Kung POW!

random static

2009-12-17T13:05:00.008-05:00

Last night, the static group got together for our regularly-scheduled run. We were scheduled to run Auchenai Crypts, but then we got a wild hair: There have been a lot of well-written articles about the dungeon finder for end-game content, but what about for the lower dungeons? Let's experiment!

First dungeon: Underbog. I've always had a soft spot for this dungeon, but not for anything intrinsic to the dungeon. Honestly, it makes me think of Underdog, the theme starts in my head, and I'm off to a happy place.

Honestly, I was a little surprised to see this one pop up. We cleared it a few weeks back and I put it firmly in my rear-view mirror. We were all either level 64 or 65, though, which I guess is right in its wheelhouse. The dungeon itself wasn't much of a problem, minus a couple overpulls, and I got myself a decent cloak. Although, I do quibble with its name: as a fire mage, I'd prefer that it be called the Cloak of Firey Death. Rays.

As a reward for using the dungeon tool, we each got a little gold and a Satchel of Helpful Goods. Well, "helpful". I got a necklace with strength and...something else not helpful for a mage. Agility, maybe? Turbulent necklace of the vendor-me-for-extra-gold, at any rate.

Second Dungeon: Auchenai Crypts. Worried that it might not come up in the random finder, we decided to just queue directly for Crypts. Less than a minute later, we were all inside the dungeon, which was *amazing*. I'm completely smitten with the instant teleport mechanism. I don't know how much of our limited play time we would spend traveling from the closest major city to the dungeon but it was certainly more than we spent last night. Plus, now I don't have to open portals for folks at the end, saving me money on reagents. ;-)

The dungeon itself was fun and even a little tricky to navigate. Three of our group had run it before to varying degrees, back in the Burning Crusade days, but I didn't remember specifics of the pulls or the fights. The only part I really remembered was the bridge of doom in the middle; I only remembered that because I had three-manned the dungeon with a couple other 80's a few months back, and one of us got knocked off. Hehe. As usual, there were a couple of hairy pulls, but we didn't have any significant difficulties. No good loots for me, but our priest healer got a nice new staff and our shammy picked up some caster mail.

Third Dungeon: Crypts, redux With our primary goal accomplished, heady with success, and with plenty of time left in the evening, we threw ourselves on the mercy of the RNG for another dungeon. Laughter rippled over vent as the Auchindoun loading screen popped up and we found ourselves deposited back into the Crypts. A few fireballs and blizzards later, we had dropped the Exarch again and were itching for more. Helpful satchel reward this time was cloth shoulders with a reasonable enchantment, but not superior to the ones I already had.

Fourth Dungeon: Mana-Tombs With a good 30 to 45 minutes of play time left we threw ourselves into a fourth dungeon. "Wouldn't it be funny if we got Crypts again? Wait, that's the Auchindoun loading screen..." Heh. We had demolished Mana-Tombs (that hyphen still looks odd) the previous week, so it was still fresh in our minds. I picked up a nice new wand, which made me a happy troll.

Summary (tl;dr): Four dungeons in two and a half hours. Teleport in/out is *amazing*. Bonus items are essentially worthless to this group, since we're pretty well-geared from dungeons and dungeon-related quests, but extra gold is always nice. And, for this level range, Death Knight tanks are overpowered. Having a DK tank is really like having an extra DPS. I'm pleased to say my DPS was greater (blizzard ftw) but she slipped by me on total damage done late in the evening. I'll get her next time. And speaking of next time, we're off to the Caverns of Time, after a little leveling. There's a rumor that Thrall needs to be rescued from a bunch of stinky humans. We're on it.

the trailer we should have seen

2009-12-17T10:03:00.001-05:00

Thanks to the Ancient Gaming Noob for sharing!

3x80

2009-12-06T00:41:00.001-05:00

Rise of the Kirin Tauren

2009-10-30T18:39:00.002-04:00

nothing like waiting

2009-10-08T21:04:00.002-04:00

until the last minute. From Monday evening:

morning brew achievement

2009-09-03T15:11:00.003-04:00

Despite earlier protestations to the contrary, I logged on to Wara this morning while I finished my morning Diet Coke. In my mailbox was the last new brew of the year:

still alive

2009-09-03T11:16:00.000-04:00

Wow. I haven't written in...what? A month? Fail.

I'm still playing WoW, but far less obsessively than I did a year ago. Or six months ago, for that matter. I no longer feel that burning need to log in before work and run a few dailies, so that the evening is free for more "serious" adventuring. I'm in a great guild, full of people who are fun to hang out with, but my /afk schedule has been so hectic that I haven't been able to raid on a regular basis and am feeling rather left out. And I'm seriously tired of just doing dailies every day, for my entire play session, so Wara just doesn't get played.

I'm still leveling alts, and enjoying being able to pop in for an hour or so and make progress. My death knight is at 80 and is just sitting, for many of the reasons mentioned above. The former poxic warlock has been getting most of my time these days; she hit 70 last week and is pushing through Borean Tundra. The pally and hunter are both in the low 40s, questing in Stranglethorn, which has been hella-confusing at times. I keep forgetting which toon has done which part of which quests and, as they're both blood elf females, there's a lot of deja vu.

I think I'm having the most fun with my mage in the static group. The group is very much in the old poxic tradition, where these characters are essentially only played together. Also, as with the purple poxers, we're leveling almost exclusively through dungeons. Passing through Uldaman and Zul'Farrak was fun but distinctly bittersweet. Seeing Maraudon for the first time was a blast and completing the Sunken Temple was very satisfying. We're about to hit a series of dungeons I haven't run much, if at all, and I'm looking forward to each of them.

All that said, I'm getting a strong case of wanderlust. I've joined Beau and the gang at MMO Voices, where there's a nice community developing, including a rotating "Game of the Site". When I joined, the game was Runes of Magic, so I have that sitting on the laptop for exploration this weekend. The current game is Ikariam, a browser game that I'm actually familiar with. Come say hello to Waradwen, on the Iota server!

new forms

2009-08-05T09:00:00.002-04:00

Like every druid and his brother, one of the first things I did last night was to select my new forms. Unlike every druid and his brother, however, I did not pick either the white or black forms, which were everywhere in Dalaran. I may give in to peer pressure later, but for now I'm digging my new furs.

Patches?

2009-08-04T08:49:00.003-04:00

We don't need no stinkin' patches!

Actually, this one sounds good. I'm really looking forward to the new boomkin spell twisting mechanic...perhaps that'll help my mediocre DPS. It sounds like heroics are the order of the day!

another sweet hat

2009-05-06T13:16:00.001-04:00

new hats!

2009-05-01T15:08:00.004-04:00

favorite new achievement

2009-03-31T09:00:00.002-04:00

Cooking With Style. MMO Champion has a screenshot of the hat, too. I've been doing the cooking daily pretty religiously and have a bunch of tokens stored up, and almost two full stacks of spices in the bank, so you know I'm all over this as soon as it drops.

straying

2009-03-24T16:06:00.002-04:00

I just wish I had noticed that the trial through Steam is 21 days, instead of the 14 day regular trial. It probably doesn't matter, though...I'm a week in and am seriously considering trying it for a while. I'll probably buy the box and use the game time that comes with, then make a decision if I can afford two games or not. As a friend pointed out, it is less than a daily coffee, so maybe I'll cut that out. Wait, I don't drink coffee...hmm.

/delurk

2009-02-19T10:52:00.002-05:00

/em pokes his feathered head out of the brush.
/s Howdy, strangers!
/s Your fine, alternately feathered and furry friend, here!
/s My /afk ego has had some computer issues but claims he misses y'all.
/s So, he sent me to say hello and let everybody know he's not dead.
/s And promises he'll be back soon, to help me talk with you guys.
/wave

what do I do now?

2008-12-12T12:09:00.004-05:00

I can't believe I haven't posted about this. As of last Friday, Waradwen is level 80! I had visions of a grand exploration ding, where I filled in the last bit of covered map to give myself the achievements for level 80, Northrend exploration, and world explorer at the same time but really that was too much work. And, as regular readers know, I am fundamentally lazy. Hehe. I have a screenshot but managed to miss the swirly shinyness. Oh well.

So, now what? I've been spending my time continuing to explore the content available and have opened up the Argent Crusade, Knights of the Ebon Blade, and Sons of Hodir quartermasters/daily quest areas. After scanning the potential rewards, the Argent Crusade is going to be last on my list of factions to level, I think...there's really nothing there that I find terribly compelling. Kirin Tor is my main goal, so I've been doing the cooking daily quest every morning and really need to get running dungeons. I've done enough Knights of the Ebon Blade quests to hit honored and get my grubby paws on the [Dark Soldier's Cape]. Now that I've opened up the Sons of Hodir area, I've been doing those religiously so I can get to the shoulder enchants. I thought about grabbing the Scryer enchant just for the time being but people are asking ridiculous prices for each [Arcane Tome] and I'm too lazy to farm them myself. There's something about those quests that makes me feel a little dirty...Blowing Hodir's Horn? Polishing the Helm? Really, Blizz?

And that's about all I've been working on lately. I've been playing a little less now after hitting 80, but am getting ready to gear up for the winter holidays. My guild took a poke at Naxx earlier this week and got completely destroyed by the first boss, apparently. I had other plans and didn't get to go with, but the word used to describe the experience was "Mollywhopped". No, I'm not really sure what it means, but I've got some guesses based on the context. Hehe. So we've got that to look forward to later this month.

How's by you? Northrend treating you well?

return of the grabby hands

2008-12-04T11:31:00.005-05:00

As of completing the Dalaran cooking quest this morning, Waradwen is more than 75% of the way to level 80! That probably won't happen tonight (unless I forsake sleep, which is possible), but will almost certainly happy by Friday night. So, what to do post-ding? Get grabby! Conveniently, Gray Matter is posting a multi-part series on pre-raid moonkin gear (part 1, 2, 3). Let's see what he suggests, and how it fits with what I have already and what I need to do to get from here to there. From head to toes:

Head: Currently, I'm wearing the [Overcast Headguard]. Not bad, but clearly PVP-oriented. Still, it's equivalent to or better than what I've seen from quests and drops so far, and it was free, as I was leveling my leatherworking. I'd like to get the [Battlemap Hide Helm] from heroic Utgarde Keep, but I might keep an eye on the AH and my tailoring buddies for the [Hat of Wintry Doom]

Neck: [Clutch of Undying Will]. Blue, but getting old at this point. I haven't seen the quest yet, but I've got my eyes open for [Emeline's Locket]. Alternately, I'll aim for the [Necklace of Taldaram] from heroic Old Kingdom if I can convince some suckers...er...friends to go into that spidery pit with me.

Shoulders: [Purehorn Spaulders]. Again, free from leatherworking and I like how they look. I feel fierce wearing them, hehe. I don't plan to replace these at the moment.

Back: [Shadow Vault Shawl]. Ack! A green! Get me to the Knights of the Ebon blade for the [Dark Soldier Cape] post-haste! (2248/6000 rep currently)

Chest: Still rocking the [Windhawk Hauberk]. It looks like I'm going to have to fall back to cloth to replace this, at least pre-raid, feh. I'd like the [Robes of Lightning] for the hit rating -- side note. I've killed Loken, I just didn't have the quest. Can't I have credit anyway? hehe -- but am drooling over the [Water-Drenched Robe] from heroic Violet Hold. Sexeh. Plus, that's a hella-fun dungeon, so I'm willing to run it a lot for the random boss.

Wrists: [Storming Vortex Bracers]. I got these on our awesome run through the Halls of Lightning the other night and quite like them a lot. Post-these, it really looks like a toss-up between the [Azure Cloth Bindings] from heroic Violet Hold or the [Plague-Infected Bracers] from heroic CoT: Stratholme. I suspect I'll end up with the former, if I have to farm Violet Hold a lot for those robes.

Hands: [Gloves of Malorne]. Dunno quite which to replace these with. It looks like there area bunch of tasty gloves in heroic Halls of Lightning, so I'll just aim to run that a lot. The [Traditionally Dyed Handguards] do look nice, especially with the socket.

Waist: [Windhawk Belt]. Ah, my first epic. And it still looks so lovely. I'd love the [Ghostflicker Waistband] from the Kirin Tor, but that'll be a long rep grind.

Legs: [Dark Iceborne Leggings]. I think I'll target the [Crenelation Leggings] at the moment, as I haven't any rep with the Sons of Hodir for their [Giant-Friend Kilt]. On the cloth side, there's always the [Woven Brocae Leggings] from heroic Halls of Lightning or [Cyanigosa's Leggings]. Can you guess where those last legs are from? Yeah. I thought you could.

Feet: [Bugsquashers]. The [Boots of Transformation] from heroic Gundrak look pretty nice. I haven't seen that dungeon yet, so I don't know how hard the heroic version will be. From what is becoming my favorite target, heroic Violet Hold, come the [Footwraps of Teleportation], which would be nice as well.

Weapon: [Chilly Slobberknocker], from the ring of blood-esque series in Zul'Drak. I'd like to grab the [Flameheart Spell Scalpel] from the Kirin Tor (5550/18000) to replace this, with the [Ward of the Violet Citadel] once I have the badges.

Oof. This has gotten far too long for a single post. I'll explore the constellation of possible rings and trinkets next time.

my frosty mug runneth over

2008-11-25T10:30:00.002-05:00

So, um...hey, strangers! How's your expansion going? Mine? Totally awesome. I am having an absurdly good time. In the last two weeks, Wara...
- is up to level 74
- has explored the Borean Tundra and done the questing there
- feels like he's halfway through the Dragonblight
- has run four dungeons: Utgarde Keep, the Nexus, Azjol-Nerub, and Ahn'kahet: the Old Kingdom. Those last two? Hope you're not arachnophobic...
- has leveled skinning to 450, leatherworking to 405, cooking and first aid to just over 400, and fishing to 350. Yeah, I've got skills.
- is on his way to being beloved by the Lolruses. So cute. Such an awesome fishing pole.
- ...

There's so much more to catch up on, but I've got to get something posted. I've started and re-started this one a dozen times now. Elbow and send!

gorilladins? totally awesome

2008-10-30T10:17:00.004-04:00

As I mentioned a few days back, my baby hunter got herself a gorilla pet. Last night I had a half hour to test him out. Verdict? Awesome.

We started out slow, going after the level 32-34 Bloodscalp trolls north of Grom'gol. One or two? No problem. By the end of the festivities, Bobo was holding aggro on three or four trolls and I could blast away to my heart's content. The hardest part, honestly, was picking them all up in the first place and keeping my mana up. Good times.

After tearing them up, a questgiver sent me to the Arathi Highlands, with some nice, tasty level 34-36 ogres and raptors. Again, no problem! At one point, Bobo and I tore down a level 33, 34, and 36 rare ogre. We got a nice clothie hat and access to a couple of iron nodes for our troubles. It was a little close with some of the heals, but we felt pretty proud of ourselves by the end.

I need to figure out how to more efficiently use Bobo's energy, because that was probably the rate limiting factor in our adventures last night. Maybe cast the first thunderstomp myself, then set it to autocast? I'll bet the astute BRK has some advice in that direction. Some how-did-I-live-without-this-before macros, perhaps.

a question and a new pet

2008-10-28T11:57:00.009-04:00

Is a level 70 epic BOE enough motivation to level a new alt?

Last night Waradwen went on a midbee, early Kara fun run, to pick up a few badges and see the Scourge Invasion boss. It was fun to see a new fight and, admittedly, it was almost fun to clear all the trash on the way to him. I've never been into the scullery in Kara or in the animal boss area, so that was fun to explore. The boss fight itself was more annoying than difficult. Our tank did an awesome job kiting him around in a big circle while we blasted him between Blood Mirrors. Love the new pet, too.

After killing the new boss, we were clearing our way towards the Maiden when [The Night Blade] drops! And I won the roll! But now, what should I do? I don't have a rogue, and this sucker just screams rogue. The melee DPSers I have are a shammy and a paladin, and I don't see the point in either of them equipping this bad boy. And I don't want to just sell it to a random dude at the Auction House. Soooo...yeah. I'm probably going to start a new alt. I mentioned yesterday that the priest wasn't a great fit yet... /stabbystabby!

