm happy where we are, above average raidprogress.. sometimes a bit slower (Holidays seem to slow us each year again) but even wipe-nights are fun, i'm sure not many guilds have that. :)
Do i dare asking a question yet? Ah let's go crazy... what makes you consider/dream about changing guilds?
Thursday, September 13
Buff my pet please!
Being a Beastmaster Hunter my pet is even more important then for a Survival or Marksman Hunter, i'm sure most people heared that discussion before. The first Hunter in the guild that went BM (i believe he tried it for a bit pre-TBC even) was always asking people to buff which was a quite new happening for most people. Since pets have been buffed by Blizz they are alot more valuable, even for non-BM Hunters. Still Hunters often need to ask for petbuffs and we get often mocked for it.
Now in my guild we are at that point that we still need to ask now and then (altho Fortitude and MotW is often done nicely) and the mockery is
more to pester us.
It's not that i ask for buffs all of the time, often my pet just runs around with just a Fortitude (if it's lucky) only to get buffed to the max at boss events. (again my buff-bot buddies need some guideance at that time often ;) )
This week in Serpentshrine Caverns my pet was missing some buffs again so i asked for them. Teamspeak was used to mock us again (or more a poor attempt at) and after the paladins had their little fun they went serious and asked which buff my pet would like to receive.
"Hmmm... how about that Devine Intervention buff?" "That aint a buff!!!""Well, i'll beg to differ ;)".
Ok that shut them up for now :P
A few trashmobs further my pet managed to die as i sicked him on a Murloc who was looking for some affection from a Resto Druid.
No mockery this time... at least my silly little comment prooved to have effect, or did it?
It took me a second before i noticed i couldnt move (as we NE hunters obviously need to keep jumping around the raid, thats in our guidebook) and saw something shiny around my character, LOL... i''ve been DI'd :P
Good to see the paladins had enough balls to follow through, i suppose that makes them truely a good buff-bot when they think the customer is always right.. even when the customer is wrong.
Too bad DI doesnt cost them durability, would have been even sweeter. ^.^
Wednesday, September 12
My on-line me
But are you realy a different person online? Jerks in real life are often jerks ingame aswell and people who have a leading function in the game often do this in real life aswell. So while we try to be someone else online, i myself see alot of myself in my online alterego. No i'm not talking those pointy ears or that blue ponytail (can't wait till they implent changeable hairstyles) but personality.
I consider myself a good guy, not much people can't deal with me i think... i did met with a few explosive/incompatible personalities and i let them know i didn't like them quite clearly so thats the only exception.
Otherwise i work hard to build and preserve my good name. I sometimes wonder if i could just be a big asshole and out all my daily frustrations on random people.. as soon as i quit wow there won't be a single soul that knows who i am or where i live.
From another point of view; some people are a lot more outcoming when they can hide behind a virtual character. Someone who is a bit shy can be a real chatter-head all of the sudden... until he's forced to use teamspeak perhaps ;)
I guess a game like Wow can actually help grow people, never expected this post would get an educational twist all of the sudden...
Might be a nice question to ask yourself to end this post with: Is your Azerothian Hero anything like you?
Ow btw... that picture aint me, i'm more like a Dicaprio/Clooney looking guy. Honest!
Tuesday, September 11
Your Ultimate WoW goal - part 1
As a young little Nightelf i couldnt dare dreaming of ever owning an Epic, let alone thé ultimate bow! Ofcourse i knew that i needed to do Molten Core to make a slim chance on starting the quest, something else i never dreamed to believe.
A loooong time later i actually stepped foot in the Molten Core with my casual guild and it took us quite a while but we finally reached Major Domo. I made it up to Raidleader in the meantime and using my tactic we managed to kill the dude ánd the quest item for the Epic Hunter quest dropped.... i used about all my DKP (we use a bidding system) which didnt bother me much as i had my full T2 set together anyway.
I was so enthousiastic and determined that i completed this quest within the following weekend.
The quest wanted you to kill 4 Elite demons without help of anyone, not even your pet... which was unlike anything i had done so far and perhaps still. When you failed you wouldnt be able to spawn the demon again for 4 hours and there would be just one (for 30mins) so if an other Hunter spawned him before you, tough luck!
Lucky for me most demons were there when i wanted to try them, i tried 4 of them unpotted to test the water and killed one on the first spawn.
The other three were done a bit later that weekend.
