Tankafishadin

2009-05-05T07:39:00.001-07:00

Woohoo! Child's Play auction: http://www.brigwyn.com/childrens-week-childs-play-charity-auction/
Lotsa good stuff, and I'm very happy to see bids on all. Yay!

Children's week continues in WoW, and last night I was down to the PvP achievement for the event. (cue ominous music here...)

I'm not big on PvP. My adrenaline hits when someone attacks me, and I just get a bit scattered at times. I don't have my HUD setup for anything but tanking, so it's a bit of a challenge to switch gears. But, I have to say, I was pleasantly surprised at my sick survivability in the BGs last night.

First, I hit my least favorite - WSG. Usually when I go in there, it's a mess and the Allies win. Meh. But yesterday it was the daily, so I figured I'd see if the good players had moved into that one. And oh yeah, had they ever! I've never won two games in a row, much less two perfects in a row. Got my flag return and some nice honor. Now I'm kicking myself that I didn't stay and get enough WSG marks for another pvp mount...

AB next - my standby. AB is a good game: nice map, achievable results, lotsa action. Had a few close games, but I was getting more and more amused that I was only rarely dying. I'd noticed it in WSG, but it was doubly so in AB. Due to a combination of healers (thank you thank you healers in BGS, you unappreciated folks) and just toughness and HP, I only died a few times. Nice - I like the lesser repair bill. And I got my flag for Children's week with my orphan watching.

Then I went over to EOTS. Now, during BC, I liked EOTS. It was fun, the bases were actively defended, and folks got it. Yeah, not so much for me last night. No, everyone cannot carry the flag. No, we really do need to get bases. No, you can't just fight in the middle of the BG for no apparent reason. I got frustrated enough to quit in the middle of a game and give up. I'll try again tonight or tomorrow.

Didn't feel like hitting AV last night. Went and leveled my lowbie hunter instead. But all in all, I didn't think two of the 4 needed achievements wasn't bad for one night. Here's to hoping the daily tonight isn't one I have already. And yay for all the non-asshat pvpers on last night, there were a lot of folks. Almost made me consider getting yet another gear set together for pvp. Hehe, WTB closet for all my armor :-)

Children's Week

2009-05-04T08:54:00.000-07:00

Wrapped up my gardening just in time to start the romp about for Children's week. Nothing like putting your raiding and gearing on hold to show a tyke around.

I really enjoyed this event last year, it was sweet. And yay for more pets. Now that the achievement system is in place, I'm compulsive about finishing the achievements for each as well. And the carrot at the end of the year for all (yay drake) ain't bad either...

We rolled through reg UP last night with an overgeared, overbeered romping good group. It was like butter, cutting through without breaking a sweat. Which was good, as the beer was also contributing. Got a marginal upgrade to my bracers, and spent more gold re-enchanting the new bits. Now my dodge is up over 21% - nice! And the Stam enchant kicked my hp over 27.5. Again, nice!

I think this week I want to try Occulus. Haven't yet, as the instance is apparently different than the average dungeon crawl tank and spank. I'll read up on it, should be fun.

Child's Play Auction

2009-05-04T08:53:00.001-07:00

http://www.brigwyn.com/childrens-week-childs-play-charity-auction/

Woohoo! Go bid on goodies - there's some awesome stuff over at the Child's Play Children's week auction. Really awesome cause, really nice folks.

Hmm...

2009-04-30T12:57:00.000-07:00

Ok, so I jumped into a 25 man VOA last night, knowing that it's been revamped and while I have read the Emalon fight, I don't know it. I was ok with my gear, especially with there being 3 tanks for some reason. But I was concerned when I noticed it was a hard core raider group.

Nothing against hard core raiders, but I'm not. Nor will I be unless I get laid off with a lot of savings. I have too much going on to commit to constant and regular 5-8 hour blocks of raiding time. I'm not the most amazing tank out there, but I do the best I can and try to learn what I can. That being said, this particular raid was not the best experience, and I've been trying to piece together why I had such an awful time in less than 5 minutes of actual time in raid.