The last thing I did last night before bed was to hop on my hunter, push her to level 32, and get her a badass gorilla. In complete huntard fashion, I forgot to take the appropriate food for the gorilla after I tamed him. Der. Fortunately, it turns out that gorillas will eat halloween candy. And that will make him happy enough to get him back to the closest town. I'm looking forward to testing him out tonight.

Happy maintenance day!

state of the (horde) toons report

2008-10-27T11:08:00.007-04:00

On the eve of the Lich King's re-emergence (and due to my self-resurrection as a poor blogger), I thought I'd give a summary of where my toons are and what they're doing. Yay!

Waradwen - Doin' dailies, makin' money, light raiding. A few months back my Horde guild asploded and, faced with a number of suboptimal options, Wara stepped through a strange portal and found himself on a new server. Same world, just slightly shifted. He's found a really awesome guild and I'm having as much fun with him (and in WoW in general) as I ever have. Wara's primary goals right now are feeding his achievement addiction (Salty Chef Waradwen Jenkins the Hallowed, ftw) and pwning Kara for badges. Moar badges! My guild got together for an rp-inspired tear through Gruul's lair and impromptu Magtheridon raid this weekend which was really fun. I'd seen Gruul's before -- once or twice -- and it was fun to get back. My rolls sucked, or I might have been decked out in complete tier 4 this morning. And Magtheridon was awesome, too. Nerfed to hell, apparently, but a lot of fun to down regardless.

As I'm on a new server, I decided to make new alts rather than spend the money to move below-level-30 dudes. Not worth it, right? So, a new horde of my own. Maybe I can be Thrall when I grow up!

Alt the first: the hunter. My first alt on that brave, new world was a belf hunter. Female, naturally. So hawt! Hahaha. I got her to level 30 this weekend and picked up a purple hawkstrider, which still feels weird. Mounts at 30? Well, I'm not going to walk... She's a miner/engineer, mostly for the fun toys. Right now I'm having an awesome time as a beastmaster, running around with a raptor pet, rocking the crap out of mobs that are much higher than me. This weekend she took down Frostmaw, a level 37 yeti, having just reached 30, to earn a lovely new headdress. Nerf hunters!

Alt number two: a troll mage. Magey is a special toon (no, not that sort of special), running in a static group approximately once a week. He can bring some awesome dps to the instances we're running, although I'm still trying to figure out mana and threat management. He started out as an herbalist/alchemist, but I found I really wasn't spending time farming with him and he dropped herbalism for inscription with the last patch. Very fun. He hit level 21 last week and loves the crap out of blink and teleport. So awesome.

Alt number three: a Tauren shaman. Goddamn I love the Tauren and love adventuring in Mulgore. I'm still getting the hang of playing a shaman. He's specced enhancement at the moment, which feels a lot like leveling a pre-boomkin druid. Pull with lightning bolt, dot with flame shock, then pound to death with a big staff. I really like having a spell interrupt for fighting casters and the totems are useful for emergency situations or for fighting big mobs. By and large, I'm moving around too much to spend the mana setting up the totems on a regular basis. I haven't had a chance to run any instances, yet, but I think that's where the totems will really shine. As of this weekend, he's up to level 18. He's my primary farmer at the moment, an herbalist/miner, gathering herbs for the mage's potions and inks and ore for the engineer and the jewelcrafter and the future blacksmith and... A brief note about herbalism. I *love* the new HoT spell. It has already saved his steak-y butt a few times from the fire.

Alt number four: a Forsaken priest. This guy is probably my worst fit so far, but it's still early. Actually, let me qualify that a little. Soloing with this guy is the worst fit. I ran around with a friend leveling a warrior a few weeks ago and had a serious blast. Since then I've downloaded HealBot, which is pretty groovy. No instances, yet, but about ready to push into the WC range. He's still low enough that fights are generally smite-smite-shadow word:pain-wand to death. Hopefully groups and getting further into the talent trees will help. As for professions, he's a tailor/(dis)enchanter.

Alt number five: a paladin. Another hawt belf chica, with a big sword. Pretty fun. Looking forward to consecrate. She's a miner/jewelcrafter. The mining is fine, helping to feed engineering and provide mats for jewelcrafting, but I'm not overwhelmed with JC. Any gem I want for Wara I can either get on the AH or cut by a friend... The self-healing statues are nice (and easy skill points!) and it is nice to provide low-level rings and necklaces for the new family of alts.

Alt number six (coming soon!): a Tauren death knight. I've got the name I want reserved with an unplayed alt and am just waiting until November. My plan is for him to be a miner/blacksmith, probably making cool swords and axes for himself. I'm trying to bank a bunch of copper and tin ore prior to the expansion so I can ease his mining leveling through smelting. Exploration will be fun, but I don't really want to do have to spend a lot of time mining copper in Durotar as an uberl33t death knight. Hehe.

Alt number seven: the former Poxic warlock. Waradwenne is still hanging around on Anvilmar, but at some point soon I'd like to consolidate her with the rest of the army. I've played her for maybe half an hour since the Purples broke up (/cry) so there hasn't been much progress on that front. She's still a tailor, but she dropped engineering and isn't sure what to pick up. Herbalism, probably, so she can funnel higher-level herbs to the mage. In general, she's on hold until I have a little more disposable income.

So there you go. Lots of little alts who will, someday, be fearsome fighters. By endgame, I'll have a couple of tanks, a couple healers, and a bunch of fearsome DPS to make with the pew pew! Pew! Pew! /cast Starfall

this is hallow's end

2008-10-22T10:58:00.006-04:00

Until this past weekend, I would have told you that Brewfest was my favorite in-game holiday. Now, I'm really not sure. Between how addicted I've become to Achievements and how much I love the sweet, sweet taste of candy, I am having a complete blast with Hallow's End. And I have the screenshots to prove it!

First, the obligatory pumpkinhead-on-dragon picture:

And how about pumpkinhead-on-nether-ray?

Big! Orange! Pumpkinhead!

Spooky undead pumpkinhead...ooooh...spoooooky...

Well, at least the little animals of the forest love me.

Ghost dance!

Lastly, for this set, have you noticed that the wisps have faces? I hadn't, until this weekend!

Some guildies and I took on His Headlessness Monday night. Well, that's not news. We seem to be doing that most nights, as are most other WoW players. But, while one of them gathered the quest to summon the Horseman, I played punchfight with the Scarlet Monestary's mobs. Somebody wants a knuckle sammich...

On the next-to-last kill, the Sinister Squashling dropped and I won the roll! Woo!

I've gone trick-or-treating through Outland and the Eastern Kingdoms, but have yet to see a flimsy mask drop. Grr. Oh well. There's plenty of time left. Otherwise, I'm nicely on my way to becoming Waradwen the Hallowed.

/cast Revive

2008-10-15T10:36:00.003-04:00

Huh. Things are looking a little neglected around here. Almost like a hurricane came through, or something. Well, time to roll up the sleeves and get some cleaning done. I wonder if there are any blood elves around...they've got those handy magic brooms...

let it begin!

2008-08-21T12:05:00.003-04:00

In the spirit of BRK's recent post:

Wednesday's damage report

2008-08-08T16:07:00.003-04:00

This is the Recount data from Wednesday night's foray into Kara. Yes, it is partly to gloat about being #1 in damage done, despite being dead for the entirety of the Maiden fight, but mostly it's to highlight the #2, my friend and guildie Linada, who just hit 70 recently and was on her first Kara run. Nerf hunters, yo!

feeling competitive

2008-08-08T08:30:00.001-04:00

rawr

2008-08-07T15:52:00.001-04:00

As I mentioned earlier today, I seriously considered respecing to feral last night to help my guild in Kara. Before offering, though, I made a frenzied tear through my bank so see if I was even close to geared well enough, because a night as tank with no practice and no gear sounded like a fate worse than death. Tanking with no practice but with adequate gear sounded painful, but in a fun sort of way. I highly esteem druids who can play multiple roles and hope to be one of those sorts someday.

So, where to start evaluating my gear? With BBB's guide, of course! And, you know what? I'm not too horribly undergeared, probably because this has always been an idea in the back of my head. As a leatherworker, I had a Heavy Clefthoof Armor set in the bank (actually, in my backpack, if you want to be specific). Similarly, I had my [Braxxis' Staff of Slumber] and picked up the [Shattered Sun Pendant of Resolve] after hitting Exalted with those dudes. Now we're getting somewhere. And take a look at the snazzy cloak that I got on a previous Kara run when nobody else had any desire for it. Quick shopping expeditions brought in a set of [Dragonhide Gloves] and [Dragonhide Spaulders], as well as a mess of gems to kit everything out. Oh! And my newest shiny, [Darkmoon Card: Madness] brings in a ton of needed health.

Phew. That was a lot of text. So what does it boil down to? 9800+ health, 398 defense rating, 95 resilience, and 17,540 armor in bear form. Not terrible...not great, but not terrible at all. This looks like a fun new avenue to wander down for a bit, doesn't it?

[Edit 8/8/08]: According to the defense rating macro listed at WoWWiki, Wara's gear is enough to make him uncritable if I respeced to feral (with 3/3 Survival of the Fittest). Rawr.

the tower? the tower! rapunzel!

2008-08-07T10:50:00.001-04:00

Last night Wara got to return to Karazhan, for the first time in months, and it was awesome. I logged in to do some dailies and fart around for a bit, and what do I see but a Kara group forming, and they need more. Woo! I actually flirted with the idea of respecing to feral, as we were short tanks, but ultimately I got to do what I do best, stand back and blast stuff. Yeehaw.

In a way that's very amusing to me, this was my first trip to lower Kara. Curator, Prince, Nightbane? Killed 'em all. Attumen? Um...quick, to WoWWiki! Heheh. The only boss fight I haven't seen yet are the animal bosses. I don't think they have anything that I want, anyway. Plus, I've heard their grapes are sour. That's just what I've heard.

It was odd at first, being back in boomkin form for a group adventure. All of my recent play as Wara has been solo, so I haven't had to think about threat or aggro or that sort of thing, and my recent group experience has been as Waradwenne, who couldn't pull aggro to save her life. Blessing of Salvation, I needs it.

The Attumen fight was quite straight-forward, as probably most of you know. Starfire, starfire, starfire, keep up faerie fire and thorns when you remember. A few minutes later, dead horse and rider.

Moroes was more of a struggle, and it took three times to get him down. The first round was one of those ridiculously close, can't believe we didn't get him fights, where we honestly got Moroes down to 1% before wiping. I got garroted early and spent probably too much of my mana trying to help keep myself alive, so by the time Moroes was at about 30%, I was OOM and very shortly out of health. The second try was just a complete mess. Among the party guests last night was the arms warrior, and he got loose early and wreaked havoc. I don't know if he really targets the healers on purpose, but it felt that way last night. It wasn't technically a wipe, because the RL saw what was happening and told us all to run out and reset the fight before we all croaked. Smart man, that druid. The third attempt was quick and efficient. We blasted down three of the guests, then were able to keep the fourth shackled while we downed Moroes himself. Fun. And for my trouble, I got a little rubber ducky! Hurrah!

By this time it was getting late for a Wednesday (especially after all the arrangements it took to get the group going in the first place), so we all had enough energy for just one more boss, Maiden. Somewhere between Moroes and Maiden we lost our enhancement shaman, so we were going in a little light, but it felt worthwhile to try. It turns out we can down Maiden with only seven. Well, perhaps I shouldn't say we, because I was one of the corpses. As we were entering her room and positioning ourselves, somebody must have come too close because first our warlock died, then I died. Since we were *basically* set, the tanks were able to corral her and we were able to continue the fight. Our RL came up with a plan: he'd battle-rez me, then I'd battle-rez the warlock. Good plan, right? Well, it probably was, except the Maiden took exception to my coming back to life and thwacked me on the head before I could get my rez off. Bitch. Stoutly, the rest of the group forged ahead and brought her to her knees. Lots of work for two badges, eh? Although, it's not like I did a whole lot. Hmm. Free badges!

So that was my fun for last night. I need to get my raid kit back together, although I don't think I'm out of anything except for flasks. All in all, a most successful evening, and I'm that much closer to having enough badges for the [Crystalwind Leggings].

all good things

2008-08-06T08:49:00.000-04:00

It is with a heavy heart that I announce the end of the Purple Poxers. This was an amazingly fun and interesting experiment and I want to thank the other Purples for the chance to be part of the group.

To Nas, Dax, Ess, and Mr. Ess, thank you. You'll always be Purple Poxers to me. Watch out for that hole, next time you're going to the Wailing Caverns...

brief screenshots

2008-07-28T21:02:00.004-04:00

So much to catch up on, so sleepy and lazy. But, for my beloved readers, I offer two brief screenshots before I go to bed early tonight. First, Waradwen is now exalted with four factions (gotta get that Sha'tar rep up next!):

Second, in budding bad-assery, dig how cool Waradyne looks in his shiny new [Flying Tiger Goggles]. Sweet, eh?

pre-vacation update

2008-07-10T11:01:00.003-04:00

I'm heading off on vacation tomorrow, so I figured I'd give the ol' neglected blog a brief update before we go. That way I'll have a set of goals in front of me when I get back, rather than having to make it up as I go...

Waradwen: Wara's largely in a holding pattern these days, waiting for Wrath. Due to some /afk issues, I haven't had the blocks of time to commit to raiding, which really sucks. Running around with the Murlocks has been totally fun and awesome, and I'm hoping that I can schedule more time to be with them when we get back from vacation. I think we've got enough people to poke our heads into some 25-man content, but I'm not sure if we're balanced enough. Hmm...something to ponder.

Gear-wise, Wara's pretty well set for the content he's seeing. I've resigned myself to the fact that he's not going to be decked out in T6, and that's okay. He's almost entirely dressed in purples at this point, when he's wearing his inappropriate-for-a-boomkin cloak. I really need to get some better legs, though, and am even contemplating PvPing for the Season 2 version. As much as I dislike the idea of using PvP to get gear for PvE, those are pretty nice. Hmm.

Waradwenne: Nothing new to report since last time. We had to cancel our group this past week for some family issues and I'm gone for next week, but after that we're ready to keep tearing up the Old World. 'dwenne's fishing is up to 225, so we're planning to go run around and do the quest from ol' Nat next session. That should be fun.

Rotaan: The Dwarf is up to level 47 and is building up that tasty, tasty rested XP. He's been rather peripatetic lately, not being able to decide on a zone to level in and bouncing between Tanaris, Stranglethorn Vale, and the Hinterlands. He stuck his nose into the Blasted Lands this past weekend and liked it, although most of the mobs were just over his head. No pun intended. The goal for him is to keep leveling, making the most of the rested XP available. He's going to do some PvP before he hits 50, too, so he can build up enough marks to get a [Black Battlestrider] at 60. Sweet.

Everybody else: Same plan as Rotaan, essentially. Leveling as much as the rested XP allows. By the time I get back from vacation, I think that everybody should be at the max amount of rested XP, so I'm hoping to get on a cycle where I level one toon one night until he's out of rest, then switch to the next. We'll see how long that plan lasts. :-D

a poxer looks at 40 (part two)

2008-07-02T11:50:00.004-04:00

As alluded to earlier, the Purple Poxers hit 40 last night following a run through RFD and two runs through the Scarlet Monestary's Cathedral (and some fire fest fun, to get Daxe and I over the hump). So, what makes this group tick? Why have we meshed so nicely and powered our way through dungeon after dungeon, week after week? The other Purple Poxer bloggers have already written their views, so I might as well add in my two cents' worth. Several of these ideas are probably redundant, and naturally many of them feed into one another, but here's my unorganized list of success factors:

1. Awesome group dynamics. We all thought about our toons for a little bit before selecting them and are reaping the rewards now. We have a pally tank, who is amazing for collecting and managing groups of mobs. We have uber-DPS coming from our fire mage. My Orc warlock doesn't bring as much DPS as I might like (I just installed Recount and am dismayed by my damage done), but I bring some decent pain. Our druid can do nice damage in cat form, then is available for emergency heals if needed. Last, but not least, our priest healer is teh awesum. There's no other word for it. We also do a lot of different *types* of damage, so if one mob is particularly resistant to fire damage we can hit him with arcane and frost and physical damage. Rawr.

2. Dedication to the group and the experiment. We've all taken this pretty seriously and essentially are taking almost a raider's eye to our prep work. We have a pretty well-defined idea of what we want to accomplish each night and subsequent "homework" assignments (set hearth in UC and meet in Camp T, for example). This mindset allows us to be focused and productive for the time that we're together, and usually that results in big wins for the Purple Poxers. Woo!