This was my personal Ultimate Goal in WoW and while i've killed the demons a couple of times more for some Hunterfriends who tried and tried but failed, it was never a challenge like it was back then. Still great fun and it was quite back-patting one shotting those Demons after a friend/guildy did 2-4 attempts just before that and were close to dispair.
Another question is if i should have helped others with this and while i have my own doubts, thats a subject for a different post. ;)
Anyway, i haven't had a personal high like that in WoW anymore and i can only pray the game will offer me a fresh goal soon.
Monday, September 10
Camera.. action!
One of my previous post was actually inspired by this post.. i just didnt write it yet ;) And this post is inspired by something i read on wowinsider.com, a post about machinima. I was looking around which special programs Myndflame used for example and all i found was some reference to a program that wasnt available anymore. This wowinsider post showed me most machinima creators didnt use anything really special afterall. Yeah i made a clip once (mocking a Raidleader who has a thing with looting killed Boss's near their back-end, i guess when you are a gnome you are easily focused on asses) but i was wondering what more options were around.
Wowmodelviewer is often uses in the bit more advanced machinima (blue screen stuff etc) and when going beyond that people import their own 3D models aswell.
Hopefully i'll get my new PC in a week or 2, i was so sick of my PC crashing i decided to order one, and i might give filming a shot once again.
Maybe a themed film or something would be fun to do.. or making a clip for a song, something basic like that.
It would also allow me to finally get Wowmodelviewer to work and make a decent titlebar for this blog ;)
For your entertainment i've stolen one of Sparky's films again which was about Utopía. (That guild turned in Elysium when TBC started bringing along 95% of the previous members.) Hopefully i'll get my PC soon so i can make me one of my own, altho... Halo 3 for the Xbox360 will be out soon aswell ;)
Weekend's report
A fairly slow weekend for a Wow addict i guess, Fridaynight we started out clearing out a few leftovers in Karazhan as we messed up RaidID's so the second Kara group didnt have a swing at a fresh instance anyway. Ah well, we've been running Kara for quite a while already anyway and some have had it with that instance anyway.
Well it wasn't thát bad, we managed to win 4 out of 6 but some matches were over before i could blink twice. And the sad thing is i think it could be mostly blamed on me... after a few tries i got into my warrior a bit more so things went better but i found out my burst damage just wasnt enough to kill people fast enough, with a decent healer against us we were pretty much screwed even with Mortal Strike on it.
A good thing was we did the arena's during daytime as i feel the more mature arena groups will be playing late at night.
This way we met up with some pretty bad groups/players or maybe we just weren't as bad as we thought we were. :P
Later i did some more instance runs with my Warrior alt (can i really call it an alt just because i don't raid with it? playtimes might be almost the same as my main) which resulted in some rep-gain.
Unexpectedly the Guildbank offered me a LW pattern which dropped in SSC earlier... it was pattern which created a BoP item which was some sort of upgrade to me and for just 20DKP it seemed like it would be worth the trouble. The "trouble" in this story were the 10 Primal Air's, the 2 Primal Nethers in it and the special scales + leather i still had on stock.
This kind of made me wish i didnt use those 4 Airs i had for a Cobrascale armorkit for on my warriors pants earlier that day.
Good thing i found me a good grindspot and about 2,5 hours later i had 70 motes of Air. Tired of grinding i bought the last 3 Primal Airs on the AH so now i'm the proud owner of [Boots of the Crimson Hawk].
Just need to compensate for some hit loss with a hit-gem in some other item and i'll be okay.
My Theorycraft addon showed the improvement on damage already and i still need to enchant them with +12 agi, but this addon doesn't take hit-loss in account as long as i'm not targeting a level 72+ so i'd better not consider myself richer just yet.
Friday, September 7
Our guild has a Raidleader, more then one actually but when this guy is online (95% of the time) hé is thé Raidleader. I'm not sure if he would like a break and wishes one of the other Raidleaders would take over but he never complains. I try to support him the best i can; setting MT windows if i know how he wants them, reminding him of things that need to be explained, warn him if someone doesnt seem to know what he's doing so he can explain it once more, etc. Loads of those things are things i or any of the other raidleaders could do as well i suppose but nothing as confusing as several people giving directions at once.
Still.. unexpected things will happen and it depends on your group how well it is being coped with. The raidleader tries to prepare us on all possible events but sometimes the unexpected happens... it may be a bug, it may be dumb luck, it may be a DC, you name it.