First, I was tired, not even sure I wanted to go on the raid, and worried I wouldn't do well. Not a good combo. It was pretty clear most of these folks raided together all the time, so that didn't help. RL specifically said no vent, so there goes a great form of communication. But since I was one of two OTs, I knew my job was adds for the most part. Not sure why we needed 2 OTs, I could have just DPS'd, or I was more than happy being told "we have tanks". I hear it all the time lately.

Trash pulls went fine, we obviously had good DPS numbers. But Emalon didn't go well on the first attempt, and 1/3 of the raid wiped on the first chain lightening. Yay for spreading out, eh? I was in the wrong place, and I knew it, but I wasn't sure where to be. The other OT had the adds, the MT had the boss, I was waiting for an add to peel off? I dunno. All the strategies I know of use 2 tanks. I'm not going to taunt off the OT as long as he has it and is fine on health. Problem is that about the time the DPs get wiped by chain lightening, the RL starts yelling. And Yelling. I mean, just stupid yelling. Mostly at me. Sigh....

Frankly, at that point, I don't give a shit. Clearly the raid has the stats to do this, there's just some slacking all around, including me. It happens on raids when folks aren't focused. And they sooo weren't if I judged the text chat right. Likely it took a wipe to wake everyone up and stop facerolling. But I'm not fond of yelling, don't think it's necessary, and really am not interested in interacting with people who punctuate yelling with swear words. So I bailed. After calling him a dumbass. That part felt good, even though I'm sure it's a drop in the bucket for him.

I dunno, they finished and a guildie got some loot off of it, which is great. But at the end of the day, I was glad I jumped. I learned from it. My only concern was really perception for my guild for jumping out of a raid. New guild, new perception to build. I do want to raid, I work at getting better, I'm upgrading gear. But it's not my living breathing goal in life. Hopefully they get that.

Good things and more good things...

2009-04-29T14:33:00.000-07:00

My buddy Everdawn and I plunked down 2, count them, 2 60 day WoW cards for the Child's Play Charity Auction starting this week. Everdawn is a graphic artist when not playing WoW, and makes some damn fine t-shirts and promo goodies out in Vegas.

Now it's your turn - the auction starts May 1st, and there's a bunch of good goodies to bid on. Go support a great cause and get some great stuff in the process! Details here:
http://www.brigwyn.com/2009/04/its-almost-here-childrens-week-childs-play-charity-auction/

Inside the game, I've been pondering my gear as I fish for Fish Feast ingredients in WG. I love that I can step off the flight path and cozy up to a nice quiet fishing hole in the middle of a BG. But I digress... I need to finish the gear process in getting up to Naxx-able, and I've been struggling with block and avoidance stats now that my def is nicely capped with a bit to spare. And even with regular upgrades, it's been a slow process. Upgrades were huge for +def, but less immediate satisfaction for the avoidance stats. So I did what anyone would do, and went to find my favorite uber pally to pick his brain for a bit...

Sadly, he's Alliance :-P But Turall is a RL friend, and very helpful and clear about explaining stuff to me about stats and gear and other things Pally. And he plays more than I do, so I get the benefit of his knowledge and experience. And he has excellent taste in cars. We batted back and forth about stats, talents, glyphs, and rotations to build the most effective tanking machine.

Some excellent points:

Improved Judgements:
If you look at the main protadin rotation, all your abilities have 6 or 9 second cooldowns (Ok, Holy Shield is 8 seconds, close enough it fits into a 9 second slot), except for Judgement, which is 10 seconds.
By putting only one point into Imp. Judgement you get a perfect 9, 6, 9, 6 rotation. SoR and HotR are 6 secondConsecrate, Holy Shield and Judgement are 9 second. You can tailor the actual rotation to your preference. But with this method you get always have an ability ready after a Global Cooldown (the 1.5 second cooldown after using a skill)

I must admit, my rotations aren't as machine-like as they could be. I'm tempted to set up a macro to see if it improves. Then again, that kind of takes the human monkey fun out of the picture, now doesn't it? Maybe I should just get better, improve my HUD, and practice.