3. Maturity. No n00bs, no asshats, nobody bragging about how l33t their DPS is or how huge their epeen is. I think this goes for all of the Poxers, but I know for certain that it's true for the Purples.

4. Luck. I feel incredibly fortunate to be a part of this group and I think we've had a lot of breaks go our way. We managed to find one night a week for our shared adventures and have had very few weeks when we couldn't meet.

5. Limitation. I think that playing one night a week has actually helped our overall success. We haven't tried to overschedule (doing damage to our /afk lives) and haven't gotten ourselves sick of the toons (or each other) by trying to do too much. Plus, the forced slow pace has allowed us to really reap the benefits of the rested XP. I think I get a level's worth of XP for each session, so that certainly helps to push us along.

6. We haven't really been challenged yet. Let's face it. These dungeons are not the most difficult fights. It's not like we're burning through the Black Temple every week. That said, we're regularly cruising through instances that are "set" for three or four levels above where we are and constantly running into artificial barriers, like quests we can't start for two more levels or gear we won't be able to wear for another several weeks...

I'm both proud and pleased that we've come this far and am really looking forward to what adventures the next 40 levels bring. We're making plans for Zul'Farak now, but I know I'm casting the occasional thought towards Hellfire Peninsula, and beyond.

Other views of 40:
Ess
Daxe
Harisan

Other thoughts on Pox power:
Ess
Daxe
Harisan

Oh, and before I forget: Hey, Blizzard! Need a group of play-testers for your new (or old) content? We'll try out all the dungeons for you! We'd just need, let's see, five beta keys? That's not so much to ask, right?

a poxer looks at 40

2008-07-02T09:56:00.003-04:00

More to come later. In the meantime, don't miss Daxe's awesome shot of the whole group.

uldaman pictures

2008-07-01T07:58:00.004-04:00

Last Tuesday night was a Poxic Party in the Badlands! We started with a little pole dancing...

And then it was off to Uldaman! Running through the zone this time was far easier than the last time we tried it. Sure, we still aggroed some of those invisible cats ("Orc warlock? Nom nom nom!") but I think we all survived the experience.

About halfway through, dancing and cavorting. There's not a lot of exciting news to report about the dungeon...it was really the same song, different verse. We came, we saw, we conquered.

Say cheese, after killing that last boss! Oh, and the follow-up quest? You cannot has. You's too little.

Later, after turning in the quests that were available to us, we decided to waste the level 45 giant who wanders around the Badlands. Woo!

The plan for tonight is to run RFD again, so Madj and I can finish the escort quest, then decide if we want to burn through Ulda again or go farm the Cathedral for what's-her-butt's hat. Sorry, chapeau.

cough

2008-06-24T11:13:00.001-04:00

*cough*cough*botting?*cough*

;-)

in which our hero emulates narcissus

2008-06-24T10:44:00.001-04:00

S: i've been looking at some of the youtube spore creatures
S: there are tons of penises
me: hahaha, naturally
S: dancing creatures that are very well endowed
S: and some that are just dancing dongs
me: well, it's important to cover both of the sides of teh issue
me: you can either have a huge wang, or just be one
S: -nods sagely-
S: i think you have summed up life
me: huh...guess that puts me in the second category
me: gonna have to be less friendly, then

one year of toons

2008-06-22T12:53:00.003-04:00

The start of the Midsummer Fire Festival yesterday marks my first anniversary of playing WoW. It's a little arbitrary, I realize, because I can't remember the specific date, but the Festival had just started when I started playing. In celebration, I present to you One Year of Toons:

The center photo is Waradwen, of course. Clockwise from the upper left corner we have Waradwock (26 Tauren hunter), Warabelle (11 Forsaken warlock), Waratrix (19 Troll mage), Sugartotems (6 Tauren shaman), Waradin (13 Blood Elf warlock), Waraclipse (15 Tauren druid), Floradwen (6 Night Elf druid), Waragrad (11 Human warlock), Rotag (22 Draenei paladin), Rotaan (42 Dwarf warrior), Waradwenne (36 Orc warlock), and Waradyne (11 Blood Elf paladin). Repetition of classes is due to multiple servers or factions. Woo!

Here's to another year, at least as much fun as the past! Much love to Kalimdor Slackers/Slack Attack on Arathor, Kiss My Murlock on Arathor, Pox Arcanum on Anvilmar, and the Sidhe Devils on Kael'thas.

SM/RFD gear goals for 'dwenne

2008-06-17T11:01:00.006-04:00

In an attempt to help focus our Poxing adventures, I'm making a list of gear that I'd like over the next four levels. What 'dwenne currently has is listed on the first line and the reasonable, available options are listed underneath. Let's assume that at the end of this thought experiment that I'm level 40...

Head: [Enchanter's Cowl]
- [Whitemane's Chapeau] (SM-Cath)
- [Spellpower Goggles Extreme] (Engineering 225; currently 186)

Shoulders: [Berylline Pads]
- [Mantle of Doan] (SM-Lib)
- [Inquisitor's Shawl] (SM-Cath)

Back: [Long Silken Cloak]
- [Silky Spider Cape] (RFD)

Chest: [Robe of Power]
- [Robes of the Lich] (RFD)

Wrists: [Elder's Bracers of the Eagle] (+5 Int, +4 Sta)

Hands: [Durable Gloves of the Owl] (+6 Int, +6 Spi)
- [Shadoweave Gloves] (Tailoring)
- [Dreamweave Gloves] (Tailoring)

Waist: [Belt of Arugal]
- [Deathmage Sash] (RFD)

Legs: [Black Mageweave Leggings]
- [Shadoweave Pants] (Tailoring)

Feet: [Spidersilk Boots]

Weapons: [Hypnotic Blade] and [Omega Orb]
- [Prophetic Cane] (Quest reward from SM)

more wow amusements

2008-06-05T17:13:00.002-04:00

I'm such a nerd, but WoW Bash is pretty funny. Case in point:

productive day

2008-06-05T14:28:00.003-04:00

This has been tempting me all day. I'm not playing at work, of course, but I might have used work's internet to download the rest of the program...

big league lag

2008-06-04T21:59:00.004-04:00

For reasons mentioned over at my /afk blog, I am hiding from the Florida heat at my folks' house this week. A while back I set up their wireless network, so I figured I could bring my laptop out here and play a little WoW in the evenings; no raiding, clearly, and I planned to avoid major cities as much as possible, but I thought I could do some questing and maybe try an instance or two. No such luck.

The wireless connection works just fine. In fact, I'm using it now to type these words to you. Email, blogging, facebook, IM? All fine. WoW? Not so much. I can log in, but then can't interact any further. Well, most of the time. Sometimes I get about a five-minute window where I can play normally, then it's lag city. Some fun screenshots to share:

I can connect, although typically all other characters and NPCs are labeled as "Unknown". Sometimes I know who I am. Sometimes.

My Friends tab works. Hmm...maybe I should blur out those names...oh well.

Uh-oh...that quest log was nearly full last time I checked...

I can run around, but there's some weirdness happening. Like the twelve-foot-tall raptor attacking Southshore. That doesn't seem quite right.

Oh, and I can die. Isn't that lovely? I can't attack, but I can die.

After two nights of fighting, I can't figure out why this isn't working. The firewalls are all configured correctly, so far as I can tell. There is some griping about lag spikes and random disconnects with Cox Cable, which is what my parents have for their internet connection (we have DSL at our house), so maybe that's the problem. How frustrating.

Oh well. A few days off isn't going to kill me (/twitchtwitch). In a way that's very bad for my productivity, I did download the EQII free trial...

looking forward to one year of wow

2008-06-03T16:11:00.002-04:00

The upcoming Midsummer Fire Festival will mark my first anniversary of WoW. I can't believe that I'm almost at a year already, it has really gone quickly. Over the course of the next month I'm going to post a series of posts, summarizing my adventures and what I've learned. It, um, probably won't be a long series. To paraphrase a bad joke, you can tell a Tauren, but you can't tell him much. Moo.

green armor dwarf

2008-05-28T12:42:00.003-04:00

he's their champion?

2008-05-28T11:13:00.005-04:00

Another Tuesday night means another Purple Poxing on a dungeon. Hurray! Last night, our heroes found themselves in the Scarlet Monestary's Armory, ready to do battle with The Scarlet Champion, Herod. Final score: Purple Poxers: 3, Scarlet Crusade: 1 (and really that was an own-goal).

The always-resourceful Daxe brought some tasty treats for us to enjoy.

[Insert your own ball joke here]

Viewing the Scarlet Champion for the first time.

Afterwards, we decided to die and run from the graveyard rather than hearth and run from the Undercity or fight our way through the respawns. This is as close as I'll ever get to naked Ess. /drool

Oh, noes! Naked ghosts!

At least I remembered to leave my tabard on. What a nightmarish image this would have been otherwise, eh?

Um, yeah, so we killed them all a few more times. In the meantime, I caught this nice picture of 'dwenne illuminated by her wand. Blizzard has done some really cool things with light and shadows that I'm just now coming to appreciate.

Ignore the fighting for a moment. How cute is the mechanical squirrel? I had never looked at him quite so closely before.

Herod? Dead. Trainee #1? Dead. Trainee #37? Oh, he's dead, too. In fact, they're all dead, here!

Next week, we're hunting some more quillboar, with a few skeletons thrown in, for good measure. And some nice clothy loots, perhaps?

peripatetic long weekend

2008-05-27T09:59:00.002-04:00

A few notes on the long weekend...

Waradwen: I am just about sick of doing dailies, which is almost all I've done with good old Wara lately. I haven't been able to get the time together to do any raiding the past few weeks and consequently haven't been spending much time boomkining around. The good news is that I'm up over 1100 gold and have my full raid kit together, so any money I make between now and next raid goes towards Swift Flight Form. One of these days...

Waradwenne: Poxing night is tonight and am I pleased as punch. We're in the Scarlet Monestary again tonight, planning to tear up the Library and get Daxe his dagger, then dip our wee toesies into the Armory. Next week we're going to switch things around a little and go tackle Razorfen Downs, which should be a lot of fun. Like most of these instances, I've only run RFD once and am looking forward to the full experience. My previous RFD experience was essentially: "Watch these guys tear it up and try not to get killed." Heh.

Engineering training is going nicely, although it's costing a pretty penny. Thanks to a helpful benefactor, I'm up to 130 and made a handful of small seaforium charges. I even got to open a locked box the other day with one, which was very exciting.

Rotaan: The gaseous dwarf is up to level 32 after a lot of play time this weekend. I still haven't taken him tanking yet, which I really need to do. I'm simultaneously nervous and excited about the possibility of tanking. Gnomer and RFK are beckoning me, though, to plumb their depths...

Over the course of the weekend, I outpaced Rotaan's crafting skills. Until now, I've been able to make gear that's too good for his level, but not anymore. I'm stuck making the green iron armor for a little while longer. Oh well. It's a nice set. I can also now mine mithril, which is pretty exciting. Whenever I read the word, I hear Gimli's voice in my ears. Haha. I'm such a dork.

Rotag: The last toon I spent some time with this weekend is Rotag, my Draenei pally tank. Well, will be tank, one day. After realizing how much fun engineering is with Waradwenne, I decided that it would be a good skill for him to have. Rotaan can feed him some armor and weapons, and Rotag can keep his eyes locked on those beautiful tanking goggles (which will probably be obsolete by the time he gets there, but who cares?

pretty purple pox pictures

2008-05-22T11:09:00.024-04:00

I'm too far behind in posting to give you all full recaps, I fear, but here are some pictures from our last few weeks of adventures. I hope you enjoy them!

From the first time we poked our heads into the Scarlet Monestary a few weeks back: Look! The mobs are red! Well, orangish-red, at least...

Good ol' Azshir the Sleepless. I think I'll have that necklace, thank you very much.

Oh noes! A wipe!

Eat hot death, Ironspine! And we'll take that chestpiece while we're at it!

How do the Forsaken sleep in these things?

Running around the next week. How fierce is Harisan with that sword? Rawr!

Uh-oh. Resistance is futile!

I said...

Running off into the sunset.

Back to the Kraul for some guano.

Overwhelmed! Well, almost...

How cute is that felpuppy?

Window shopping. I don't think I'm wearing this outfit without the tabard!

Back into the Library. Eat it, Locksey!

Firedancer!

Doan!

Dead.

'dwenne and her pets. Aren't they cute?

How's this dress? Shexy, yes?

We hit that Library so hard it got fogged over!

Night, night!

more podcast goodness

2008-05-22T11:05:00.001-04:00

(Again, cross-posted from my /afk blog, because there's some nice gaming podcasts in here for y'all.)

Item the first: Go donate to the Maximumfun.org Maximum Fun Drive. Do it! Be like all the cool kids (and me)!

Item the second: I found a new knitting blog to add to my reader, if only because of the title (well, the content looks cool, too): The A.D.D. Knitter. Hurray, knitting! Hurray, AD...wait, what was I talking about?

Item the third: New podcasts to try, from friends' suggestions and the depths of my memory! Here's some updates to my previous list (which I promise to fill in with linkage in the next day or so):
- The Savage Love-cast
- Shut Up. We're Talking.
- Witty Ranter
- You Look Nice Today (recommended personally by his awesomeness, Jesse Thorn)
- Cast On
- Sticks and String
- Y Knit
- Stash and Burn
- It's a Purl, Man
- News from Lake Woebegone
- Car Talk
- NPR: Hidden Kitchens
- QN (formerly known as Quirky Nomads)
- A Brobdingnagian Minute
- Marc Gunn's Irish and Celtic Music Podcast
- And how could I forget retroCRUSH, the Podcast?

That'll keep you busy for a few days, eh?

N.B.: I haven't yet listened to many of these, but they're recommended by people I like and whose taste I generally approve of. Just saying. YMMV.

podcast suggestions

2008-05-21T10:42:00.000-04:00

(crossposted from my /afk blog, sciencemonkey.net)

Hey, gang. I need some advice from y'all. I b0rked my iTunes library the other day and am having to reload everything. Since I'm going through and resubscribing to all of my podcasts, I figured I'd take this chance to see if there are any that you'd recommend that I'm missing. So...what'cha listening to?

So far, here's my list:
- This American Life
- NPR: Science Friday
- NPR: Sunday Puzzle
- NPR: Wait, wait...
- alt.NPR: What Would Rob Do?
- All the awesome stuff from maximumfun.org (Jordan Jesse Go, The Sound of Young America, TSOYA Classics, Coyle & Sharpe, Kasper Hauser, and The College Years)
- The Instance
- Cory Doctorow's Podcast
- How I WoW
- EFF Linenoise
- Radio Free Burrito
- Radio Lab
- Krulwich on Science
- retroCRUSH

What am I missing?

announcement

2008-05-20T14:14:00.002-04:00

Ahem! May I have your attention, please? I would like to say CONGRATULATIONS to my friend and (hopefully) yours, Ess, for having the Blog of the Week on this week's Shut Up We're Talking. Ess is an excellent author and gamer and an all-around awesome person, and I'm proud as hell to call her my friend.

Three cheers for Ess! Hip hip hooray! Hip hip hooray! Hip hip hooray!

alternative post

2008-05-19T17:26:00.003-04:00

I can't believe how behind I am in posting. Well, not behind, as there aren't deadlines or schedules or what have you, other than self-imposed. Feh.

Waradwen: I've been playing a lot of my alts lately. I've done a little raiding with Wara in Karazhan, but not much else with him. Some dailies, I guess, and am pushing exalted with the Shattered Sun, so that's nice. I'm tired of the dailies and usually only do a few each day to support my modest raiding habits.

Waradwenne: Awesome fun with the Poxers, as usual. The past few weeks we have torn up the Scarlet Monestary Graveyard and done a bunch of running around, filling out class quests. I have lots of screenshots that I will someday get posted, but probably not before tomorrow's adventures. I have my felpuppy now and we're anxious to start pushing deeper into the Library. We got through half of the Library a few weeks ago but were pretty overpowered by the large groups of mobs post-Locksey. This week they're going down. Woo! And Arcanist Doan is going to drop his robes! Umm. That didn't sound right.

