Rage Winterchill and PvP Trinket

OK, day two of patch 2.4 and we finally make a visit to Mount Hyjal. I hadn't had much time online so had still not updated addons - DOH!

My that Jaina Proudmore has shrunk a bit since she was here!

But in we went, there was much discussion that we must have the *Emblem of the Alliance PvP trinket for the escape from movement impairing effects.

Screw that, I spent more than enough time pre-TBC grinding up to rank 10 only for the bastards to make that grind totally pointless, I have no intention of putting HolyWarrior into another battleground for grinding - Ever. Only PS the Rogue goes into BGs and that is just for a little ganking fun once in a while.

Luckily I have the pre-TBC *Insignia of the Alliance. The only difference is the reduced cooldown on the newer one and I am a paladin so have 2 bubbles (not sure if they work yet!!) to use during this longer cooldown. The guild is saying everyone should have the new one. Screw that if bubbles work! (Not sure if BoP will work though! Edit: No it doesn't)

So, in we go and start the event after lots of explaining. Unfortunately TiceNits' PC (NEW PC) doesn't seem to be able to handle the massive amount of mobs and WoW just freezes. Every time she logs or reboots and logs back on it just freezes again :'(

Well, back to the event, we die a couple of times on the last few waves before we get into our stride. On the first attempt I used my trinket and bubble on the frost nova effects thinking they were the uber damaging ice-tomb things. (14-15K damage) that you need the PvP trinket for.

Basically when you get encased in what looks like a mage's ice block you need to use your trinket to get out of it so that you only take 5K damage instead of 15K. The newer trinket has a 2 min cooldown and the old one has a 5 minute cooldown. Bubbles, Ice Blocks, CloS are all supposed to work too. Not sure about Vanish or gnome's escape artist. Edit: Healthstones, potions and Blessing of Protection do NOT work. But apparently blink does.

So on the first attempt I blew both of my escape routes pointlessly but luckily didn't need them. But I did die to Death and Decay which was something else. It's a big AoE red glowing effect around the prick, I didn't get out of it in time and died. At around 65% we were down to about 5 people left who actually got him down to 34%.

The second attempt saw us get him down to 15% with a similar quantity of casualties early on. I died because my shield was on cooldown and by the time I could get my mouse over to the Trinket I had died - oopsy - maybe I need to hotkey that!!

On the third attempt similar amount of early casualties and we got him down to 32%. I died to the ice-tomb because my trinket didn't work?? I checked my equipped items and it was not equipped. WTF? At one point I suspected that it might be my healing macro swapping out the trinket for the one it wanted to use, but that does a /use 13 rather than by name so I am still confused as to why I was not wearing the trinket for the last attempt.

We did NOT down Rage Winterchill on the first night. Gutted. Why? because half the raid hadn't read up on the tactics and had no form of PvP trinket at all, even though they'd had weeks of warning to get one!

We should easily have taken the bastard out.

So in summary:

• Stay out of the glowing red shit.
  
• After the last wave and before you even sit down to drink equip a PvP trinket.
• When Ice-Blocked (not Frost Nova) use trinket or bubble IMMEDIATELY - no hesitation!
• Keep everyone topped up on health, escaping from an Ice Block still gives you 5K damage and that's a lot for some squishys!!

But MUCH MORE IMPORTANTLY: Why the fuck has Blizzard created a PvE encounter that seems so reliant on a PvP trinket that requires quite some grinding to get? Is there another solution? Not that I know of. Blizzard you suck fat sweaty arse!

As a consolation prize one of the wave trash mobs did drop and epic. Interesting comment on it!

*Might be the other way round!

Badges From Raid Bosses

I forgot to mention earlier, one of the changes in patch 2.4 to raid bosses is:

• Increased gold dropped. HK Maulgar dropped me 10 gold last night
• Bosses that drop tier tokens drop another one. HK dropped one of each token last night. Grull dropped 2 of 1 and 1 of another.
• Raid bosses now drop Badges of Justice. HK dropped 2. Gruul dropped 3.