His glyphs:

Majors-Glyph of Seal of Vengeance: bumps up expertise, nice for keeping Vengeance stacks up (it's the only seal I use for tanking)
Glyph of Salvation: %20 damage reduction when Hand of Salvation is active. You can use this as your own emergency button if your threat is really high, or it is good for saving someone's ass.
Glyph of Divine Plea: duh.

I personally am not a fan of the Salvation Hand. I get the mechanic, but my mindset while tanking involves using my taunts, not dropping their threat. Probably a good consideration, but I don't think I've ever, ever pressed this button. Ever. I suppose I could while healing, but I have yet to do so while tanking. Interesting thought.

Time to go mess with some basic setup and gear stuff. I did add the Aldor shoulder enchant last night, getting my dodge up a smidge more. And I'll go change my weapon enchant to STR, which should help my block a smidge. And I'll probably respec, he gave me some good points that I want to see in action.

Charity - go do good things!

2009-04-23T15:57:00.001-07:00

http://www.brigwyn.com/2009/04/childrens-week-childs-play-charity-auction-update/

I highly recommend giving what you can, participating if you can, promoting if you can, etc. Gamers have hearts, too!

And its been a while...

2009-04-13T14:35:00.001-07:00

Sooo it's been a while since I posted. That pesky real life has been annoyingly inconsistent lately, so I took a break from my usual writings to go deal with it. And again. And again...

But I've made it almost to patch 3.1, and I find this: http://www.wowinsider.com/2009/04/12/the-light-and-how-to-swing-it-patch-3-1-and-you-part-ii/

Yes, that high pitched squeal is every prot paladin in the Wow-niverse having a game-asm. Yay for viable pvp on a prot spec, not to mention the hardened goodness of the pve changes. I can't express it better, but I do have a new shopping list of glyhs to attmept. Now I'm just wondering if I'll be getting talent points back to respend amongst the new goodies.

Had some drama with the former guild. Best I could figure out is that the GL got annoyed at being the land of alts, not having good attendance at raids, and generaly not being #1 in our hard core raider's books. Which isn't hard to believe when most of them were on during prime time, and the GL works nights. Makes for difficult raid scheduling. The things I got annoyed by was signing on to mass insecurity as alt after alt was being kicked by the GL/other officer and no one was explaining to the rank and file why there were toons flying out the doors. Especially folks who'd been there from the beginning and were well known and liked. Sadness and chaos all around. I ruminated on it for a week or so, talked to everyone involved, and eventually decided that I needed to be elsewhere if I couldn't stomach the leadership style. Sad to not be in guild with some of the folks I left behind, especially since I switched servers to play with them. But I can still harrass them from my handy dandy friends list instead.

Still struggling with gears, although now that the bf has hit 80 (yay for him!), I'll be towing him through a few heroics perweek. I'm ahead of him on the gear scale by far, but the more we hit, the faster he'll catch up. He got 2 upgrades in the first instance we hit.

And here's 80....

2009-01-05T15:12:00.000-08:00

So, I hit 80 over the weekend, despite my laptop video card crashing, the holidays, and general mayhem. 80 is good, nice to be on the upper part of the pile again.

Gettign to 80, sucked. I hate levelling, the grind, the questing, the ganking. PvP is fun. Ganking is not. Even with hitting 80, I was still harrassed in Sholazar Basin by random spellcasters who felt it necessary to annoy me while I was turning in quests over the weekend. I'll never be quite so glad about school breaks being over as I am now that I play WoW. I'd be standing in the middle of the Nessingway camp, minding my own business, and I'd get hit by random spells and dots. Nothing really taxing, I'd just heal up and keep turning crap in. But really? Does someone need a hobby or what?

Not that I mind PvP. But I do mind PvP based on stupidity. I'm not one to gank people based on opportunity. I don't like being attacked while I'm in PvE combat, and tend not to bother other folks who are just questing. Mind you, that's bitten me in the ass. I'll leave someone alone, just to have them attempt to jump me while I've moved on to the next critter. As a prot pally, luckily it still takes effort to grind me down to dead. I'm a big fan of making others work for it.