I've also swapped 'dwenne's professions around. She had been doing mining to make some money, but since I don't play her much other than on Pox Nights I never did much leveling. So I dropped mining and picked up engineering, which is pretty awesome. Not having a rogue (or other engineer) we've been passing all of the locked chests, and I'm looking forward to my first seaforium charge. Heheheheh. Plus, there's some really cool headgear coming up soon...

Rotaan: Most of my game time lately has been with Rotaan and I'm starting (starting) to get a feel for playing a warrior. I'm getting better about remembering which move to use when, etc., and am having a heck of a lot of fun with him. Rotaan's up to level 26 and I'm currently leveling him as an Arms warrior. I started with Fury but am having more success with a big, two-hand weapon, so Arms seems to fit better. I'm having some trouble figuring out just where to be leveling, as this is my first real Alliance character, but I'm starting to get the hang of it. I spent a couple nights banging my head against the Wetlands before discovering Redridge Mountains which was so much more appropriate for my skills. I'm back to Wetlands now and am starting to plot where to go next...maybe somewhere on Kalimdor? That'd be fun to see as an Alliance toon.

I'm also looking forward to (but am very nervous about) tanking my first instance with Rotaan. I ran Deadmines with an overpowered guild group a few weeks ago (whence the Rolling Pin of Doom) but not as the tank. I think that's the next thing I really need to do. I just picked up a ton of Gnomer quests late last night, so maybe...no. That's probably not a best choice for first tanking experience. I never did the Deadmines quests, so I should probably go back and pick those up. Easy XP, baby.

Miscellany: Sidhe Devils are awesome. I had one of the most fun evenings just farting around on Friday night thanks to my awesome new guildies, as well as an older friendship that I'm getting to develop more lately. Oh, and the tastiness of a few Honey Moon Summer Ales. (Not my favorite beer ever, but certainly decent and enjoyable.)

fishy dwarf

2008-05-04T21:40:00.001-04:00

OPP: the second P is for Purple Poxers

2008-04-24T09:00:00.022-04:00

The missing P is a typo.

Another week, another dungeon down. Last night the Purple Poxers tore up Razorfang Kraul, making us an undefeated 5-0 against dungeons this season. As is becoming usual, we had no deaths. We did, however, break a sweat at one point when we aggroed an entire room of level 26 and 27 elites, but even they couldn't bring us down (although Daxe ran out of mana towards the very end). Let's see some of the highlights!

Here we are, about to take out the first boss of the instance, Aggem Thorncurse.

And here he is, 30 seconds later, dead.

Next? Why it's boss number 2, Death Speaker Jargba. It's hard to tell in this picture, but I'm dancing on his corpse, to avenge the bullying he and his thugs used to do to poor Cait.

Another boss...

This was just after killing the giant pig boss. Somebody skinned him before I could grab the picture, but you can see the hole where he used to be.

Oh! Look who makes an appearance! The Blind Hunter!

You should've stayed home, man.

And the last boss, about to go down.

Here's the most frustrating part of this instance. Although we were clearing it handily, we were still too low a level to do some of the quests! Srsly!

Ah, our most difficult fight. See all of the mobs in this room? We're about to be attacked by them all. (Plus, isn't that a nice shot of Daxe's rear? Meow!)

Of course, we survived. Them? Not so much.

After tearing through the escort quest and discovering that the tuber collection quest was bugged (it wouldn't let any of us open the tubers! Maybe we were too low a level, eh?), we decided to try to get Harisan the nice helm that the second boss drops. No luck the second kill, but on the third? Jackpot!

Time to hearth and do some training!

See you guys next week, when we start reclaiming Gnomeregan from the troggs!

warrior woes

2008-04-23T13:43:00.002-04:00

Leveling a warrior is tough, man! Little Rotaan is up to level 14 and it has been tough slogging so far. I'm getting better at pulling single mobs away from a group (hurray for cheap guns!) but still have trouble when I get swarmed by more than about three comparable-level mobs. Oh well. Practice, practice, practice, I suppose. Or as a guildie recommended, I need to go to another zone and try some green-level quests for the time being.

in which our hero blathers on...

2008-04-21T11:30:00.005-04:00

...about his new main guild, Kiss My Murlock.

You guys are seriously awesome. Congrats on the first ever full clear of Kara! I wish I could have been around more this weekend but I'm so proud of you. I hear the drums calling us from ZA and I'm looking forward to spending more time with you guys.

...about his new alliance alt and associated guild.

I'm a total follower sometimes and have joined BBB and Cassieann's new guild, Sidhe Devils, on Kael'thas. Having always rolled Horde, I've been feeling an itch to explore the Alliance side of the game. I've recently learned about how important the social aspects of the game are to me, so when I read the announcement it really scratched my itch nicely. I've rolled a dwarf warrior named Rotaan (there's a story, naturally, but probably not one worth sharing). It's really odd talking in guild chat and seeing this "other," non-Wara-prefixed name speaking in my voice. I'm starting to get used to it, but it's still a little disconcerting. "Who is this guy, and why is he saying what I'm saying?"

So far, I'm really enjoying the dwarf story. I like the snowy wilderness that we start in and I think Ironforge is really cool. I'm totally lost, still, but have gotten good about flipping between the map and where I'm running. QuestHelper has been a blessing, too.

A few more words about the guild, before I forget. It's awesome. I'm still a little starstruck when BBB or Cassieann are on but they've been nothing but kind and friendly and funny. In fact, BBB made one of the worst puns I've heard in a long time the other day. There's another guild member with the exact same first name as me (a rarity, at least in these parts) and the same first half of his last name, and we were chatting about how to translate our names. "Hegge" roughly translates to "rocky" and I thought that "stad" roughly translated to "land" -- so my last name would mean rocky land, which is quite appropriate for the town we came from -- but my alter ego informed me that "stad" actually means "city" from the old Norwegian. So, rocky city. After which BBB interjects, "Philadelphia." Huh? Oh. Rocky city. Not rocky, Rocky. /golfclap, sir. You win this round, but I'll get you yet.

There are also a bunch of Poxers in the guild and I'm having a blast spending time with them. One of my regrets about the way the Pox Arcanum project is going is that we've become a little insular in our groups and we don't get a chance to spend a lot of time with the other groups. I know it's mostly due to the innate difficulties with scheduling but it make me a little sad. And now, here's a chance to hang out with them! Hurray!

...about the new dailies.

Honestly, I'm split. I like the diversity of the dailies and really like that there are some that benefit gatherers and fishermen, rather than just kill-10-of-these-dudes, but they're not very stimulating. Especially when you do them day after day after day. Consequently, I'm not. I'm doing enough of them to keep me supplied for raids and keep all of my armor sets well-repaired, but that's about it. If there's a little extra I might try to upgrade a gem or two, but I'm not doing enough dailies for there to be much extra.

My typical routine is to do the Outland quests three or four days a week, then go to the Isle of QQ once or twice a week. This seems to work okay. The Outland dailies are enough to meet my monetary demands easily, so the rest is gravy. I tend to do the Nether Residue quest by skinning clefthoofs in Nagrand, so I've built up a few nice stacks of Thick Clefthoof Leather and Heavy Knothide Leather which will be useful for either myself or other crafters.

As for the Isle, phooey. I do them occasionally, but find them very boring. I'm not in a huge hurry to build my Shattered Sun rep but am already at Revered, even with my casual play. I picked up [K'iru's Presage] to replace my current healy mace ([The Essence Focuser]) and love the [Naaru Rations], but otherwise...*shrug*.

...about his gear.

Nothing terribly exciting to report. I grabbed an [Ember Skyfire Diamond] for my beautiful new helmet. I also got my bracers enchanted (Greater Intellect) and have the mats for most of what else I want.

belated weekend update, continued: Saturday

2008-04-16T17:18:00.000-04:00

Saturday's Kara run almost, *almost* didn't go off, and not because we were short a healer. You won't believe me when I say it, but we were short DPS. DPS! Everybody wants to DPS! Fortunately we were able to find a priest from another guild (the guild leader, in fact) and we were off, just a little bit late.

First stop, Prince. Trash clearing went very smoothly and after a few minutes of stratigizing, we were good. In we go to Netherspace, position an imp at a certain mystical spot (not sure why, actually), and after his next patrol we were off. As soon as the tank started running to his position I noticed that one of my group-mates, another DPS-er, disappeared. D'oh! I assumed that the raid leader was going to call off the attempt, but he didn't and we hit Prince hard. The tank did an amazing job holding Prince and we poured on the damage. The infernals fell fortuitously and we got that bastard down to 2%. Two percent! With only nine of us! Unfortunately, his axes went nuts about then and chopped us all down. We ran back, found another DPS to replace the still-missing guy, and tried again, twice. During the second attempt the infernals fell almost directly on top of us each time, and we had some bad falls the third attempt. By that time we were getting fatigued, I think, so we decided to go back to the other targets, then maybe come back at the end of the night.

Next: Netherspite. This was a pretty straight-forward fight. I got assigned the blue beam for half of a round which was pretty cool. I didn't see the giga-crits for uber damage that I was led to believe I would see, but maybe I missed them. It was hard keeping track of what was hitting where and when. I really need to get WoWWebStats running so I can go back and figure out how to improve. I know I need to get better about using and swapping my trinkets, but I'm sure there's other ways to improve my damage output.

Next up, dragon number 2: Nightbane. What an amazingly fun fight! There was so much going on that I didn't get many screenshots until the end, which I'll share with you when I get home. It's a nice picture of me, dead, watching the last 1% of Nightbane's health drain out. It seems to be a recurring theme for me in boss fights, that I die just before the very end of the fight. What a pain. All that time I'm lying there, dead, I know I could be pumping out more Starfires. Hell, even Moonfires at that point. Why conserve mana when the boss is at 2%? I die so freaking fast, though, that I hardly even notice before I'm dead. Hmm. In loot news, Llanion finally got his [Stonebough Jerkin], so grats to him!

By this point we're all fired up and full of ourselves, so we race back upstairs to try Prince again. This time the fight is almost a piece of cake. We get reasonably-placed elemental drops (that is, we didn't get the two elementals that surrounded the tank, like in an earlier fight), and we blast through Phase 3 before the axes do too much damage. Hurray! Prince is dead! So here comes the minor drama.

[Helm of the Fallen Defender] drops. We had been joking all run that this would drop, so our tank could get his Tier 4 helm. I had forgotten that this could represent *my* Tier 4 helm, too. There's two other druids, me, and our warrior tank who could use it. Two of the druids pass immediately; they're happy with their current helms and the drops they've already gotten this run. And I'm torn. Two things are clear to me. 1) We only go as far as our tank takes us; if he's undergeared, we don't go far. 2) I want that helm. By guild loot rules, it's mine. I'm a main, he's on an alt. He's got an epic helm already -- one of the ones crafted from engineering, I think -- and I'm in a blue. A decent blue, to be sure, but this would be a significant upgrade. And I'm now torn. Can I take this drop, knowing how rare tank drops have been in the past? Who am I? I'm new to the guild. The tank has been in the guild for a long time, and is actually one of the acting GLs while the regular GLs are on a hiatus. Nobody else wants to venture an opinion. I keep trying to convince the tank to roll for the helm. That seems reasonable to me. We've both got a claim to the drop and it represents an upgrade for both of us. What would you do if you couldn't decide between two druids? You'd roll, right? He keeps refusing to roll and eventually gives in, citing the loot rules. He's on an alt, I'm on a main. So now I've got this awesome helm and feel absurdly guilty. Am I a loot whore? I sure hope not. I'll probably feel guilty until he ends up getting it, assuming he does.

That wraps up the adventures for Saturday night. When I got back to Kara there was an announcement that somebody had just defeated Kael'thas (the real one, not the Sunwell one) and so there was a buff to Sha'tar rep and damage done in Tempest Keep. I tried to organize a Bot run but we couldn't find a tank. After asking around for a little while and getting no takers, I realized how late it was and decided to turn in. A waste of the buff, but I really didn't want to PuG a tank. DPS I could possibly tolerate, but not a tank. It just seems like a recipe for frustration.

/cast Rebirth (Rank 6)

2008-04-16T15:49:00.002-04:00

Breaking news! It's a banner week in the world of moonkin blogs! Two of my favorite blogs, the main two blogs that led me into the joys of the boomkin, are back on the scene!

First back was Confessions of a Part-Time Panzerkin, which was very exciting in and of itself. This is the first blog I found that described how to think about being a Panzerkin, an experiment I'm still itching to try. Plus, he's got the coolest blog tag I've seen in a long while. "Holds Aggro. Will Travel. Wire Panzerkin, Shattrath City." Awesome.

And today, joy of joys!, Laser Chicken is back! Delos was extremely helpful in my late-60's and learning the game post-70, so it's quite a thrill to see that he's back. Plus he's got a new ley-deh friend who is also a WoW blogger. He may never see the light of day again, poor guy.

If you don't read either of these blogs, ~~I'm going to smack you over the head~~ I'd recommend that you start. Now!

Um, part two of my overly-detailed review of the weekend's adventures will come in a little bit. I know I promised it to you yesterday, but, well, yeah. That's how I am. :-)

belated weekend update: Friday

2008-04-15T09:20:00.006-04:00

The guild I'm in is relatively small (but growing!) so we just have one Kara run per week, with a couple of people swapping toons depending on the fight. Consequently, we break it up into three parts: a Wednesday run for the lower bosses (Attumen, Moroes, Maiden and possibly the beast boss or Opera, depending on how the group is feeling); a Friday run for the first half of the upper bosses (Opera, Curator, Shade, and Chess); and a Saturday run for the big boys (Nightbane, Netherspite, Prince, and Illhoof). Because of Pox Arcanum coolness, I can't run with the group on Wednesday, but I've gotten to run probably three of the last four Fridays. The couple of Saturday runs I was scheduled for didn't go off for want of a healer.

Friday: Kara (Opera through Chess)

The Wednesday run had gone according to plan, so Opera was first up. Romulo and Julienne. Hella-fun. The first two phases were cake. We had a few problems with interrupting Julienne's heals on the third phase (she kept resisting, apparently!), but eventually got them both down. Hurray! I died once, I think, but got battle rezed and was able to get back into the fight.

Next up, Curator, which was a harder fight this time than the first time I did it, for whatever reason. I guess we had less DPS on the sparks (whatever they're actually called), so I ended up using Moonfire more than I might have otherwise liked and was essentially out of mana for the last bit of the fight. I actually kept getting aggro from the sparks, so I even melee-ed (if that's a word) them a little, to build up some minor mana. It's my inner panzerkin wanting to come out, I think.

Shade. Shade was probably the most straight-forward and easiest fight of the night. Everybody was awesome about not moving during the flame wreath (and I remembered the lesson learned from my first fight, that battle rez counts as moving, so I was patient and fought the urge to rez one of our healers until the flame wreath was gone) and I could actually see the blizzards easier, so no worries there. We took him out mere moments after the polymorph phase.

Last was Chess, which was pretty unremarkable. I still don't quite get it -- it feels very random to me -- but it's a nice break after a night of fighting.

In summary, a very fun night in the tower. I think I died twice during the whole night, so that's not too bad, and we one-shot all of the bosses. Well, I guess technically we two-shot Opera, because we did the somebody-get-naked-and-find-out-what-it-is thing, but we dropped them the first time we were actually all there. ~~No loots for me~~ I forgot! From Shade, I got [Boots of the Infernal Coven]. I also got eight Badges which are nothing to sneeze at.

After Kara, a few of us were still sufficiently awake to run another dungeon, so we went to Old Hillsbrad. Former healer turned jack-of-all-trades Llanion has figured out a pretty sweet build for himself that allows him to heal in Kara, DPS as necessary, and learn to panzerkin, so he wanted to test his skills on a moderately challenging instance. It went pretty well, to be honest. I stole aggro from him a few times (unintentionally, I swear, Llan!) but overall it went very smoothly. I even got the [Ravenwing Pauldrons] for my healing set which look hella-awesome.

Next post: Saturday's unbelievably fun destruction of the upper bosses, including the Prince.

awesomest kara run yet

2008-04-13T10:08:00.004-04:00

I'll post more details later, but I wanted to share a picture and some quick news with y'all. Last night KMM went into upper Kara and took out Nightbane, Netherspite, and Prince. We one-shot the dragons which was hella-sweet. Prince was a little more...interesting. We got him, though, and he dropped the [Helm of the Fallen Defender] token which I got! I tried to force one of our tanks (who is also the co-GL but was on an alt) to roll for it, but he muttered something about looting rules and alts versus mains and I ended up with it. What a swell guy. Seriously. This whole guild is really awesome and I'm having a really good time playing with them.