So HolyWarrior goes from 74 to 79 Badges of Justice!

So the gold probably covered the repair costs. My highest so far has been 33 gold! But, apart from the BoJ, it was stil relatively pointless visiting a T4 boss.

What's The First Thing You Did in Patch 2.4

TiceNits took the day off work and was online at 12:56GMT. I was stuck at work till 17:00 and then had my kid till 19:00GMT so TiceNits had a 6 hour patch 2.4 lead.

She had taken TiceNits and her alt hunter through all the current dailies and run Magisters Terrace on both characters and also done most of the Netherwing dailies.

So what was the first thing I did when I got HolyWarrior online?

1. Logoff
2. Enable out of date addons
3. Login
4. Logout
5. Disable Focus Frame
6. Login
7. Logout
8. Disable Gatherer
9. Login
10. Curse Loudly and wonder how many times this is going to happen
11. Logout
12. Disable Recount
13. Login
14. Accept Raid Invite
15. Accept Summon to Gruul's Lair

YEP - Gruul's Lair. After sorting out addons* I spent the first evening of patch 2.4 in Gruul's Lair. Two one shots admittedly - but still Gruul's Lair.

While we were there a GM replied to my ticket on chat channels being screwewd and I noticed the new icon to counter spoofing message from GM's.

Afterwards I popped up to Elemental Plateau and the Water area was empty and there were 5/6 pools of Pure Water - woot! Then off to do the new Sunwell dailies.

TiceNits on the other hand discovered how to put raid icons into chat! haha!

So what was the first thing YOU did when you logged onto patch 2.4?

*OK, I didn't sort addons out, I just disabled the ones that gave errors. Omen didn't error; it just stayed blank. I couldn't download updates because www.curse.com crashed.

2 More Epix To Get

Without even having to set foot into a Heroic or a raid group I can get 2 more pieces of epic "suitable for warlocks" cloth armour. These should last me well into SSC (if he ever gets to go)

They are the Spellstrike Set. Hood and Pants.

Apparently the total materials required are.

20 Spellcloth
10 Primal Might
Rune Thread.

UPDATE: It's 2 Primal Nether, not rune thread. Farming not occured due to 2.4 and only 3 lots of 2 shadowlcoth made with another 2 lots of 2 tonight (1 Apr).

I can make shadowcloth and hopefullly trade it in /2 UselessBanterByRetardsTrade for Spellcloth. I believe there are 4 other shadow-spec tailors in guild so on Thursday night I should have 10 pieces of Shadow/Spellcloth and the following monday night the last 10. Or I could really go mad with netherweave and primals and get them all to do both their non-specced cloths as well. So with enough farming have everything by Thursday Night.

That would be possible, EXCEPT, I need 10 Primal Might as well. That is 10 Primal Earth, Fire, Water, Air and Mana

So assuming the efficient cloth production route my progression is:
86/180 Netherweave Cloth (easily collected while questing)
20/20 Arcane Dust (already got)
53/100 Mote of Earth (pick up while doing netherwing mining)
72/200 Mote of Fire (pick up while doing netherwring mining, 100 for shadowcloth)
7/100 Mote of Air (Farm Elemental Plateau)
19/100 Mote of Mana (Farm Netherstorm Mana beasts)
28/100 Mote of Water (Fish in Elemental Plateau)
30/100 Mote of Shadow (From Nagrand voidies for Shadowcloth)
1/2 Primal Nether

and whilst I'm doing this I also need to level enchanting from 292 - 375

Ouch!!

Warlock Nostromo EZ-Mode Macro

Warning, Disclaimer, Whatever: For god's sake don't do this. It's against ToS, EULA etc. Read this.

Further to my previous post I have just thought up something even better.

A lot of warlocks, I assume, have an EZ-Mode cast sequence macro where they just have 1 button and keep pressing it to load up the target with DoTs and finish up with a SB or DL.