But really? Attacking me while I'm in camp, turning in quests, minding my own ball o beezwax? Can't be satisfying, other than the annoyance factor. I just healed up and moved on. Really the only inconvenience here was not being able to take the flyer back to Dalaran the first time I clicked on it. And I just did a tap dance around camp and took the next flyer out of Dodge. Didn't even bother to see wh owas snickering to themselves in the bushes, the annoying little gits.

It is interesting to see which areas are morphing into the new gankerton centrals of Northrend. Sholazar Basin, Howling Fjord, and parts of Dragonblight seems to be annoying. But as the primary rush of those levelling fast v. those who take a more liesurely route have changed the traffic patterns as time meanders on. And the holidays pushed all of our servers into the joyous queue of love, waiting to even be able to sign onto our beloved toons. We'll see how it pans out, and which area wins out as the Hellfire Penninsula and Stranglethorn Vale of Northrend.

Otherwise, I'm off to gear for tanking raids and heroics. I've got the def cap, now I just need more stamina.

Winter Veil and the joys of levelling

2008-12-15T08:57:00.000-08:00

So, I've been busy levelling, getting a new job, and generally attempting to convince my video card to work for the last few weeks. Thanks to my buying a Dell with a possibly faulty nVidia graphics card integrated into the motherboard (M1330 with a 8440M GS), the new content runs like a lame jogger, running through molassas and being chased by their biggest nightmare. *le sigh* (something like: run run run, trip, stumble, run run run, jumpy jumpy stumble, run run run, faceplant tumble drag drag garble stumble run faceplant, reboot try again)

But despite technical difficulties, I managed to get my main up to 77. Mainly by questing in Outland, as the BC areas are deserted and much gentler on my video card's crappy processes. While I like the new content, being regularly ganked by DKs 5 lvls lower than I am is frying my grits and making the game less than fun.

And thats another thing. Someone explain the logic behind a "Hero Class" to me. Because as far as I can tell, it's Blizz's way to get us all to play, Death Knights instead of those other pesky classes we've had all along, spent hours and boats of gold levelling, only to have our asses handed to us by a hybrid class who only has to rol their face across the keyboard to kill us. And just when you think you have them, they rez at full health into a ghoul and finish the job. Great. Thanks for the wonderful chance at staying alive there.

So basically IMHO, Death Knights just need a more effective healing spec, and all of us can abandon our regular toons for our new sparkly DKs, and the game can go on from here. We can dump our toons that we spent years in the making, mainly because "Hero classes" are a more effective way to play the game. Thanks, Blizz. Screw you too...

But I do like Winter Veil. I generally enjoy seasonals, as its a break from the daily grind and stupidity of questing in the new areas. And they generally give more experience for whatever quests there are and achievements you can only get during that time period. And thank god this time the achievements aren't completely based on the loot rolls, like the Hallows End crap was. All of you who achieved the "Hallowed" title, screw you for rolling better. I saw the mount drop briefly, same with the helm, but never even saw many of the items needed for the stupid title on my main (squashling dropped for my lvl 9 mage of course. WTF?) I can make gingerbread cookies since last year, and I can rescue the silly reindeer too. And my lower alts have a chance at doing it as well.

Have fun kids, I'm off to farm small eggs like everyone else.

And what I've been doing since Xpac..

2008-11-25T10:24:00.000-08:00

I know I haven't posted in a while. I've been busy playing every chance I get. I was involuntarily (...) laid off, so I suddenly had time to play the new content. It's pretty. Pretty pretty pretty. The new environments make me shiver with the snow and cold and make me crave hot cocoa :-) I love it, especially living in the desert.

I hate the traffic. There are so many folks in the new areas that completing quests gets comical. Shall I kill him next? Is it my turn yet? Ok ok, I'll wait for the group of 47 to be done.. Sheesh. I've gotten into a rhythm of questing in the late morning to early afternoons in the new area, then hitting Outlands and low level quests for rep all night. The lag is insane, and I've been averaging about 20fps. Sooooo frustrating. Still trying to figure out what's from addons (they work again, wheeee!) and what's from server lag.