Enough sap. I raced back to Shattrath to exchange the token for the [Antlers of Malorne] and there was much rejoicing! And not only because that fugly blue thing can now rest in the bank for a while...

On the left I'm wearing my new regular shoulders (the [Wyrmhide Spaulders]) and on the right I'm wearing my new healing shoulders, the [Ravenwing Pauldrons].

Oh, and before I forget! After the boss kills last night I had enough badges to buy the [Idol of the Unseen Moon]. I probably should have saved up for the trinket but, as I've said before, I'm a serious spendthrift. Only one green remaining!

threepeat

2008-04-11T14:18:00.005-04:00

How many groups of five players do you know of that can run SFK three times in three hours, killing all of the bosses and the vast majority of the trash? I can name one, myself, the Purple Poxers.

We took last week off due to some personal stuff but came back last night with a vengance. As the others have already mentioned, we did get together on Tuesday night for some class-quest festivities, which was a lot of fun but not quite the same fun as tearing down an instance has become. There was a lot of running around which doesn't do this orc's feet much good at all. Not all of us have those hooves, Madja. :-)

But last night was pure Purple Poxing pleasure. I went in with hopes of getting through SFK about one and a half times. I figured we would clear it in a few hours, then get to the second boss before our three hours were up. Man, was I wrong. We started about 7 eastern and killed Arugal a little after 8. And a little after 9. And just before 10. Three full runs in three hours. [Feline Mantle]s for all of the casters. Thrice sharded [Odo's Ley Staff]. A [Bloody Apron] for me (my first blue! and I even won the roll! Nevermind that nobody else rolled...). A [Belt of Arugal] for me (legitimately won on a roll!) and for Mr. Ess (I think, or did Daxe get the second? I don't remember). Some nice tanking stuff ([Rift Bracers] and [Fenrus' Hide]). And lots of [Mutton Chop]s. We must look like an 1880's barbershop quintet, given all the mutton chops we're sporting.

We had a slightly rough start, when I accidentally pulled the first few mobs after ridding the world of a plague-ridden Black Rat. Apparently they took offense, but we handled them easily. In fact, all three runs were fast and smooth. No wipes; in fact, I don't think we had any deaths at all. Harisan's tanking was superb and consecrate made short work of multiple-mob pulls. In fact, I think the most difficult part was targeting the next mob to fall, we were killing them so quickly.

We did the first two runs with my lovely pyromaniacal imp, then I thought I'd let my newly acquired succubus get some practice. She did reasonably well, but I don't think she did as much damage as the imp did. She'll be more useful when I get a few more levels and can train seduction and provide a little CC. Until then, we'll let Ababis bring the high heat, I think.

The plan for next week is to stick our heads underneath the water and plumb the Blackfathom Deeps. Skimming through the loots, I'm not sure that this is an instance we'll want to farm, but we may want the extra experience from a second run. And then we'll be off to the Kraul and Gnomer!

On a more personal note, I'd just like to say publicly how much fun I'm having with this group and this experiment. Ess, you're a very clever lady for coming up with this idea. I think I'm actually having more fun than I imagined that I could, when we first started organizing the groups. We've got a great group of people who are simultaneously serious about wanting to play well and blitheringly silly, which makes being online with them a treat. Pox nights are totally full of win.

Others' views:

Daxe

Harisan

Ess (when's Mr. Ess going to start blogging anwyay, Madj?)

weekend update: MrT, fishing

2008-04-07T13:11:00.004-04:00

So much fun this past weekend, so little blogging. Whoops. :-D

I took Friday night off as Mrs. Wara didn't have to work at the hospital overnight, and we saw a movie. 21. Pretty fun. Not great, but worthwhile. I never did like the main character...actually, I largely disliked him. Impossibly good MCAT score and you can't figure out how to get a loan for med school? Really? Dumbass.

Saturday night was supposed to be a return to the raiding, but it sadly didn't materialize. The guild had an awesome Friday run and downed Prince, so we were faced with Illhoof, Netherspite, and Nightbane. Tough fights. Additionally, I think that the guild currently stands at having downed 11/12 Kara bosses, with only Illhoof remaining, so I was really excited about the chance to be involved in a guild-first kill. Unfortunately, we were a healer short and the GL called the raid. So what to do with nine raiders on a Saturday night? Why, let's go take a peek at Magister's Terrace.

Holy crap is that ever a hard instance! Our group was a warrior tank, me (boomkin DPS), a hunter, a rogue, and a resto druid for heals, all heroic- and Kara-equipped, and we got our asses handed to us. Hard. In about two hours we got through two bosses and wiped about five times. All of our wipes were on trash. The bosses were pretty quick and fun fights -- at least the two that we saw -- but the trash pulls were seriously hard. I actually had a really good time...it was almost nice to be challenged that much. Almost. I got to off-tank on a few pulls (panzerkin ftw!) and was able to prevent a couple of wipes after our healer went down by either getting him rezed and innervated or by taking over healing duties.

I spent Sunday relaxing and recovering from Saturday's violence. I was up early Sunday morning, so I ripped through about ten dailies and blew a bunch of money on the AH. All I need now is the seven and I'll have my [Lunacy Deck] completed. I'm also stocked up on raid consumables ([Flask of Blinding Light], [Superior Wizard Oil]) for another couple of weeks, which is nice.

Sunday evening I spent some time leveling my fishing and was rewarded with a [Weather-Beaten Journal] on my last cast of the day. Seriously, my last one. I had been fishing for about and hour, had more than a full stack of [Zangarian Sporefish] (to make into my new favorite buff food, [Blackened Sporefish]) and was going to call it a night, but had another two minutes on my lure. "Here, there's some Steam Pump Flotsam...let's go try that..." Woo hoo! Now all the schools of fish show up as little yellow dots on my minimap, so I won't have to fly all around the lake to find the next Sporefish School. Very nice.

I also picked up one new piece of gear this weekend. I grabbed the [Wyrmhide Spaulders] from the Cenarion Expedition, a slight improvement over my [Dreamer's Shoulderpads]. Hurray for more stamina and intelligence! Plus, the new shoulders look like turtle shells, which amuses me greatly. One of these days I'll get around to farming Capacitus for the [Lunar-Claw Pauldrons] (or maybe we'll get into Gruul's Lair and I'll get those lovely [Pauldrons of Malorne]? Hmm?)

looking at a new build

2008-03-31T09:38:00.004-04:00

Now that I've got all of this dope balance gear, I'm thinking about respeccing a little. While I love (love) boomkining around, my guild really seems to need heals. In fact, our Kara run on Saturday didn't happen for want of another healer.

I know the obvious answer is to respec to Tree (tree is 4 fite!), but 'dwen is my only serious source of money and materials and I'm afraid it'll be too tough to farm without balance talents. When I tried Tree before I could hardly kill the Skettis birds without having to eat and drink after every. Single. One. And that was no fun at all.

So how about a Restokin 34/0/27 build? While eating breakfast this morning I read about two specs on WoWWiki, one based on healing touch and the other based on HoTs. I'm inclined to try the HoT-based build, since that's what I'd be doing if/when I go fully to tree. Hmmm...

EDITED TO ADD: Hawesome resto druid Llanion has suggested his flavor of Restokin build, which I'm seriously leaning towards, primarily because it lets me pick up Subtlety. Wara w/o Subtlety = aggro magnet. Srsly.

gotta get a better hat

2008-03-30T21:35:00.003-04:00

Three cheers for Patch 2.4! Because I can now by Primal Nethers on the AH (only ~70 gold each, less than what I expected!), I have now finished my Windhawk Set!

Now I really need a better hat. Although I kinda like the antlers, the blue isn't working for me...

+3 bosses, +2 purps

2008-03-29T16:36:00.003-04:00

A brief note about last night's adventures.

I went in to Kara last night with a great crew from KMM. I missed the first night of the raid, Wednesday, because of Pox Arcanum festivities, but that's no matter. They only got to Attumen and Midnight before having to call it a night, so we had many, many bosses ahead of us.

The first boss was Moroes, which was a hell of a fun fight. We had three sets of shackles, so controlling most of the dinner guests wasn't too terrible. In fact, we were able to one-shot him, probably due to the good cc available. I got garroted once (whee!) but we managed to take him down before we all died. For dessert, Moroes dropped the [Brooch of Unquenchable Fury], which I won on a roll. Woot! I never win rolls!

Next up was Maiden, which was a harder fight. The first time, I got hit immediately by holy fire and died before I knew what was happening. The second time we did better, wiping after getting her to around 30%, I think. The third time, however, we took that bitch down. The first half of the fight was slow, and I kept getting silenced by that repentance thing. As I usually do for boss fights, I was mostly using starfire and trying to keep insect swarm up to conserve mana, but when she hit 40% and I was at nearly full mana, I said to myself, "fuck it," and started spamming her with moonfire and wrath. For her last 5% of health, I was moonfiring her like mad. She died (thud!) and dropped the [Mitts of the Treemender]! The resto druid in the group already had them and I was the only other leather wearer, so hurray! More of a healy item, I realize, but still better than the PVP blues I had just picked up at Thrallmar. Plus, gem slots, so today I picked up a [Sparkling Star of Elue] for +8 spirit and a [Dazzling Talasite] for +4 int, +2 MP5. Those gems should be useful for both DPS and healing. If I end up getting a token for T4 gloves sometime, I'll reconsider, but for now they're nice.

The last event of the night was Opera. Our mage had to leave after Maiden, so there was much joking about us getting Oz. Naturally, we did. As we were prepping, one of the healers kept saying that the kill order was "Dorothy > Tito > War > Straw > Tin." Wait. War? Me? Umm...yeah. He meant Roar, of course, but I was still amused when after we burned down Dorothy and Tito, Roar aggro locked on me and just would not let go. I would stop hitting him and bring him towards the tanks, but then if I even looked at him funny he'd come charging after me. Oh well. I spent the rest of the fight face-down on the stage, watching helplessly as they avenged my death, then took out the remaining bosses. Annoying, but still a fun fight. Our guest priest (who was awesome at removing the holy fire debuffs during the third attempt on Maiden) got the [Blue Diamond Witchwand], and I think we melted the other item. Pally shoulders, maybe? I'm not really sure.

Sadly, by that time it was after 1 eastern (we didn't start until about 9:30 due to a RL problem) and our hunter had to leave. We dithered around for another half hour trying to get a DPS replacement, but it was not meant to be. Tonight, Curator, Shade and Chess, at least. Mmm...more badges...

new belt

2008-03-23T23:20:00.004-04:00

As I've mentioned before, I'm a bit of a spendthrift. So, when I have the money to buy something that I want, it's really hard for me to resist. After last night's Kara festivities, I had enough badges to buy a primal nether and make myself the [Windhawk Belt]. Woot!

UPDATE: I logged on early this morning and picked up a couple of gems for this beauty. I grabbed a [Great Dawnstone] for the yellow socket (mmm...+hit) and a [Jagged Talasite] for the blue socket.

Kara <3 Moonkins

2008-03-23T17:26:00.004-04:00

First, a brief guild update. After much thought and consideration, I'm now a nooblit in Kiss My Murlock. I wasn't going to rush into another guild, but the thought of being guildless at 70 didn't seem very appealing, and this group looks like a great fit for me. I have a dear friend who is already an officer in the guild, so I'm looking forward to getting to play with her more, and frequent commenter and resto blogger Llanion is also a member. Plus, they're fun, casual, and seem to be pretty mature and cool and stuff. I played in-game-mail tag with the current gl and finally caught up with him on Saturday. I'm pretty excited.

Last night Mrs. Wara was asleep, so I was screwing around online. Big surprise, right? Just as I'm trying to figure out what I wanted to do for the evening -- I was thinking about trying to round up a group for Arcatraz...I have like a half-dozen quests in there -- the Kara run starts getting organized. And they need DPS. Guess who's got four hooves and got to go DPS last night? That's right! This guy! I had a fantastically wonderful time and got some freaking awesome loots, which I was seriously not expecting.

The group had already started the Kara run for the week, so the first boss fight was Curator. Having never been there, I spent a few minutes pouring over the WoWWiki entry, had a very nice description from Llanion about what was expected, then we burned him down. Somehow I ended up budgeting my mana just right and was about to go oom when he went down. I need to get better at using my trinkets, but overall I'm pleased with how I did. And guess what he dropped? The [Staff of Infinite Mysteries]. And they gave it to me! Holy freaking crap! Now I really do need to focus on getting the major spellpower enchant mats together, 'cause I'm keeping this bad boy for quite a while, I think. Woo!

The next boss was Shade, which was a tougher fight. It wasn't hard, there was just a lot going on. I died twice on our first attempt, first when I couldn't tell where the blizzard was, then when we all wiped. Someone was battle-rezzed during the flame wreath and that seems to have set it off. But that's okay. The second attempt went stupid-fast and we burned him down before he got to the polymorph phase, which has apparently never happened before in the guild. Yay! He dropped a set of paladin shoulders (and we had no pallys) and [Aran's Soothing Sapphire]. Which they give to me for my healing set! Holy freaking crap, again! The healers (who were incredible, btw) already had it (or better), and the other boomkin didn't want it, so I got it. I really almost couldn't take it. If anybody else had shown any interest whatsoever, I would have gladly passed, but nobody did and they didn't want to d/e when I could use it, so...I did decide then that I was passing on anything else. How could I take so much from this group, when I've been a member for less than a day?

By this point it was getting late, but I we were awake and excited enough to go do the Chess event and get a few more shineys. On the way to Chess, Kara opened her heart again to the boomkins and dropped the [Ring of Unrelenting Storms] off of a trash mob. Happily there was another boomkin who could use it, because I really don't think I could have taken it. Three epics in one night, on my first run in Kara with a new guild? Nope. Impossible. Two epics was too improbable already.

Chess was...odd. I took an orc wolf and had fun tearing up the other side's casters, but I really don't understand what happened. At any rate, we won and got some more loots for our hard work. By the end of the night I had my two beautiful new pieces of equipment, my [Violet Signet] for hitting friendly with the Violet Eye, and six more [Badge of Justice]. Not a bad first night at all, huh?

a quick question

2008-03-22T12:44:00.002-04:00

Do any of you have advice about Vent servers? We've been using the in-game chat for Pox Arcanum and it seems to work okay, but definitely is lacking. There seem to be tons of options out there, many of them quite reasonably priced, but do you have any experiences to share? Good or bad?

purple poxers punch pwailing pcaverns

2008-03-20T09:41:00.003-04:00

Wednesday, in the depths of the Wailing Caverns, the Purple Poxers laid the smack down. We came to kick ass and eat Savory deviate delight, and we did not disappoint. Led by the all-Kalimdor paladin tank Harisan, the Purples tore through all of the caverns, killing all of the Lords of the Fang and collecting many deviate hides, wailing essences, and serpentblooms.

I started the evening as level 16, as I mentioned last week, only one kill away from hitting that next level. Before I even hit that level, though, I got some nifty loot. Salindiar camped a vendor somewhere in the Barrens and bought out his supply of [Wise Man Belt]s, which he very awesomely shared with me. Woot! Combined with my [Seer's Robe], I looked stunning, if I do say so myself. I think Sal might have been flirting with me, sending me that belt, but let's not tell Madja that. Besides, Madja's really more my type. Mmm...cowgirl.

Anyway, we all met up at the Crossroads and began our run to the Wailing Caverns. We were clever last week and collected all of the quests that we could, so we could just start right away in the dungeon. Our second kill of a deviate raptor got me the experience I needed to ding (woot!) and equip my lovely Simple Pearl Ring (gotta love that +hit!). Oh, and spend another talent point improving my imp. Our path into the dungeon was fine, except for my falling into a hole near the door. You'd think that this would teach me, but it didn't, as we'll see later. Despite my clumsiness, we were on our way into the dungeon.

The first few pulls were pretty straight-forward. Harisan did a rock-star-caliber job pulling the mobs and holding aggro, and Salad was all over the sheep. Um, not like that. Madj waggled her bear rear in the air and tore into the mobs with her ferocious claws, and Ababis and I hurled firey (and shadowy) death at the mobs until we forced them from this mortal coil. Daxe had our back, keeping us all alive and healthy, and even finding time to throw a few wand-bursts at the beasties from time to time. We were cruising our way to that roundabout part with all the raptors when I hit my first stumbling block. A crash. Stupid computer!