Well, two excellent features of the n52 are firstly the ability to write macros and secondly to insert pauses into these macros*.

So I could write a macro to press each key in my DoT sequence with a pause between each that equals exactly the Global Cooldown or Spell Cast time and then follow up with a shadow bolt. The result? Well hopefully minimised gaps between casting leading to increased DPS, but more importantly LazyEasy Mode for me!!

I wonder if I can trigger this sequence off then alt-tab to HolyWarrior and start healing. Probably not as a) the alt-tab macro would probably not execute until the cast sequence macro had finished and b) I could manually alt-tab but the remainder of the cast sequence macro would probably try and execute on HolyWarrior's session.

Worth a look though!

UPDATE: Woohoo, created the n52 macro and it would boost DPS nicely with 0.00 seconds between each cast. Farming voidies in Nagrand is: hit button, watch mob die. If attacking from max range the CoA and UA would hit before the mob can could get to me so no interrupts to UA, then slap on corr, SL and a quick tap before a Drain Life. 90% of the time the mob dies before Drain Life completes or before a Shadowbolt can even think about casting Hmm, I think I must have dreamt about that!!. All from just the press of 1 button!!

On the subject of alt-tabbing, I figured out what would happen: if I manually alt tabbed over to HolyWarrior it DOES would try and continue the macro on him as his screen is the one in focus. But you can could quickly pop over while EvilBastard is draining life and cast a quick heal and then pop back before the Shadowbolt cast kicks off.

Affliction Locks - what is you usual cast sequence?

* Against Blizz ToS, EULA etc don't do it!

Alt-Tabbing

As some people may be aware I run 2 accounts. Pally on 1 and Warlock on another. Sometimes I run them both at the same time on the same machine (Although this does load the machine a little!!)

It can be a bit of a pain alt-tabbing between sessions to heal then DPS, especially with different button set ups on the different accounts.

As some other people may be aware I have a Nostromo n52 which is superb, I have all my heals macro'd to be mouseover, bound to WoW buttons and those buttons mapped to Nostromo buttons for immensely easy healing.

When I am healing I don't wan to take my hand off the n52 to alt-tab and throw a shadowbolt out.

So, I have bound the mousewheel click on the n52 to an n52 macro (yes you can write macros in the n52 software) that simply does Alt-Tab. I have also moved all EvilBastards button bars about so they are in the same place as HolyWarriors and put my offensive DoTs and Shadowbolt on the same keys as my most used heals.

So now its FoL, Shadowbolt, FoL, Shadowbolt, FoL all with 2 nostromo buttons; one to cast and one to swap characters :))))

Just need to put an asist macro on EvilBastard now to assist HolyWarior and remember to have HolyWarrior target main mob.

Happy Waradin am I!

Quests to hand in.

After doing some instances last weekend I inadvertently picked up 2 quest items to complete quests. One of which was David Wayne?

Anyway, I am still carrying the items around. I was trying to bang out some Netherwing dailies for EvilBastard and someone was asking for a group for The Battle of Crimson Watch". HolyWarrior tried this quest a while back. In fact he wiped on it and then failed to pick up the quest again when it was attempted for the second time. Of course it was completed on that attempt but people couldn't stay to do it again.

This time HolyWarrior made sure to pick up the quest and we got it done with EvilBastard in the background throwing out minimal DPS!!

Total Quests to hand in: 3

Free Epix

I was just pootling around doing dailies when a guildie offered 40 time lost scrolls. I snapped them up. I had already got Gezzaracks Claw and 5 time lost scrolls so only need 25 and gave the other 15 to TiceNits.

The guy that gave me them offered to come help with the quests too so we grabbed a guild alt-tank and off we went. I completed the remaining three sub bosses and TiceNits got her first sub boss done and then we headed off to summon Terrok.

He was a bit touch and go with the tank not spotting the first flare so he went off on an immune rampage for what seemed like forever, but we finally got him back under control and took him down. He dropped [Terroks Leagcy], which, after a bit of discussion, EvilBastard one!!