But I'm up to 74, and I've replaced 2 pieces of epic gear already. Kinda hurts, but I'm about to the point where it makes sense. Plowed through Utegarde Keep like it was made for me to walk all over Vikings, err Vyrkul or whatever. The Nexus was a bit harder, but still got through without too much pain. Wiped a bit figuring the bosses, but yay for guildies!

And by the way, what happened to players? They all want it to be easy and effortless... I've seen more PUG members drop because we wipe once on a boss than I ever did in the lower levels. Lazy gits, suck it up and do your job. Funny how we usually do better with whoever joins the group next. It's a weirdness, and I think it's based in being overgeared for 5 mans for so long that you expect to walk through it like it is cake. Sad how complacency brews stupidity.

But overall, other than predictable things, I'm enjoying the expansion..

Tuesday maintenance day...

2008-11-25T09:59:00.000-08:00

Lets go with Q&A today, shall we?

Grace, you were wrong about the Stinker, lots of pets, thingy....

Yes, I am wrong. You need 50. I'm up to 28. This could take a while.

Why paladins? And prot at that?

I like melee combat. Even more so while wearing plate. And the hockey playing defenseman in me likes taking damage so others don't. Yes, it's kinda "masochistic - savior complex - isthatallyagot" but for anyone who knows me IRL, it's my personality. That being said, I'm also enjoying my hunter and rogue lately.

Why fishing?

Well, I started fishing heavily when stressed out. The guild I was in at the time would be shouting "level" at me, and I had plenty of RL stuff going on to make the frustration level in my life just hit the roof. It was nice to just sit back, chill at a fishing hole, and yank deviates out of the water. The gold I got for them made me feel like I accomplished something, however silly. And some of the funniest interactions I've had with Alliance happened while standing around fishing. The concept of people watching is come to life while fishing somewhere with high traffic, like The Barrens. I've beaten a rogue to death with a fishing pole when he ganked a lowbie right next to me (you did what? really? right here? Oh thats just not right...), I've called gankers off Allied fishermen when they were polite and /wave or /greet me or ask politely if they could fish in my pond. And the random quest runners, gleefully jumping swimming and romping about as I placidly sit there fishing does provide amusement. And once in a while I'd go stomp Alliance who were hitting The Crossroads, when I needed a bit of fun. It's a silly profession, but highly rewarding for the cooking, meditation, and gold rewards.

Why Horde?

Well, I ,for one, like the underdog. Being from Buffalo, NY (wide right! Wide right????! You have GOT to be wrong!), folks from there tend to feel the universe is stacked against them. I seem to go through life uphill, both ways sometimes, despite some really cool things I've accomplished. I'm self made, a female geek, and not fond of the "popular" trappings that tend to be media promoted. I could care less if I'm pretty, but you'd better tell me I am when I'm covered in sweat and mud and wearing armor for one of my many sports. I find enjoyment in being the unexpected. All that being said, if I'm gonna play a fantasy game, I don't want to be a human. Besides, the human women's hips are HUUUUGE. And Gnomes and Dwarves just aren't cute to me. Drenai and Night Elves are a bit better, but when I flipped to the Horde side, the avatars just felt like more fun. And I sincerely think that the default being Alliance has more to do with why more people playing Alliance when they first start than anything else. They really ought to make that boot screen random for character gen.
And all the sexy people I know play Horde. For the Horde! Baby....

And Tanking?

I tried healing first as a pally. And a priest. After the 47th time I got yelled at for "not healing fast enough" I was done with it. D.O.N.E. Heal yourself Sparky, I'd rather watch you die. Badly. Soo at the time the only other real viable option for a pally was tanking. Ret was a joke for DPS. And they still feel kinda Rodney Dangerfield (I got no respect), and I don't see that ending anytime soon. But tanking let me focus on controlling the aggro flow, taking damage, and just orchestrating the feel of the fight. Can't control all of it, but learning when to let the damage be passed around a bit and when to take it all onmyself was good stuff. I am grateful to the folks who helped me, taught me, yelled at me constructively, taught me about gear and generally helped me learn to be decent at it. My current guild got a decent tank when I transferred over, and I'm getting vastly better on every run. Tanks really do take a lot of gear management, button pushing strategy, and knowledge of what damage your group can take. A good tank can make a crappy group get through an instance. A bad tank, and no one is going anywhere. This is of course doubly influenced by your healers and the speed of your DPS folks and whether they pull aggro. But it starts on the tank..