As quickly as I could, I closed the error windows and logged back in, to find that the other four Purples had done a fantastic job burning down the mobs without me. Phew. "At least it wasn't a boss fight," I muttered into voice chat, to the confusion of my friends. Yeah, so they didn't even notice I was gone. "Well, [the mobs] didn't go down quite as quickly," Daxe offered as a minor condolence. Heh.

Undaunted, we pushed forward and dropped group after group of raptors cleanly and efficiently. I don't know how many wipes of how many PuGs those raptors have caused in the past -- I know I've been in a few -- but we avenged their deaths and then some. The first two boss fights were almost anticlimactic, in fact, we were such a well-oiled killing machine. All of a sudden we all had two of the four jewels and Madja was rocking both the [Serpent's Shoulders] and the [Gloves of the Fang]. Actually, it was a good night for her...as the only leather-wearer, she ended up with, what, half a dozen blue pieces? Not bad. I'm hoping for similar drops when we get into SFK. There's lots of tasty blue caster drops in there!

The rest of the instance went just as well, with two exceptions. The first happened about halfway through, when a mob aggroed on us, then fell through the bottom of the world. "That was odd," say we, and we pressed forward, forgetting about the bugged guy. We were almost done with the next mob group when all of a sudden we aggroed the entire instance. At once. Despite our valiant fighting, we wiped, for only the second time ever. Not even my fault this time! Our best guess was that the mob somehow respawned at the entrance (or at that large roundabout area) and came for us, bringing all of his deviate friends. Feh. Corpse run.

The second time that something like this happened came about half an hour later. We were battling a few mobs somewhere (honestly, it's all a bit of a blur by this point) when all of a sudden we were charged by at least a half dozen adds. Good times, eh? Amazingly, impressively, we managed to beat them all back with only one death. The sheeps sheared Salindiar before we knew what was happening. Sigh. Harisan continued to do a fantastic job holding as many of the mobs as she could (which was basically all of them, all of the time) and kept marking, so we knew who to focus fire on. It was really awesome and a hell of a lot of fun.

This post is getting far too long and is way past deadline, so I'll try to wrap it up here. I think I've given you most of the flavor of the evening, except, perhaps, how much fun we had. I love this group of Purple Poxers. I can't believe that we walked into the Wailing Caverns as a bunch of just-dinged or about-to-ding level 17s and basically cleared it on our first run. Only one wipe, too, which probably wasn't even due to poor play or a mistake on someone's part (like my minion). We killed all of the Lords of the Fang, eradicated the Deviate menace, and collected bags full of Serpentbloom, Wailing Essences, and Deviate hides. I think we all got a couple levels of experience, too, and have either just dinged 19 or are about to. Not bad!

I think that the plan next week is to go back and do the escort quest which we didn't have time to run this week, and finish collecting the remaining stuff that everybody needs. It would be really awesome if we could get all these quests done in just two runs, wouldn't it? I'm hoping to be able to get some of that nice caster gear from SFK in a few weeks, but maybe we'll be too advanced by then! Ha!

moving on

2008-03-17T10:18:00.002-04:00

As I alluded to yesterday, I left Slack Attack this weekend. It's something that I've been thinking about for a long time now and wrote about...what...a couple of weeks ago? Something like that. It was a very difficult decision, but I think it's for the best.

So what does this mean for our favorite cow? PuGs, probably. Yikes. I actually hadn't considered that aspect of this decision. :-D I think I'll keep running my daily quests and run a few dungeons, to see what it's like as a mercenary boomkin. Maybe I'll figure out how to play feral and learn to tank. I'm also looking at a couple of guilds on Arathor, including one where a RL friend is an officer, but I'm not in a huge hurry. I want a group that's social and fun to spend time with, but has enough high-level characters to run heroic dungeons and possibly Kara. We'll see.

/cry a little

2008-03-16T09:14:00.002-04:00

purple wednesday

2008-03-13T08:12:00.011-04:00

I'm going to forgo the blow-by-blow narration of last night's Adventures of the Purple Pox and instead just share some pictures. If I were cool like Rabbit, I'd make it look like a comic book. But I'm not, alas.

Here we are, killing stuff in RFC. First, from our perspective...

Now, from the target's perspective...

Rebuffing. Dig Madja's green hooves!

This was going to be a nice close-up of Madja, but then she moved.

We did a lot of running in preparation for the WC quests. Go to the first oasis, back to XR, go to the second oasis, back to XR...

End of the night, dancing in Ratchet.

As usual, it was a really fun night. We have all of the quests for WC now and even finished the 99-Year-Old Port quest. Next week, WC decimation!

Oh, one last snippet of a picture to share with you. As of this morning (when I turned in the Hamuul Runetotem quest and picked up Leaders of the Fang), I am 99 XP away from level 17. Just 99! It was so tempting to go kill one raptor near XR, but I didn't. We'll see how well my willpower holds the rest of this week...

Edited to add last night's Quote of the Night: "My rear is sortof a mascot." - Madja

roflmao

2008-03-07T16:04:00.001-05:00

the F is for Farm

2008-03-06T09:19:00.008-05:00

Hey, guys! Ababis here, Waradwenne's favorite minion...or so I thought until last night. Sit, my friends, and let me tell you a sad tale of treachery and abandonment.

Last night's adventures started out well. Wara took me to a new place, which was way too pretty for my liking. There were some fires there, which are always nice, but they were more for decoration than actual burning. Stupid blood elves. What do they know about fires, anyway? Fortunately we didn't stay there long. Wara met up with her friends and we all went on a brisk jog to the south.

Wara's friends are okay, I guess, and she really seems to like them, but they don't let me do much. I get to cast like ONE fireball at a gnarly-looking spider before one of them slices off its head! Where's the fun in that? If we're going to kill something, why not make it suffer first? Right? Am I right, or am I right? Sigh.

Anyway, we run for a while (boring!) and even have to swim a little (the horrors!), to find a specific little cave on a specific island where we can kill this one dude. Let me tell you a secret about him: he's not so tough. Although I did get two fireballs off, I think he was dead by the time the second one hit him. That cow sure likes her moonfire. Mmmm...barbeque...sorry. Where was I? Oh yes.

With cave-man dead, we're off for more running, back to that horrible Silvermoon place. I swear I'd rather spend time with the TAUREN than there. Srsly! We run around a bit, Wara does some smelting which I like, 'cause we're near a forge, some magic happens, and we're done with that cursed placed. Our light-swinger can resurrect people (so I can kill them again, I think). It's back to Orgrimmar and into the Ragefire Chasm! But, before you get too excited, this is where our tale takes a sad turn.

I suffered through all of this running and swimming so that I could go kill those troggs underneath Orgrimmar. It's what I'm made for, baby! You know, back in high school they used to call me Ababis Troggburner. Really! I'm not making it up! Well, I might be making it up a little. Who are you to judge?

Anyway, back to The Betrayal. We go into the Chasm and kill a few troggs (joy!), and Wara replaces me! Puts ME on the bench in favor of that...that blueberry! Can you believe that? What a bitch! She didn't even apologize. She was just like, "Okay, impy, you're out." Not even a fake apology.

But, you want to hear a secret? C'mere...closer...I heard that old Konvhug wiped their entire party. Swear! He's going to blame Wara, I'll bet, but I know that he did it on purpose. Oh, wait...here he comes, so I'll let him finish the story, but believe me about the wipe. His fault. Totally.

I don't like this place.

Last night I was comfortably roaming around the Twisting Nether when I was rudely summoned to serve my mistress. I helped her and her friends kill some ugly troggs in that awful place full of fire, when something odd happened. My mistress and her companions were standing around, plotting how they were going to lay waste to the group of troggs ahead when she ordered me to go attack. Not one to question my mistress, I obeyed, and we were all quickly overwhelmed. Ah, death. How quiet.

Rest was not in my future, though, and I was soon re-summoned to serve at her side. This time our adventures were more successful, surprisingly, and we quickly killed everything in that horrid cave. My mistress and her companions were so pleased, in fact, that she didn't let me return to the Nether, and made me go back into the cavern once again. Again, we killed everything in sight efficiently, sending them to death's sweet embrace. My mistress and her companions seemed excited about some of the items that they stole from the dead corpses of our victims, but I care not about such things.

And now I return to the Nether, until I am summoned again.

Quote of the night: "No, this is the 'other' clockwise." - Salindar

purple poxic rashomon: Wara's view

2008-02-28T11:05:00.005-05:00

The recaps of the Purple Poxers Premiere are coming fast and furious, so I'd better get my account out there before it becomes completely redundant. Not that that would actually stop me, of course...

7:00 comes and I log on, having been home for perhaps half and hour and having wolfed down dinner. The other purples are on already and we congregate at the Orgrimmar bank, dancing and cheering that we're actually all online at the same time. A few tweaks and button-presses later, I hear new voices in my ears! It's Madja! And Daxe Fifth Avenue! And after a little more fumbling, they can hear me, too! Woot! I have an historic aversion to voice-activated mics (they seem to clip off the first syllable, but I haven't used one in years), so I used the push-to-talk feature. Most of the time I remembered to hit the button when I had something to say. :-D After a few minutes of mindless chatter and idling, Daxe took over leadership duties and moved us out. Here we are, running south of Org to kill some sailors. I haven't figured out how to take a picture of the front of us all when running...my camera rotates back, so most of my shots of us are from the rear. A setting somewhere, I suspect...

We were so unbelievably OP for this region it wasn't even funny. No, it actually was funny. Admittedly these guys were lower than our level, so any of us could have soloed the area, but they dropped like...huh. I don't know a good dropped like simile. They hit the ground like a prom dress? Close enough. I, in fact, could hardly even get my first DOT cast before they were dead. I need to change that macro, so that I cast Curse of Agony and Corruption first, so I can at least do a little damage. Immolate just takes too much time.

We breezed through the sailors, then wreaked havoc on the Razormanes, killing them so efficiently I couldn't keep count. We turned those quests in, then started the long run to Thunder Bluff so Madja could get her bear form. RAWR!

Of course, the run to TB took us through the Barrens, and we couldn't help but test our skills on some higher-level mobs. Level 12 raptors? Toast. Level 16 hyenas? No problem. Well, except for Daxe dying when a centaur and his two pets came up at the same time, and none of us noticed until it was too late. *sigh* Poor Daxe. A short corpse run later we were back on our way. We safely made it through Mulgore (which still feels like home, despite my playing an Orc now) and to TB. Much milling around ensued while Madja spirited off to commune with the Great Bear Spirit, or whatever. When she was done playing in the woods, we flew back to Camp T to finish her quest, and we had to kill a Moonkin! A Moonkin! I had forgotten! How horrible is that? I almost couldn't do it, but then realized that I was a lock now and should be unaffected by petty emotions. Burn, baby, burn!

After nomming on some fried chicken, guess what we saw. A level ?? (to me, at least) ~~thunder lizard~~ Thunderhead. Dare we? Of course we dare! And down went dino! I was actually a little surprised that we could do it -- most of my spells were resisted -- but we managed to bring it down. Madja wasn't even a high enough level skinner to take its hide as a trophy. How tragic is that?

A brief flight back to TB and Madja had her bear butt. No comments from me on the size. Dance, bear, dance!

Once these serious matters were attended to, we were back to Orgrimmar to start the RFC quest chains. Collecting all of those [Lieutenant's Insignia] took a good three or four clears of the Burning Blade's cave. While we were there we grabbed the tablet I needed to get my voidwalker and eventually collected all of the badges we needed. Gazz'uz took a pretty bad beating, too. We must have killed him five times while we were rampaging through the caves. Insignia in hand, we were back to Thrall to turn them in. His Magnificence humored us while we took a few group pictures with him. That Thrall...he's some Orc.

By this time, it was getting late. Due to RL schedules, we only had about a half hour of play time left, so we decided to try a few pulls in RFC. We went slowly -- well, that's not really true. We were just careful and methodical -- and burned down a mess of troggs. By the time the evening ended we had collected enough dead troggs to finish one of the instance quests and were skilled enough to handle three of them at a time. Not bad for a bunch of level 11 and 12s, eh? Harisan did a nice job for her first ever tanking experience. No, that sounds like a backhanded compliment. She really did well. We used my voidwalker to tank a second mob when we were dealing with three at a time which worked pretty well. Tank one, voidwalker one, and sheep the third. Lather, rinse, repeat as necessary.

As we exited, the second group was getting ready to start their run, and there was an impromptu Pox Arcanum party down in the Clef of Shadows.

Overall, it was a hell of a fun night. The plan for next week is to get Harisan's class quest done with so she can taunt, then decimate RFC. This is going to be an interesting experiment. I think we're all going to get very tired of the quests where we each have to grab one of an item -- like the early Hidden Enemies quest -- but we're going to mow down the kill-10-of-these-guys quests. Maybe we'll just do a lot of those quests and run instances. Sounds like a good time to me!

Quote of the night: "Hey, Ess. Did I enchant your chest yet?" - Daxe

not forgotten!

2008-02-27T16:06:00.004-05:00

I really haven't forgotten about Waradwen in all of this Pox Arcanum madness. Really. I haven't played him a lot because of some Guild Drama that has essentially made it Not Very Fun to be online lately.

There has been a lot of turnover among the Slackers lately. As both the Kalimdor Slackers and Slack Attack we've tried to strike a balance between being a more casual, family guild and a guild that does some raiding. We're not in Black Temple, of course, but we're in Tempest Keep and Serpentshrine Cavern. According to WowJutsu we're #17 on Arathor (#6 Horde-side). Not bad, I don't think, especially for a family guild.

Lately we've taken a turn towards being more raid-focused. It's not that we're demanding people raid nightly to stay in the guild, but it seems like there's a large fraction of the guild who is just there for raiding. Guild chat is often silent, other than people looking for specific gems to be cut or for enchants for their gear. We've also had a more than a few people come in lately, gear up through Kara and our routine one-shots of Gruul, then jump for a more hardcore raiding guild, which really bums everybody out. I've complained about this change in attitude a bit on our guild forums but it doesn't seem to be changing. Progression is the order of the day. Having fun in other ways is less important.

I'm not sure what to do at this point. I've been a Slacker since I started playing WoW (not a huge amount of time, I realize, but still significant) and don't really want to leave, but at the same time I'm not sure I like where the guild is going. We've lost a bunch of people lately, especially from the more family-oriented members. It's just...it's just not as much fun now as it was six months ago, and what's the point of that? Avoiding the problem isn't a good long-term solution. Pox Arcanum is significantly more fun, so I'm spending more time on that project but poor Wara is getting neglected, which totally sucks.

Any advice, readers? The options that I see at this point are: (a) stay in SA and try to get into the raider mindset; (2) stay in SA and feel like a second-class member because I'm not working towards Progression; (iii) leave and try to find greener pastures elsewhere. I'd love to see the end-game content, but I haven't even finished a complete Kara run yet. I've been in on a Gruul kill, but I suspect that could've been 24-manned if I weren't there. Maybe I need to find a guild who is still clearing or has just recently cleared Kara and jump in there, not try to start serious raiding in TK and SSC. Hmm. I just don't know what's available. Anybody looking for a Boomkin for Kara?

poxing day

2008-02-27T14:51:00.002-05:00

Tonight's the big night! Well, the big night, take two, I suppose. Nevertheless! Big night! Tonight the Purple Poxers descend on Anvilmar and will shake it to its very core. Tonight our run of domination begins and we will not rest until Illidan Stormrage, Lord of Outland, himself begs us for mercy.

Of course, by the time we get to Illidan, everybody else will probably have moved on to downing the Lich King. Whatever. We'll still be having more fun than all of them combined!

/sing A-Poxing we will go, a-poxing we will go...

and we're off!

2008-02-21T10:01:00.003-05:00

The Grand Experiment officially commenced last night, although the Purple Poxers didn't get a lot of adventuring done. Sadly, Nas had internet problems and couldn't log on. Still, we were able to get our guild formed (yipee!) and our tabard designed (yahoo!) and mess around a little bit. I took a couple of screenshots that are good enough to share. I'm hoping Dax or Madja got better pictures of the group shot, as they were closer to the center and I was off on an edge.