So he now has Full Shadowweave and a purple Warlock Cloak!!

The guy that gave me the time lost scrolls suggested it go to the guild bank as it was BoE - yes - Bind on EQUIP - WTF?? But EB could really use it. I felt a bit guilty, but screw it, EB really could use it. HW has lots of Shadow Elixir left so will grind some more scrolls so EB and TiceNits can do Terrok too, and maybe donate any good loot to guild bank if we can't use it!

Besides, when I handed in the 4 sub bosses' parts for quest: Adversarial Blood and got the Time Lost Offering to summon Terrok, I didn't notice the quest become available to kill Terrok. Hmmpphh, will have to do it again anyway!

Lots of Netherweave Later...

[PICS TO COME]

...and when I say lots I mean FRIGGING TONS OF THE BLOODY STUFF!!!!

My timescale for the full Frozen Shadowweave set was Sunday 30th March. I got it a week early!!

Over the course of the weekend I was skilling up my tailoring whenever I had the mats. Come raid time on Sunday night I only needed:
4 Shadowcloth (both NicePallyClassLeader's lock and EvilBastard have x2 proc becoming available at midnight)
2 Imbued Netherweave Robe's (needed the cloth)
Primal shadow for the shadowcloth.
Lots of Primal Water

So during raid quiet moments I farmed motes of shadow in Nagrand. Come raid end time I had the cloth and only had 2 motes of shadow to farm to complete stage 3. I got these farmed and headed off to The Altar of Shadows. NicePallyClassLeader and I made the cloth and I headed off to make those robes and hopefully get the tailoring skill ups to 375 (it went yellow at 370).

Nope, 1 procced but the second didn't so I was stuck at 374. I could not handle anymore grinding so gave up for the night.

Monday morning (Bank Holiday Monday FTW!) I buy/grind/steal Netherweave Cloth and go grind Netherweb Spider Silk. It still doesn't proc. Repeat. Still no proc. Grind more spider silk, swap Netherweave Cloth for Knothide Leather Scraps with TiceNits. THIRD attempt of the morning gets me to 375 Tailoring. I bought the Pattern for the Frozen Shadowweave Robe and headed off to grind 8-ish Primal Waters.

TiceNits and HolyWarrior came along and we got into a good rhythm. HolyWarrior fishing the Pure Water pools when they spawned and topping off DPS health as neccessary. TiceNits had to go after we had a couple of Primals but HW and EB finished it quite easily.

I made the 3rd piece of the set and equipped it quick smart!! Off to the Auction House to gem up all 5 pieces of gear that have slots (blue head and wrist pieces) with blue-quality gems.

So 8 Blue gems and 1 Meta gem later I am 650 gold worse off.

But my DPS only appears to have increased by 20 :( I was on around 400 grinding motes of water (best I got was a 520 burst) and now I am on 419. Humphh, gonna go grind motes of water under the same spell rotation see what happens!

Anyway, that's 4 pieces of epix I am wearing now. 4? I hear you ask. YEP - read the next post...

Raiding Update

Since my last raid update we've had some more raids. I'll update this "placeholder" post later, but we managed to get a whole raid in on Vashj training.

Getting out of step slightly, we had a raid scheduled for the 11th but we could field a full team? WTF?

Sunday 16th
We started off in the afternoon for a painful 5-shot on Hydross for [Boots of the Shifting Nightmare], [Band of Vile Aggression] and [Ring of Lethality] then we moved onto Lurker for a quick 1 shot and [Boots of Effortless Striking], [Velvet Boots of the Guardian] and [Choker of Animalistic Fury].

In the Evening we went back in and after an hour got Leo down on a second shot to garner [Gloves of the Vanquished Defender], [Gloves of the Vanquished Hero] and [Girdle of the Invulnerable].

45 minutes later Karathress was down and he dropped [Leggings of the Vanquished Champion] x2 and [Bloodsea Brigand's Vest]. For the first time ever I bid a LOT of DKP but was till outbid.