A good group can adapt, we shouldnt be like sheep waiting for the Raidleader to shout the new instructions. (roll over, play dead, sit... hey, stop playing dead! ow.. ffs) For example a few days back we did Karazhan and we got the Wizard of Oz in the Opera, a DPS warrior was gonna kite Tinman but he didn’t do that before so tripped over his own dwarven beard and got killed. Since kiting is part of the Hunterbasics i took over right away.. not waiting for Raidleader instructions, if they had a better idea then that i could adapt once more but for that moment we needed a fast solution. (easiest thing i ever kited ánd in such a small space btw) The Crow went down shortly after that.
Another example: Yesterday we did the Lurker Below in SSC. When the Lurker dove down during an earlier attempt, the tanks needed to pick up their adds but right at the moment they became aggro'able some Heals over Time from a Druid ticked and one add ran off. The weird thing was there was actually a taunt on the mob (couldn’t check myself as i was misdirecting another mob onto that tank) but for some reason that didn’t work as it should.
The Raidleader shouted some instructions on Teamspeak to several people which were misunderstood and adaption went poorly, resulting in a few people lost. Was it a bug, did the tank not do his task correctly and/or wrongly interperted the RL's instructions or was it simply bad luck?
We try to think of the most unexpected and prepare for that.. this situation is of course added to the list of expected unexpected "things", coming soon to a raid explanation near you! ;)
Thursday, September 6
Hate-love relationships
It wasn't just me, three of our Hunters (had 6 at that time) even had this guy on ignore when not raiding with him. This guy was probably just having fun with us, not noticing that he went a bit too far with it.
But with some people you have more then just a Hate-relation, there is some "love" involved aswell.
We have quite a few people in our guild with a twisted sense of humour and quite a couple of those have a sharp tongue which results in quite amusing chats in Guild-, Raid- or Partychat... often going on till someone bows down to the others over the top remark, mostly ended by the "loser" by ROFL instead of another witty reply.
We have several returning themes (sex and twisted games for example, 'pegging' is used on a daily basis) and people who are often the target of the assault but don't seem to mind the abuse and have a great lauch about it.. after all, it goes that far over the top that is sooo clear its not true. Even the most simple action/question often results in a twisted wordgame.
As an example i'll take a conversation i had with someone i'll call Big Gay Al to hide his real name. :P
[Me]: Would you mind making me a few gems plz?
[Big Gay Al]: What a stupid question is that, you know bloody well i do mind!
[Me]: But you make them anyway right? :P
[Big Gay Al]: Only if you hug my Squirrel (he ment his Mechanical Squirrel pet btw.. at least i assume)
Exanimo steps on Mechanical Squirrel. Clank!
[Me]: How's that?
So i trade the gems and he accepts.
Big Gay Al takes the Enduring Talasite and chucks them up Exanimo's ass.
Anyway.. he makes the Gems and trades them, not pressing accept yet.
[Big Gay Al]: Say please.
Exanimo gives Mechanical Squirrel oral pleasure.
[Big Gay Al]: Good boy.
It's an interaction which could take 20 seconds but things like this stretch it to several minutes.
Personaly for me these nonsence discussions add something to online play, i guess you either Love that.. or Hate it
Unbalanced Party
Everyone has been in an unbalanced party before, a party where you ran with too many healers.. a pettank instead of a "real" tank, three Hunters.. various other options are possible. But thats not what i wanted to discuss at this moment. ;)
Pre Burning Crusade my guild was raiding MC, BWL and AQ40. MC was mostly an alt run with a couple of mains still hoping for that one (legendary?) drop. Every had done Stratholme for the bazillionth time on non-raid nights and we were pretty much outfitting in Epics, making those instances kind of trivial.
So our Huntercommunity came up with a interesting idea: How about doing an instance with all Hunters? People might have done it before, more likely on lower level in lower instances but i hadnt heard about it before and i was thrilled about the idea.
Playing with only Hunters would create some interesting situations, more interesting then when playing with just Druids who could fill every role by themselves. (even make it a stealthrun).
No we Hunters would have to do without a tank and healers. We discussed some tactics pre-run like which pet would be the best tank, demoting its master to the tank healer. As we planned to do a Tribute run in Diremaul North, which was one of the harder 5-man instances back then, we thought about how setting the Icetrap for the 3nd boss, how to kill the endboss and that sort of things.
The planned evening arrived and 5 Hunters (4 mains and 1 alt) set their way to Diremaul North... Sparky, Babyhunter, Tasic, Gakochun's Hunter alt and myself; Exanimo. It was fun i can tell you and after we succesfully done it other classes speculated on how they could pull of a run like this. Druids came even close to actually leaving on this trip determined to beat our time (which they surely would have) but for some reason never got the 5man together. (i was even planning to come along on my Druid alt :) )
Sparky made a nice video with some highlights in it which is shown below for your enjoyment.