Dancing and joking around, waiting for everybody to show up.

My best group shot.

A proud Purple Poxer (Poxette?):

antiPUG anticipation

2008-02-17T22:00:00.004-05:00

Little Waradwenne hit level 10 earlier this morning, so she's ready for Wednesday's big night. I'm so excited. We've all been online the past few nights independently leveling and starting our professions and have been having a good time in chat. We seem to have a decent number of crafters at the moment, so I've decided just to pick up two gathering professions. The stacks of copper bars sell nicely, so I have a few gold coins jingling around in my purse, some of which will go towards our guild tabard Wednesday night. I'm following Og's great advice and trying to flip a little on the AH, too, but I've just started. It's hard to buy stuff -- even if it's relatively cheap -- when you only have a few silver to your name. :-D

I've got two pictures to share with you tonight, before I hit the sack. First, I took a nice picture of Waradwenne's first meeting with Thrall.

Second, my first group picture with a soon-to-be-antiPUG-guildie. Daxe is the tailoring specialist right now, having made an extremely helpful set of bags for our toons. I had forgotten how painful it is to run around with only 16 bag slots available! She also made me a nice [Barbaric Linen Vest], which she claims makes me look like I'm actually wearing a top, and some ~~pants which are in the mail~~ [Handstitched Linen Britches]. Here we are meeting in Razor Hill, flirting and laughing with each other. Very fun. Dig my plunging neckline, too. Hawt, right?

antiPuG alt

2008-02-14T10:36:00.003-05:00

Whoops. I totally forgot to mention in my last post who I am in the Grand AntiPuG Adventure. I'll be Waradwenne (I know, recycled name, so be it), a female Orc warlock. She's hot and she's gonna kick your ass, man, so you'd best watch out...

more antiPuG goodness

2008-02-14T09:58:00.003-05:00

Holy crap is this idea popular! About lunchtime yesterday, Ess's blog nearly ignited from the fast and furious comments pouring in. It was almost all I could do to just keep up with it all, let alone get a word in edgewise!

As of last night, we have two and a half groups of 5 who will adventure and quest together, roughly based on time zones. As of now we've got the Two and a Half Orcs (and a brother), the Game Dame, Ess and Mr. Ess, and a few other people whose blogs I'll link as soon as possible. There's a few open spots in Group Three (the Yellow Poxless), so if you get over to Ess's blog soon you might be able to weasel your way in.

We're going to play Horde on Anvilmar, a PVE server, on Wednesday nights (at least). Group One (the Green Poxed) are left-ish coasters, so they'll meet later than we Group Two Purple Poxers, but there's going to be some overlap so we can all mess around together. The plan is for us all to get to level 10 by next Wednesday, then meet in Orgrimmar to continue our festivities. Screenshots to come!

antiPUG

2008-02-13T08:42:00.003-05:00

WOW blogger Ess has had what I think is going to be a seriously fun idea: the antiPUG. A group of five dedicated people who will start new toons and play them only together, on a regular, organized basis. Yeah, it's really a thin excuse to roll another alt, and we probably won't get to end-game content, but who cares? We're going to seriously pwn until we get there. We'll be like a freaking steamroller, plowing through Azeroth and (hopefully!) Outland. W00t. And actually, I don't see why we won't be able to do end-game instances and heroics if we plan our class balance decently now.

So what do we need? I'm thinking a druid tank (but maybe I'm biased), a priest healer, a mage for hella-AOE action and sheeping, a lock for serious DPS (and some cc), and...something else. Another druid could bring kitty DPS, backup bear tanking and caster off heals. That's just my bias, though. Maybe we should have a pally or warrior tank instead of the druid and have the fifth person as a druid. Decisions, decisions.

more screenshot goodness

2008-02-07T09:29:00.000-05:00

It's Lunar Festival! The time when all of the world gets invited to celebrate in Moonglade. Where they all spend their time PVPing. Bastards.

My current wartime gear, for comparison. I really feel like a doofus in that hat.

While waiting to finish the Gorefiend quests in SMV the other day, I caught this nice picture of myself on top of a mountain. I almost want to wear those [Spectrecles] around town all the time.

Near the end of the Gorefiend's Armor quest, the dragon thought he'd like some beef ribs. Sadly, the ones he wanted were mine...

If you look closely, you can see my foot sticking out underneath his right eye.

Other than those, nothing terribly exciting to report. Do you guys like seeing these pictures? I take them for myself, but thought y'all might like to share. If not, I'll quit wasting your bandwith.

I'm planning to go raiding tonight. I think we're going to go hit up Loot Reaver again. I'm still moderately undergeared, of course, but I think that I can do a little damage. Better to have my peashooter in the fight than a 24-man raid, right?

group quests in SMV

2008-02-06T10:54:00.000-05:00

I finished a couple of long quest lines in Shadowmoon Valley last night which makes me quite pleased. I couldn't find a group in the guild to run any instances (hypothetical raid starting in half an hour from when I logged on, despite nothing being scheduled) so I decided to go do the quests that would get me neutral with Netherwing. I zipped through the quest line -- only the crystal collection was frustrating, because I had a hard time finding the doogies that drop the crystals -- and found myself ready to face Zuluhed the Whacked. I polled the guild and found a couple people to help: a resto druid, a level 68 lock, and a 70+ balance druid who was working on his Netherwing rep, so he couldn't actually target Zuluhed. Okay, so we had megaheals, but were a little light on DPS. We were about to bag it for the night when a 70 rogue chimed in on the general chat, looking for people to drop Zuluhed. Hurray! I ended up essentially tanking Zuluhed (Panzerkin ftw) and the rogue and I burned him down pretty quickly. Not quite quickly enough to avoid the first summonned add, but almost. We freed the dragon and I picked up the [Netherwing Spiritualist's Charm], a nice healing off-hand do-jobbie.

We then went on to finish the Cipher of Damnation quest line, which makes me extra happy. The rogue and I needed to down Ruul the Darkener, then we all went to face the ginormous fire elemental. I had seen Gruul and some larger-than-life characters before, but he was still freaky. Our balance druid swapped for his warrior who needed the quest, so he tanked and the rest of us brought the pain. We had an overzealous pally join us, letting the resto druid heal from the outside (he wasn't nearly ready with the quest line). The pally kept trying to steal aggro from our warrior (the warrior had to actually warn him to slow down at one point!), but otherwise the fight went pretty easily. I kept myself happily at about 85 to 95% of the tank's threat, basically using my "boss" spell rotation (Insect Swarm, Starfire, Starfire, Starfire, repeat) and had no mana trouble at all. I chose [Oronok's Ancient Scepter] as my reward, but it's not an upgrade. I'm a bit of a softie (if you hadn't noticed) and liked the reminder of Torn-Heart in its tooltip. Into the bank until I need the cash or bankspace or learn to disenchant.

In all, it was a fun night. I don't think I'll have much trouble finding groups for the heroics and pretty soon I'll have my Champion of the Naaru title! Well, assuming we can down Magtheridon, that is...

down with Gruul

2008-02-04T12:55:00.001-05:00

As I briefly mentioned earlier, I got to go on my first 25-man raid Friday night, when I went with the guild to rout Gruul from his lair. We've had Gruul on farm for a while now (the guild had recently killed Gruul for the first time when I started playing, eight-ish months ago) so I figured most of the other people would be well- or over-geared and I could do some damage with my suboptimal gear. I was right and it was a freaking blast. Fortunately for me, I had read up on the overall strategy for the raid so I wasn't completely lost and could basically play follow the leader. "There's someone doing my same job. What are they doing? Right, that guy comes third of Maulgar's council. No problem." :-D

Here we are at the entrance, getting organized and buffed for the first pull.

Same time frame, with my character info open, so you can the effects of the buffs. Over 10K mana and health! Also, you can see me contributing to the taunting of the first pull, by mooing at him. Moo!

Trash mobs down, we pressed into High King Maulgar's chamber. While moving to my starting position, I caught this view of the King and his council. Little did they know they were all about to die...

And the aftermath:

HKM dropped [Pauldrons of the Fallen Defender], but I didn't have enough KSP (our version of DKP). Maybe next time! He also dropped [Brute Cloak of the Ogre-Magi], but again, not enough KSP. No worries, though!

Here we are in Gruul's chamber, waiting to rain firey death on his ugly head. He's the one under the giant red arrow, if you weren't sure.

I think I did pretty well for the fight. I managed to keep myself alive until about the third cave-in that I saw, which, well, I didn't actually see until it was too late. Bastard. I kept myself well-separated from the rest for the Shatters and remembered to use Barkskin appropriately. I healed myself a little (one pot, a Regrowth) and kept an eye on the people around me, until falling when Gruul was at about 30% health.

We dropped him on the first attempt, taking less than an hour for the entire raid. Well, about an hour and a half, counting the pre-raid organization, buffing, and random waiting around. Gruul dropped two tokens for the hunter/mage/warlock legs and I decided to forego any of the other loot in hopes of getting the shoulders next Friday.

I spent much of the rest of my time in-game this weekend charging after gear. Saturday I got a good Mech group together and picked up the [Warp-Engineer's Prismatic Chain] and the second half of my Arcatraz key. I chose the [Sha'tari Anchorite's Cloak], which seemed to be a nice healing cloak for that set of gear. Plus I like the way it looks, so I'm wandering around in it most of the time.

Sunday I got a group together to finish the Gorefiend quests in Shadowmoon Valley and got myself the [Druidic Helmet of Second Sight]. Woo! I need to get it gemmed, then I'm ready to rock and roll with it, but...oh, man...what a goofy looking helmet. I keep giggling at myself as I run around with it on. Heh. At least the Tier 4 headgear looks like antlers. This looks like...I don't know. Giant yellow rabbit ears? Fuzzy bunny FTW!

first raid!

2008-02-01T23:18:00.000-05:00

Tonight I ran my first 25-man raid, as Slack Attack stormed into Gruul's Lair and kicked some serious ogre ass. We one-shot both High King Maulgar (and his council) and Gruul. I survived for most of the raid, falling in a cave in with about 27% health left on Gruul. I took several screenshots that I'll share when I'm less tired. For now, however...

body check to the ego

2008-01-31T08:17:00.000-05:00

Can I tell you how much I stunk last night in heroic Black Morass? Holy crap. There were BBQed chicken feathers all OVER that swamp. Oi.

So last night I hopped online hoping to get some healing practice in, but again couldn't find a group. However, a guildie wanted to run heroic Black Morass for the daily and I said I'd respec and bring my boomkin. I've done regular BM a couple of times before and have run a few heroics, so I figured I'd be fine. I played like a complete spaz. I managed to (almost singlehandedly) wipe us two of the three runs. The first time through, I sat to eat and drink too close to the first big boss and got my ass stomped, leading to an eventual wipe. The second run through I did essentially the same thing, running towards a normal wave boss ahead of the tank who had stopped for a moment to bandage or something and I didn't notice. They brought me back after getting that Rift Lord down, but from then on we were behind and eventually lost Medivh. The third (and final) attempt we actually did pretty well and made it to the final boss with Medivh's shield intact. Unfortunately we all were in combat after killing the final Rift Lord and couldn't eat and drink before we took on Aeonus. We let Medivh's shield fall to about 8% before we engaged and started okay, but our healer grabbed aggro almost immediately and went down (and my battle rez was on cooldown, so I couldn't bring him back). I tried to heal the best I could in my DPS gear, but it wasn't enough and we eventually wiped. We might have been able to finish the third attempt but I borked up my Chrono-beacon. The times I had run the instance before, we used it to help control the adds. Apparently everybody else knew to drop the beacon next to the portal. *sigh* We were all exhausted by this point, so I logged off after the third attempt and stumbled down to the couch to watch TV with my wife who had just come home, thoroughly down on my game-playing abilities.

Oh well. You live and learn, right? Next time through, I'll know better. Feh. Gotta get some better DPS gear.

After last night, I'm reevaulating my healing experiment. I'm now leaning towards staying as a boomkin and farming some good healing gear prior to fully switching. Maybe I'll heal lower-level Outland instances, but not the 70s.

annoying night

2008-01-30T09:23:00.000-05:00

It's nights like last night that are going to make me respec back to balance post-haste and turn a deaf ear to your pleas for healers.

Last night I logged on a little before 7, with a good few hours before raid time. My wife was out for the evening, so I had hoped to run an instance (or two, if we could squeeze it in) and /flex my mad healing skillz. I hopped on guild chat and greeted everybody (like I try to do every time), then asked if anybody was looking for a healer. No response. "No problem," I tell myself, "I'll just go kill those last few naga and get my [Tiny Spore Bat] while I wait."

I go through my next-to-last iteration of Now That We're Still Friends... and ask again if anybody is interested in running anything. I'd rather not PUG it for my first run as a healzor since about level 23 and figured I could find a guild run of something. Anything. This time, a guy currently running Bot responds and says he'd like to do any of the TK instances for the rep. "Hurray," I thought, and suggest Mech. Both the balance shoulders that I covet and the other half of the Arcatraz key are in Mech, so this seems like a good solution. He goes back to finishing the last boss in Bot and I go try to hurriedly finish the naga off.

A few minutes later they're done and he's putting together his group. I announce on guild chat something like, "I need to turn in this quest and I'm ready," and hurriedly go run to the Sporeggar quartermaster to get my goods. New pet in hand (well, backpack), I whisper him and ask if he's gotten the group ready yet and he replies, "Yeah. We're already running. =/ Forgot you were interested. =(" Jerk.

I'll give this experiment a week, then I'm back to balance. Boomkin is so freaking much fun that I'm pained to have left it, but am willing to sacrifice a little to help my guild. Maybe they don't need more healers and I can go back.

As nobody else wanted to run anything in the hour or so prior to the raid, I swapped over to my hunter and tried to get the feel of him again. Having a pet cat is hella fun. I need to figure out how to better set up my UI for him, 'cause it's a mess right now. Buttons all over for all the different traps, poor organization of my hotbar, etc. I screwed around a little in the southern Barrens, doing the Razormane quests down there but mostly getting reestablished on how to play hunter, dinged a level, hit the trainer and called it a night. One week, I say, then back to the glory that is Boomkin.

respecing resto

2008-01-28T13:12:00.000-05:00

I finally couldn't stand the self-imposed guilt this past weekend and respeced to resto. Nobody in the guild actually asked me to (or even implied that I should), but how long can I keep ignoring the pleas for healers? I'm viewing this as a fun experiment. Maybe I'll hate it. Maybe I'll stink. And maybe I'll be really helpful and useful for raids. We'll see.

Boy oh boy do I need some new gear, though. I've been sort of collecting healing gear and have some okay greens, but that's about it. I've got a decent healy mace ([The Essence Focuser]) and offhand ([Archmage Orb of the Invoker]), and some of my gear has +healing, but... Time for new gear. Gathering the Moonglade Raiment will give me good practice in learning just how to heal, too.

Plus, respecing to resto lets me use my new battlecry, stolen from the druid forums on Blog Azeroth, "Tree is 4 FITE!"

screenshot-y goodness + alts

2008-01-28T09:37:00.000-05:00

So here's that screenshot showing off how nice the [Skywitch's Drape] coordinates with our current guild tabard. I still like the looks of the [Spell-Slinger's Protector] best, but this isn't too terrible.

I'd like to also take some time to introduce you to my current horde (sorry) of alts. I realized over the weekend that Wara's done with almost all of his solo content (at least for the moment), so I'm going to decide who's coming up next. Recommendations?

First, my eldest alt, Waradwock. He's a 25 Tauren hunter with Echeyakee as a pet. I love his look and am having fun with the pet, but I don't think I can do the Tauren storyline immediately again. There's just so much more to explore, right?

Next comes Morningwar (sense a theme in my names?), a 13 Orc warrior. I'd like to learn how to be able to tank with Wara but don't want to, you know, learn at level 70. Seems like that'd be frustrating. I do like the bloodlust and violence available through Orcs and warriors, so this seemed like a really nice combination.

Last on Arathor is Waradwenne, a level 8 Blood Elf mage. A girl, of course, 'cause I think male belfs look hella-stupid. New story, new lore, new gameplay (and fun pew pew!) but I also started a Belf warlock on another server to play with some other friends (Waradin, on Steamwheedle Cartel), so there could be a lot of repetition.