Another 45 minutes passes and we complete a 2 shot on morogrim for [Gnarled Chestpiece of the Ancients], [Pauldrons of the Argent Sentinel], [Talon of Azshara] and [Pattern: Boots of the Long Road]

Tuesday 18th
We spent the whole raid training Lady Vashj - yawn. We started off with a lol wipe and put in a further 8 attempts progressively getting better and better with our best being 3 shields down just as we wipe!

Thursday 20th
A Lurker kill. We took him out in 11 minutes with 22 people and he dropped [Boots of Effortless Striking], [Cord of Screaming Terrors] and [Mallet of the Tides]

Easter Sunday
No afternoon raid but in the evening we tried Hydross without enough tanks, we only tried that once, then onto Leo who we one shotted for [Orca-Hide Boots], [Gloves of the Vanquished Defender] and [Gloves of the Vanquished Hero] and then a 3-shot on Morogrim for [Illidari Shoulderpads], [Mantle of the Tireless Tracker] and [Ring of Sundered Souls].

Tuesday 25th
No raiding for me, boring meeting to go to :(

Irregardless

Yes Lightshield, I too hate people who use the word "Irregardless"

Some people just hate particular words. An ex-girlfriend hated the C word. No biggie there, that's understandable.

But some people have really strange dislikes. My ex-wife hated the word "Moist" and her sister detests "Flange".

What word do you hate?

Hibernation

It seems that some blogs have disappeared, gone private or gone into Hibernation. So I'm gonna trim down my blog roll a bit and put them here in case they ever come back.

Gold Making
Caffeine, Smokes and Auction House Fees
Critical Goblin
Foo's WoW Musings
Alto's Goldish Advice

General
Big Red Kitty's Personal Blog - Brain Needed Space - Removed

Paladins
Bubble Hearth
CC = Constant Consecration
The Paladin Class Leader
Paladin Schmaladin
Road to the Dark Side - Removed
Zen Tanking - Retired
Legend of the Assbringer
Seal of Rogueshness

Rogues
Gweedo
Ambidextrous
A View From Behind

Shaman
Lessing Healing Wave

Priests - maybe
Discipline of the Light

Druids
The Young and The Noobish

The Chronicles of Klanksta

Warlocks
/emofire
Out of Mana
Tap Tap Pew Pew
Warlock Therapy

CRAP EPIX

I completed the Frozen Shadoweave Boots last night.

I knew they were going to break my Imbued Netherweave Boots set bonus, but I did't realise quite how shit the epic boots are (or appear to be)

OK, I accept the shadow damage is nice but WTF is with the i-level? The epix have an i-level of 102 compared to the blue imbued boots 109.

Am I just being really dense or is there no point in equipping this epic piece of crap until:

a) I have full 3 pieces of Frozen Shadoweave
b) I break the Imbued Netherweave set with a huge upgrade to the piece that the Frozen set does not replace (probably legs)?

Also I was looking at the set bonus. Return 2% of the damage caused to your HP?

OK, just one example, say Seed of Corruption does 2K damage. That returns 40HP, which means 40 mana against an expenditure of 800 mana for the cast. That's 5% of mana back. Which means one free cast every 20.*

Is that awesome? Or is it Turd-on-a-Stick(TM)? Answers from "real" warlocks appreciated :)

*disclaimer - I'm at work and my maths is crap, these figures are from memory when I was looking at this stuff drunk last night!!

WTFinWoW - 2

Foton has his latest Where in the WoW going and it looks surprisingly like mine.

But I think they are different. They may not. I can't check at the moment cos I am at work :(

EvilBastards First Look at Karazhan

TiceNits' alt got herself into a guild group for the 2nd half of Karazhan on Saturday night and they needed a healer so HolyWarrior went along. There was only one other healer and that was a guild applicant Shammie.

Surprisingly we went straight for Nightbane, which some consider a 3 healer fight. Nope, we one-shotted him. The we went and downed Aran nice and easy. And headed off to Chess.