Seeing this video back again it makes me wanna do another run like this but this time in one of the Outland instances. Hunter pets have been greatly buffed since those days so it may be a walk in the park.. 5 traps will help alot aswell. ;)
While its no longer the days of 40man raids and each class is less presented in most guilds, with some alts or class-mates from other Guilds it is probably still possible to arrange. I'm getting exited again al ready :P
Monday, September 3
Twinky
I liked to call my Twink, semi-twinked as i didnt have Crusader on my weapons (had a Rogue which seemed one of the best twink options) or any other absurd enchants either. I did buy some nice blues and leveled him with Engineering so i could have some handy dandy stunning grenades and other stuff like that [Net Throwing Thingie] which helped alot when trying to stop the flag, even when it backfired alot. (Gnome Engineering at its finest!)
So i was happily grinding reputation Pre-TBC so i could buy some sweet gear once i got some higher rep. The bitch was i couldnt turn in those damn tokens as i was afraid to level and i wanted to stick at level 29.
Being hacked kinda spoiled this all as my Semi-twink got stripped up until his underwear. :(
After a while (when i got my other toons back in shape and could afford gearing my not-close-to-semi-twink up again i decided to go for it.
I lost some items i couldnt replace (Questrewards like the Triprunners from Gnomeregan) and to make up for that i slapped a Cobra Scale Armorpatch on my new patch... and while i was add it, put a libram on that headpiece. Ow and i have an orb left... let's do a Crusader :)
I didnt go all out and there are still some items missing from my wishlist but i do okay now i guess. There were still more twinked people out there (it seemed i was often one of the few twinked ones on my side while the Horde had a small army of twinks)
but at least i could give them a good fight for their money.
With the new system i was gathering Honor and Tokens (which had use for a change) and i was able to get some nice gear. I just needed to go to the Silverwing Sentinels near Auberdine but to my surprise i didnt have that flightpatch yet.
So i started on the journey and avoided killing mobs so i wouldnt get any XP, still i got some small ammounts of discovery XP and when i was finaly there i got one final dose of XP and...
DING! 30 :((No longer was i the highest in my league as Battlegrounds are from 20-29 en 30-39. That small ammount of XP made lots of my gear instantly worthless.. well, sub-par anyway compared to level 39 twinks.
I began the grind to level 39 and i think i got stuck around 37 now... not really stuck actually as i got past the most horrible bit of Stranglethorn Vale (30-35 imho) but lost interest in my Rogue for awhile anyway. I could level it easily to 40 now and do some serious leveling but do i really need another level 70 character?
Raaaah!!
So you try to patch it with some tape so it holds for a little while but you know you will have to find a proper sollution sooner or later anyway.
Besides that, that tape doesnt really give the right effect and while it allows you to play it doesnt quite fully do the job.
I had that last two weeks where i couldnt get near to Shattrah so i just avoided that place making me dependend on summons to the various places. In the meantime i looked for a better sollution from running Spybusters, Memory scans, replacing my Graphix Card to Defragmentating my drive. As a last resort i reinstalled Windows which was quite a pain with 1 bazillion updates.
That didnt work either so the rly rly last resort was reinstalling WoW which was even a bigger pain and took me most of my free Sunday, luckily i could still play WoW as i was installing it to a different drive. Finally i was able to enter Shattrah again and i was joining that nights raid with full confidence again and with much hope of not crashing. Due to 1gig of memory still on my desk instead of the PC it was bit laggish but my PC held out. :)
All and all this addict had a good WoW day last Sunday, i played my Warrior alt and did several runs which got me some nice reputation from various factions. Even got me a nice DPS chest which will be better then my current once gemmed.Normally i need to tank as a DPS warrior but this day i actually had 1 run where i could do damage for a change. I was surprised my dps gear missed a few enchants and even gems so there is still room for improvement but i managed to get 2nd on the meters behind a mage and just above an Enhancement Shammy (he healed now and then but i tanked so that about evens out i guess).
Most importantly i had fun, even in the Caverns of time where we escorted Thrall and every dps managed to get aggro from different mobs.. i'm still surprised no one died (maybe the gnome mage once but he had one comming ;) ).
Ow and did i mention i got my Warrior keyed to Karazhan aswell? My main still needs some stuff in there due to a 2 month break but when saved it might be fun to test my skills in there with my warrior.
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