So there's the family. No Forsaken, but not for any particular reason. No rogues, no pallys, no shamans. I'm not terribly interested in learning another hybrid class at the moment. I think I'll bring 'em all up to at least 20 (or maybe 30) to decide. Nobody fits quite as well as Wara yet, but maybe that'll come with time. Lots of fun stuff to explore! Maybe I'll even try those pinko Alliance at some point, too...

blog azeroth

2008-01-24T11:40:00.000-05:00

Like so many of my friends and compatriots, I have signed up for Blog Azeroth. Thanks to all involved for setting up such a nice-looking resource!

grinding rep, gaining idols

2008-01-22T09:17:00.000-05:00

I spent my time online this weekend finishing a few long quest lines and improving my reputation with a couple of factions. As of the end of yesterday, I'm only missing the [Flamewrought Key] to get into heroic dungeons. Woo-hoo! I know, I know...it's pretty silly that Thrallmar is my lowest rep, but there you go. Another Citadel run should get me up there. I'm gunning for that [Ivory Idol of the Moongoddess] from Shattered Halls, so that sounds like a good way to get both goals done.

Speaking of Idols, I finished the long quest line in Shadowmoon Valley and got my [Idol of the Avenger]! Woot! It was really an easy quest line but took some time due to its length. Driving a Fel Reaver was totally worthwhile, too. After dancing around for a bit after getting my idol, I did a little googling for idol-swapping macros and found a couple that work nicely. If anybody's interested, I can post the code that I'm using, but it's pretty simple and easily accessible if you look around. The two I'm using now swap in the [Idol of the Moon] for each moonfire cast and my new [Idol of the Avenger] for each wrath cast. I don't have good numbers, sadly, but qualitatively I feel my damage is up quite a bit. Wrath was hitting for about 800-900, I think, and criting for 1800-ish.

I'm now revered among both the Mag'har and Sporeggar after this weekend's grinding. The Sporeggar grind was easy but fairly time-consuming. I kept repeating the Now That We're Still Friends... quest line, killing hundreds of naga. It took me about 15 minutes per iteration for 750 rep, which really isn't too bad. I went from honored to revered in an afternoon and think I can push my way to exalted by this weekend. And you know what that means, right? [Tiny Spore Bat]! I'll be able to give my Wolpertinger a rest for a bit. The cutest pet I've seen so far is Peanut, who I hope to be able to grab next Children's Week, but the Spore Bat is pretty sweet.

Along with the Mag'har rep came some new gear. I bought a pair of [Tempest Leggings] -- which I now need to gem and imbue with spellthread -- and the [Band of Ancestral Spirits]. The ring was a frill and probably isn't worth the money, but oh well. I've already described how much of a spendthrift I am...it shouldn't come as a surprise.

My goals for this week are to finally finish a few more questlines. I've been trying to fire up interest in the guild for the Gorefiend quests without much success, so I'll just have to pug it, I guess. I also want to finally finish the Ogri'la attunement quests (yay, more dailies!) and...something else. I can't remember now. Finish my own Arcatraz key, maybe.

spanning the continent

2008-01-19T13:40:00.000-05:00

skywitch Wara

2008-01-18T11:13:00.000-05:00

I took a few days off from "serious" playing to spend some time with my wife, but was back at it last night. Guess who has four paws, chicken wings, and is revered among the Skyguard? This guy! Okay, so revered is not as exciting as I had hoped (I somehow, mistakenly thought the [Airman's Ribbon of Gallantry] was available at revered, not exalted) but I love that the NPCs around the Skyguard camps now comment when I walk by. "The skies are safe when Waradwen's around!" Hee. I did pick up the [Skywitch's Drape], but that was more for the looks than the stats. It was essentially a wash with the other cape I was wearing but you have to admit it looks pretty hawt with our pink guild tabards. Well, maybe you don't have to admit that now, but you will when I get a screenshot up later today. :-D

More later. I need to actually get some work done today.

threatening wara

2008-01-14T11:03:00.000-05:00

A short report and a quick question to my tens of readers. First, I want to say that Delos's boss spell rotation worked really well for me this weekend, especially the long fight variant. In fact, it probably worked too well. I ran a bunch of dungeons this weekend (and partial dungeons for Kara key runs) and kept stealing threat (or nearly stealing it) from our tank. Whoops. I did really nice amounts of damage and didn't have too much mana trouble. A few pots, an occasional innervate (but mostly I had that available for our healer), but overall very manageable. Woo-hoo!

My question is actually related to the previous paragraph. My guild officially uses KTM for threat management but there has been a recent desire to switch to Omen. I've been experimenting with Omen but had a persistent problem this past weekend. For some reason, it was seriously overinflating our mage's threat, or possibly not reducing it correctly. It seemed to work well with the tank which is what I'm mostly concerned about, but it was a little odd and I kept fixating on it rather than paying attention to the tank. Is this just me? Is there a new version of Omen that I haven't found? I should probably just ignore it, huh?

Enough for now. Type to you later.

I've got the Master's Key

2008-01-11T09:27:00.000-05:00

So off to Kara I go! Hurray!

A group of guildies and I ran the Black Morass last night and I finished making my Kara key! That was quite a fun instance, too, almost non-stop fighting for the entire time. The worst part of the instance was when I screwed up our first attempt by getting too close to Medvih, starting the fight too soon. Not a huge deal, we just ran out and reset the instance, but it made me feel kinda dumb. Oh well.

I got some nice loot yesterday in addition to the key, so I passed on all of the shards from the boss drops (nothing useful to any of us). I got [Pattern: Stylin' Jungle Hat] from the instance. To celebrate my key, I went to the AH and bought myself [The Bringer of Death] which totally rocks (thanks again for the suggestion, Urthona!). Lastly, while farming the Ethereals, I picked up the [Enigmatic Cloak of Magic] from an Ethereum Prison. Something of a lateral move...I lose some spell crit and intelligence but pick up some stamina and arcane resistance.

In crafting news, I've got half of the [Primal Air]s for my Windhawk kit. Woot! I'm too impatient to farm the elementals myself, so I'm farming them from the AH. Seems to work well enough. I need to get working on those [Primal Nether]s now.

Anybody want to run something?

druish goodness from around the web

2008-01-08T10:22:00.000-05:00

What else to do on patch day, other than highlight some druid and boomkin goodness from the past few days?

First, two nice posts from Laser Chicken (even if he is an Alliance pinkie):
- A clever idea to boost DPS and threat in Kara, particularly for Moroes.
- Also, Delos shares some good advice on spell rotations for PVE DPS. I'm all over that boss rotation...

Second, WOW Insider has a lovely boomkin UI. I haven't tried much UI customization but maybe I'll give this one a whirl.

And lastly (but not leastly), the most awesomest druid video I've seen in months.

You can tell it's authentic, 'cause his hotbar is full of moonfire. :-D

spendthrift Wara

2008-01-08T07:15:00.000-05:00

I have the worst time saving money in WoW. I suspect it's the combination of gold being like Monopoly money and the fact that I like to buy cool, potentially useless stuff. Take last night for example...

I had managed to save up just over 600g through farming and running a bunch of quests. Not bad, right? Certainly as much money as I have ever had in my grubby little hooves at any one point in time. Rather than saving that money or even using it to buy mats for my Windhawk garb, I blow most of it on [Pattern: Windscale Hood] at the AH. The hood itself ([Windscale Hood]) isn't even that much of an upgrade over the [Druidic Helmet of Second Sight] that I'm hoping to get in the next couple of days (one more Gorefiend quest to do). But it's epic. And I can make it myself. Alas, Wara. Bind your money to your hand.

In other news, I'm getting to the point where my quest log is full of Dungeon and Group quests which is rather bittersweet. I love being able to run around and do stuff for myself on my own schedule (and many of the "group" quests I've been able to solo). Now I need to start relying more heavily on others. It's a good thing I'm in a kick-ass guild, eh? :-D

epic weekend

2008-01-07T10:07:00.000-05:00

So guess who's got two thumbs and epic bracers? That's right...this guy! I've previously written about my desire to make the Windhawk set of armor and have been spending much of my online time farming the mats (or making money, so I can farm at the AH). The most difficult pieces are going to be the [Primal Nether]s, and I need three for the entire set. But, but then last night I had an epiphany...I didn't need one nether for each piece. I could make the bracers without a nether and I had enough materials to make the bracers. Hurray! I present to you my newest, coolest pieces of kit: the [Windhawk Bracers]. Woo!

my first heroic

2008-01-03T09:41:00.000-05:00

Last night I ran heroic Sethekk Halls with a group from the guild, to help another druid finish his epic flight form quest. I had been on for a few minutes trying to farm primal airs for my Windhawk set when he started asking for another druid to help, but I was nervous about running a heroic so I mostly ignored his call. When he whispered and asked me specifically, though, I explained my anxiety then decided, "What the hell," and joined the group. Good decision!

The five of us were me (boomkin), two mages for ultra-uber DPS, a feral druid tank, and a healer on her first heroic (in fairness, an alt healer of a raider running her first heroic as a healer so it's not like she didn't know what was going on). This ended up being a really good group, with lots of CC and plenty of firepower. Plus, Bora's a really good tank and leader, so that made things *so* much easier.

We had a few little stumbles (FYI, the Ravenguards on heroic can't be sheeped...whoops) but overall the run went pretty smoothly. We had a bad strategy on the first boss and wiped but fixed that pretty quickly for the second time. He spawns these elemental adds and we tried to just ignore them and burn the boss quickly, but that wasn't such a good idea. We survived the first wave of adds but died as soon as the second wave spawned. The second time around we just burned down the elementals as soon as they spawned, and that seemed to work pretty well. They weren't elites, I don't think, so they didn't put up much of a fight.

The Raven boos, Anzu, wasn't a bad fight at all. For those of you not familiar with the fight, there are three statues that can be brought to life by a druid's HoT and give really nice buffs while they're up. My job: keep them up. At Bora's suggestion, I tried writing macros for each of the three but couldn't get the syntax quite right for whatever reason. The macro would target the right statue, but then wouldn't cast Rejuvenation. I'll have to figure that out sometime later. What I did last night, though, was to use my essentially-unused second hotbar for each of the targeting macros and the rejuv. Much of the fight for me was hitting 1, 5, 2, 5, 3, 5, repeat. :-) That's not entirely true, but it's pretty close.

Flushed with success after taking down Anzu, we progressed to the third boss. This fight was much harder but we got him on the first try. I say we, but I actually had little to do with the fight. One of the mages and I went down after the first arcane explosion (I think our pillar was defective) but the remaining three were able to take him down. Amazingly. These raiders are pretty good, I tell you what. I knew Bora wasn't going to be able to battle rez me during the fight, so I tried to run back in. Sadly, this didn't work. I got stuck at the entrance and it wouldn't let me "zone in while an encounter [was] in progress." Or something like that. Oh well.

We got some nice loots for the run. Three [Badges of Justice], hurray! My first badges! As the only leatherworker, I got [Pattern: Stylin' Crimson Hat] and [Pattern: Shadow Armor Kit]. Nice. I also picked up the [Sethekk Oracle Cloak], a slight upgrade, and a [Large Prismatic Shard] from a disenchanted drop. Not bad at all.

I logged off about an hour after I had intended to, full of excitement and confidence. I survived a heroic. I was helpful and brought some useful skills to the group. I'm still not ready for Kara, but I think I will start running heroics on a regular basis. All in all, a really good night.

preheroic gearfest

2007-12-18T10:30:00.000-05:00

As inspired by BBBB, here's a listing of my current gear and what I'm working towards. I'm starting to think that I'm ready to try a heroic dungeon or two...

Head: [Stylin' Purple Hat] (crafted BOE leatherworking)

Neck: [Brooch of Heightened Potential] (Blackheart the Inciter, Shadow Labyrinth)

Shoulders: [The Dreamer's Shoulderpads]

Back: [Spell-slinger's Protector] (quest: Bring Me The Egg! in Nagrand)

Chest: [Living Crystal Breastplate] (crafted BOP leatherworking)

Wrists: [Clefthoof Bracers of Intellect]

Hands: [Expedition Gloves of the Invoker]

Waist: [Eighty Silver Links] (quest: Murkblood Leaders..., Zangarmarsh)

Legs: [Haramad's Leggings of the Third Coin] (quest: Undercutting the Competition, Mana Tombs)

Feet: [Grim Boots of the Invoker] (world drop)

Ring 1: [Dreamcrystal Band] (Ogri'la)

Ring 2: [Band of Dominion] (a present for hitting 70)

Trinket 1: [Ancient Crystal Talisman] (quest: A Spirit Ally?, Zangarmarsh)

Trinket 2: [Charm of Alacrity] (quest: Voidwalkers Gone Wild, Hellfire Peninsula)

Weapon: [The Essence Focuser]

Off-Hand: [Draenei Crystal Rod of the Invoker]

Idol: [Idol of the Moon]

At the present time, I'm leveling my leatherworking skill so I can make the Windhawk Set ([Windhawk Hauberk], [Windhawk Bracers], [Windhawk Belt]). Beyond that, I don't know. [Badge of Justice] rewards, I suppose. I'm not ready for Kara, clearly, but I'm over 6k health and 7k mana unbuffed. Seems good enough for heroics, right?

At any rate, comments and suggestions would be appreciated.

Incidentally, if you play a druid (or are interested in playing one) and aren't reading BBBB's blog, what's wrong with you? Get thee thence, posthaste!

key weekend

2007-12-03T08:37:00.000-05:00

I had a moderately busy weekend in-game and ended up with a few nice new pieces of gear, as well as [Restored Apprentice's Key]. Woot!

Saturday night I was screwing around, PvPing a little, and trying to figure out what I was going to do when the scheduled raid fell through, because not quite enough people showed up. Guild chat was full of people looking for something to do, so I suggested, "We could help Wara get his Kara key," not actually expecting people to be interested. Almost before I knew what was happening, I found myself in a *fantastic* group, plowing into the Shadow Labyrinth. The balance seemed a little odd, but it worked out really well...we had three druids (representing all three branches of the talent tree), a mage, and a shadow priest. The fights weren't too bad, actually, although the fears from Ambassador Hellmaw were a serious pain in the ass and lead to my only death of the instance. For a guy who usually dies frequently, I was very pleased with my ability to stay alive. :) The gear drops weren't particularly useful for me, but I did get the [Brooch of Heightened Potential] from Blackheart the Inciter. "TIME FOR FUN!" Heh. After downing Murmur we swapped in another guildie who also needed the key fragment, grabbed it, then danced around for a bit.

Flushed with triumph and feeling only moderately tired (it was pushing midnight at this point back in reality), we pressed onwards to the second fragment. By this point we had lost our druid healer to PvP and our shadow priest had dropped out, so we were left with two druids and two mages. Not a good group to actually clear the Steamvault, so we decided to just run to the key. After an initial aggro (and subsequent death), I was able to stealth myself through the field of nagas to the pool where the second key fragment lies. Our other druid had the bright idea of giving the mages run speed potions, so between their invisibility and some quick running, they were also able to make it through unscathed. Well, relatively unscathed. Hurray! The second guardian was a piece of cake and we celebrated getting the second key fragment. By this point I was exhausted and called it a night.

Last night we make a quick run into the Arcatraz to pick up the third and final key fragment. Our group last night consisted of a warrior tank, myself and the resto druid from the previous night, and the two mages from the second key frag run. Arcatraz is pretty tough, man! Or maybe I'm just still undergeared and undertalented. We did reasonably well, though, wiping only once after an accidental aggro of a beholder-looking-thing. A death watcher, I guess it was. Before getting the key fragment, we took out Zereketh the Unbound, which was one hell of a fight. I think I acquitted myself well, battle rezing our healer when she went down about two-thirds of the way into the fight and keeping myself alive to spam moonfire at the very end when both our healer and at least one of the mages went down. /flex. He dropped the [Idol of Feral Shadows] which I walked away with. Hurray! We got ourselves resurrected and healed, then beat the snot out of the third guardian and picked up the third key fragment. Before logging I turned in the quest, so now I have the Restored Apprentice's Key in my hot little hooves.

Tonight (tentatively), we're going back in to to help Thrall escape from Durnholde Keep and to help Medivh open the Dark Portal. That means that by late tonight I may be able to enter Karazhan! W00t! Not that I'm actually ready for Kara, of course...my gear is still pretty indecent, although it is improving. I may even be able to consider heroic instances sometime soon...