They swapped an alt in for Chess so I asked if I could take EvilBastard in, my wich wash granted and he started the long trek from Elemental Plateau to Karazhan. Ahem, maybe I should have moved him a bit nearer during the early fights.

Anyway, so we go it done and there was no loot for EvilBastard. *cry*

So HolyWarrior back in and off to Prince. Due to appalling luck with infernals we wiped several times in phase 3. But once we got over our appalling luck we got him down.

This added 7 badges to HolyWarriors stack of 67. Making 74 Badges in total and now EvilBastard has 2 badges too!

OMG - Tankadin Lovin'

A buff to Avengers Shield - a serious buff!!

I have not confirmed this yet I Tank Stuff has reported that in the latest version of patch 2.4 on the PTR Avengers Shield won't hit crowd-controlled mobs. One Word ...

WOOT!

There's No Helping Some People

A little while back when I was trying to get my tailoring up to 360 I made some Netherweave Robes. A LOT of netherweave robes. Now did I go to the AUction House and blindly put them all up for sale for whatever random figure the Blizz AH suggested?

No of course I didn't. I looked then the current cloth armour market and determined that there was 2 other Netherweave Robes up from 2 other people around the 8 gold mark and other comparable robes were around the same price.

So I put 1 - ONE - of my robes up for 7 gold 99 silver 99 Copper. Undercutting by 1 copper. Yes that annoys some people, I don't get why, but it does. In my mind I have something to sell, of course I will undercut the others as I want MINE to sell, and why undercut by 4 gold and completely depress the market. That's just plain retarded.

So I carry on with my auctioneering and later on do a quick check to see if it's sold or has any bids on and what do I see - some fuktard has put up 5 for a 50% discount - what a prick.

My first instinct was to whisper him something along the lines of "Are you a fuktard or just plain stupid?" - That was the politest thing I thought of saying. Instead I thought I'd take a more polite an educational approach.

Hmmm


Next Time I will just call him a fuktard and put him on ignore.

Unfortunately on this occasion he might not have learnt his lesson. If he put them on for a 48 Auction then they all sold (Or an even greater fuktard ignored his auctions) because when I logged back on later my robe had sold after all!

Seriously, did I not come over polite and helpful?

How to Get in a Raiding Guild - I

Tailoring Marathon - The Sprint Finish

Materials Possessed:
1.9 Primal Fire

By the end of March I should be ready for the final step. Of course, 9 Imbued Netherweave Robes may not have got me to level 375 and that is going to be a pain to make more :(

Frozen Shadoweave Robe
14 Shadowcloth
16 Primal Water
4 Netherweb Spider Silk

Materials Required:
160 Motes of Water
4 Netherweb Spider Silk

Progress:
160 Motes of Water
4 Netherweb Spider Silk

Final Strategy:
1. Grind Required Mats
2. Make Robe
3. Delete WoW from PC
4. Reclaim Life

Timescale:
I want this done before April so the timescale look like this ...
Start: Thursday 27th
End: Sunday 30th

That's just over 2 weeks from now. I'd better get moving

Tailoring Marathon - Step 3

Materials Possessed:
8.9 Primal Fire
0 Primal Earth
2.8 Primal Shadow
0 Primal Water
8 Bolts of Imbued Netherweave
1 Bolt of Netherweave
90 Arcane Dust

I have a feeling this is going to take some time and my bank balance may take a bit of a hit once I get bored of grinding. But due to the shadowcloth cool downs I can spread the grind over a little time.