Hmm, time to check if the servers are up :-)

Zul'Aman

2008-11-12T13:06:00.000-08:00

Did ZA with the guild one last time last night, once the servers came back up. The cities were insane, with the glitch giving away free or cheap PvP gear. I steered clear of Org, meandering around Stratholme a bit more instead.

I'm still attempting to get my addons working again, so I used the 4+ hours of unwanted downtime yesterday to scrub my system, send a farewell note to the CS rep who's been helping me from Blizz, and crawling the walls while waiting for realms to be brought back online. I know there are huge changes being made to the game, but it's still frustrating to not be able what you planned for the evening. I did get my billls paid, paperwork organized, and a few things cleeaned up. But I wasn't in the mood to be productive. I really just wanted to play.

I've somewhat given up on actively farming gold for the moment. With the instability of the realms, I'm not sure at any given moment whether I'm going to have to wait for my mail, auctions, etc. to be restored. So I'm just tooling around int he game, finishing up loose ends.

ZA was a good run. Once we got the cats, err, players herded into the instance, it went like lightening. We wiped a few times, but nothing dramatic. I need to gem up my +Stam a bit more on my gear, but I did get a nice tanking weapon (Heartless) as well as a new dps type one hander. Most of the folks had been on full clears before, so it flowed nicely. I do enjoy working with my guild folks. No attitude, clear instructions, good communication, maturity. Good times and good players are highly correlated. No mount drop, but I really cant complain on the drops I got. I likely would have passed on the mount anyhow, as I got 2 epic drops already.

I've decided ZA is a merlot instance. It went well with it last night :-)

And one more pet to find and I get Stinker, as I currently have 24 pets. I'll have to shop for one tonight.

See yall after the install...

Feel the Burn...

2008-11-12T12:56:00.000-08:00

I gave in.

Amazon.com failed me, so I gave in.

I was trying to deny the level of geek I'm at and be happy with just getting my copy of WotLK in the mail from Amazon. I checked on my order status today and just sighed. Even with overnight shipping, they couldn't get me the xpac until Monday at the earliest. So I cancelled, even after calling the nice Indian man in customer service to verify their lame shipping. Nope, not until Monday.

Cancel.

So I start calling around for a midnight opening at Gamestops, and join my local WoW addicts in a plot to get the xpac. I'm stopping on my way home from work to reserve 5 of the damn things for all of us. Then off to get a nap so when I crack the silly thing open and start installing, like I know I will, I won't utterly destroy my chances of staying awake at work tomorrow.

Random kind of related note - if you select overnight shipping on an item on Amazon, you won't be able to cancel it once the order is processed. They shack that puppy into production so fast you won't have a chance to change your mind. As a result, I'm getting my copy of Sleeping Beauty that I ordered with Wrath tomorrow... just what I needed.

Some amusing reading...

2008-11-11T12:43:00.001-08:00

http://blue.mmo-champion.com/1/12454549907-is-it-thursday-yet.html

Possibly one of the best chuckles I've had in a while. And yet another reason I'm still writing legal treatises on video game law for fun and profit. Multilayered geekdom, FTW!

Stratholme and other meanderings...

2008-11-11T10:01:00.000-08:00

Last night a buddy and I ran Stratholme for kicks. He brought his 70 Tauren Druid, I took Gracepresure. We tore up the place! Pally tanking in there is like shooting fish in a barrel. I pretty much just stood around spamming consecrate and holy wrath, and things just died. Really I just wanted the achievement, and while it was not an effective way to make gold, I did farm the heck out of runecloth and AD rep. I'll likely go back a few more times for more runecloth as I'm still not exaulted with the Horde factions. And runecloth sells pretty well on my server for exactly this reason.

I can easily solo the place, as I proved when I went back last night after dumping my bags. A good number of blue drops, ok greens too. The non-soulbound items arealrady sold on the AH. I found a severe lack of buyable gear on the AH for lvls 50-60 last night. I had good stuff to list, and most of it got snapped up pretty quick. I also got the Cannonball Runner trinket in a drop. It's a silly trinket, I think I'm keeping it for the fun factor, despite it being too low for really effective damage. It drops a cannon in front of you to shoot at your enemies. They really should have a trinket achievement, there's sooo many fun ones out there. There may be one, I just don't know about it...

This morning is the dreaded maintenance day. All servers were down, making me happy I hit the snoozebar about 47 times. I figured they would all be down, this being the last scheduled maintenance before the xpac on Thursday. But my usual morning is made brighter by the prospect of finishing a few dailies while I soak up my coffee. I'm hoping to run Gruuls or Mags this week before everyone and their sister is running around like a chicken with their heads cut off, levelling and exploring the new content. I'm pretty sure we'll be running a few of the old school instances again, but it will definitely be harder to get groups together than it has been.

The past three weeks have been daily pugs of all major instances right from the guild members signed on. We usually have 20-30 70s online at any given time, and we've been running instances left and right. But I started my new job and just haven't felt like running anything for 2-3 hours by the time I get home. This week is better, but of course the xpac comes out. *sigh* I'll get through what I can, I'm sure we'll be trying stuff as we lvl to test our uber-ness..

Then, of course, I did my fishing daily. It was the baby crocodile one that amuses me to no end. yay for urban legend references, I fished one up on the first shot in Org. I usually catch Old Crafty every time too, apparently my uber fishing skillz are hard for him to resist over and over....

What I'm up to in the last few days before Wrath...

2008-11-10T14:15:00.000-08:00

Until the xpac comes out this Thursday, all of us are in some sort of holding pattern to see what we're in for. While I am very much looking forward to the new content, I just got to 70 a few months ago with my main, and I don't feel like I had enough time to really finish all the 70 achievements and such that I would have liked. While I knew I wouldn't get to all of the raid content, I did want to get some basic 70 stuff taken care of.

1. Gear - I'm ok on gear I think. Grace is pretty solidly tanking, and consistently not too shabby while doing it. The last two patches (the uber patch and the subsequent quasi-nerf) required me to tweak my game play habits, and explore the changes a bit. I have most of the invasion (+v. Undead) set, minus the random chest drop, and I just need to do some gemming and enchanting to get my gear to the level I would put it at without the xpac.

2. Professions - My JC is maxed, but my enchanting is definitely not. I finally hit 275, so my skill is ok, but I should spend a bit of time and cash getting that last 100 points. But frankly, it's not a huge priority...I love my maxed out fishing and cooking skills. Those dailies are fun and fast to do, and for some strange reason I just find those skills satisfying.

3. PvP - I'm not much of a PvP player. I have done some, but I find it relatively annoying unless I'm in the mood. And even when I am in the mood, I prepare to get killed a lot. My experience as a prot pally is that we tend to outlive opponents to death. Not terribly exciting. And I'm just not interested in using the keyboard and hotkeys as much as I could to be better. Frankly, the Tab key and Consecrate really cover that rocking motion I see most players use to avoid being hit. I'm sure it works to some extent against melee, but its annoying to look at. I'll probably hit AV a good number of times over the next week or so until I'm up to 71, but its more to bank honor points than anything like enjoyment. I've utterly given up on WSG as any kind of fun. AB is still enjoyable, but it amazes me how often players simply don't defend bases. Arrrgh....

4. Mounts- I want my flying epic mount. I have the regular one, but things would go vastly faster on an epic. So I've been questing hard to get mine, and finishing a lot of Outland quests while I'm at it. It's resulted in a number of achievements, but the primary reason is just getting the cash.

5. Gold - Well, at the end of the day, what my biggest goal has been is simply gold. While my first priority is my epic flyer, I've found that more than anything else, gold has been the number one thing to have on hand in WoW, especially when levelling. And I'm not one to save money, real or otherwise, unless I have a goal in mind. So I set my flyer as the goal, I'm almost to 1k gold. I also wonder if the gold return is going to be somewhat nerfed once the xpac hits because we'll be getting xp instead of gold. We'll see, but I'm not betting on having access to this much gold this quick from dailies once the levelling begins.

6. Instances- ahhh yes, the time consuming yet fun instances. I've been running a buttload of them over the last few weeks with the guild, before and after the Great Nerfing of Outland. I've gotten some nice gear out of it, but I'm finding them somewhat frustrating. While I like that I've been given the chance to try the BC content before the WotLK xpac, the groups have become somewhat insane. Any and every 70 has been running them lately, and while no one seems to care about gear anymore, I can seriously tell the difference. Well geared folks can mean the difference between an hour in an instance and 5 hours wiping over and over. I won't be terribly sad when this particular frenzy is over. I can always go back later and try stuff just because with a handful of good folks.

What would I have liked to have finished? Epic flyer, a few more BC instances, exaulted with the main Horde factions, cleaning out the last of the quest crap in my bank and bags for Outland quests I just never seem to finish. Getting a set of PvP gear so I can at least die in style... I dunno, there isn't too much on the list for this character. I do have a ton of alts that will again get pushed aside for the fun of the new content. We'll see how this goes, as I wasn't here for the BC xpac. But based on how painful it is to level to 70, we'll see how many more high level characters I'm able to get.

What do I read....

2008-11-10T12:38:00.003-08:00

Here's a quick rundown of what I read regularly as relates to WoW:

http://www.wowinsider.com/ - Hands down, my favorite all around info source for WoW. They amuse me, have a nifty weekly calendar right on the page of events coming up, and explain the stuff right about the same time I notice it. Sure, they're not the most in depth, but they reference good sources for more info.

http://woweconomist.blogspot.com/ I'm an uber geek who likes math, so any discussion of economic functions in an online, created universe are fascinating to me. Not to mention that I'm clearly not the best at making cash in this game. But I do very much enjoy learning. It's relatively new, so we'll see what pans out.

I haven't yet found anything Paladin related that does a good job of evaluating the skills, seals, etc. since the Big Mucking Patch 3.0.2,but then we're all trying to figure it out a bit. I do know that I prefer http://wow.allakhazam.com/ over WoWWiki. I just do.

Raids - I like http://www.mmo-champion.com/index.php - MMo champion does a nice job of making a raid and raid bosses make sense in text form when you haven't been there.
http://wowvault.ign.com/View.php?view=Guides.Detail&id=163 has a nice guide to what a raid is and lots of common practices for how folks organize them. Nice info for your first foray into raiding.

I used http://www.wowwiki.com/BC_tanking_equipment_%28paladin%29 for tankadin equipment gearing. Solid list, lists stats on the page so you don't have to click back and forth.

I'm sure there's more, but that's what I hit on a regular basis. For random stuff I tend to just go to Google.com and search.It's faster than scrolling through a lot of crap :-0

Thus, it begins

2008-11-10T11:04:00.000-08:00

I decided to move my World of Warcraft blogging to one spot, mainly not to bore the tears out of my less geeky friends. Not all of them are video game addicts like I am. I figured it would be a kindness to stick it all in one place.

Most of my comments will center around my current main - Gracepresure on Deathwing. She's a 70 prot pally with some decent Kara/ZA gear. As my first character on WoW, she's been a guinea pig for me to learn lots of good things on.

I also have a 55 ret pally on Gorgonnash - Graciejones, a 35 lock on Gorgonnash - Evilheather. I have a few other alts, a rogue, a mage, a hunter, and a warrior. But I'm primarily a paladin player. And I'm not a healer. I started as one, but after the 47th time someone yelled at me to fix their stupidity by healing them, I repecced, never to return. I respect healers, but I don't make a good one.

My Myspace and LiveJournal accounts will stick to non-gaming topics. But for tracking my wow-junkie habits, I will be here.