9 Imbued Netheweave Robe
972 Netheweave Cloth + 108 Arcane Dust = 72 Bolts of Imbued Netherweave
18 Netherweb Spider Silk
9 Rune Thread

Shadow Cloth:
7 Imbued Netherweave
7 Primal Fire
7 Primal Shadow

Materials Required:
18 Arcane Dust
951 Netherweave Cloth
42 Motes of Shadow
18 Netherweb Spider Silk

Progress:
18 Arcane Dust
951 Netherweave Cloth (edit: just bought 278)
42 Motes of Shadow
18 Netherweb Spider Silk

Materials Remaining:
1.9 Primal Fire
0 Primal Earth
0 Primal Shadow
0 Primal Water
0 Bolts of Imbued Netherweave
0 Netherweave Cloth
0 Arcane Dust

Strategy 3:
I need to grind LOTS of spiders, 9 hours of excruciating tedium, until I give up and buy them! Then I need to grind 42 Motes of Shadow - good job I have plenty of time.

The Netherweave cloth is going to be a pain though. That is 50 stacks. Luckily the voidies drop it and I'll keep an eye on the auction house for cheap stacks. I reckon I'll have to buy 30 stacks - budget: 100 gold.

The Arcane Dust, shouldn't be a problem, just disenchant any greens that drop while grinding.

I can shorten the shadowcloth time by also make spellcloth and primal mooncloth, need to check out those mats.

Whilst doing this I'll need to keep grinding Motes of Water for the next step too.

Timescale:
Start: Saturday 22nd
End: Thursday 27th

This timescale assumes that each time I make some shadowcloth that I also make a primal mooncloth and a a spellcloth. But the mats above are just for 7 Shadowcloth, they'll need updating.

Tailoring Marathon - Step 2

Materials Possessed:
8.9 Primal Fire
0 Primal Earth
2.8 Primal Shadow
2.3 Primal Water
8 Bolts of Imbued Netherweave
1 Bolt of Netherweave
90 Arcane Dust

The materials are already dwindling, luckily all this step involves is making the epic boots. I have a feeling they are going to mess up my Imbued Netherweave set bonus, but these are epix!!

365-366 Frozen Shadoweave Boots
8 Shadow Cloth
12 Primal Water
2 Netherweb Spider Silk

Materials Required:
97 Motes of Water
2 Netherweb Spider Silk

Progress:
97 Motes of Water
2 Netherweb Spider Silk

Materials Remaining:
8.9 Primal Fire
0 Primal Earth
2.8 Primal Shadow
0 Primal Water
8 Bolts of Imbued Netherweave
1 Bolt of Netherweave
90 Arcane Dust

Strategy 2:
I need to grind some spiders, 1 hour of relative tedium, not too bad. Then I need to grind 97 Motes of Water. I'll need to compare the drop rates between the Elemental Plateau and Skettis, but it may just be that I kill Surgers while doing the Skettis dailies and then buy the rest!

Timescale:
I'm gonna give myself a few days to get the Motes of Water so...
Start: Tuesday Evening
End: Friday Evening

Latest Tailoring Strategy

Last night HolyWarrior went to Netherwing Ledge and did his dailies solely to pick up motes of earth!! He got 30 Motes and a few motes of fire.

Then EvilBastard went to Nagrand and ground the voidies. Now this was even worse. He spent anywhere between an hour and 2 hours (was a little drunk by then) and he picked up 16 motes of shadow. This morning I spent 20 minutes and got 2 motes. So it was probably more like 2 hours last night!! Thottbot says the drop rate is something like 20%. The thing is, they usually drop in lots of 2 or 3 so you actually have to kill 15 or so to get anything. Luckily I appear to have bought 4 Primal Shadows cheaply on the auction house when I was drunk the other night!!



EvilBastards materials bank also holds 106 Arcane Dust, 2 Bolts of Netherweave and 91 Netherweave. All the Netherweave will make 47 Bolts, totaling 49 Bolts of Netherweave. Add in 16 Arane Dust and and you have 8 Bolts of Imbued Netherweave and a bolt of netherweave left over.

Materials Possessed:
11.9 Primal Fire
5.3 Primal Earth
5.8 Primal Shadow
2.3 Primal Water
29 Bolts of Imbued Netherweave
1 Bolt of Netherweave Cloth
90 Arcane Dust

I have just compared this to the minimum materials I will need to reach level 375 and am not happy :( Lets split this into 4 slightly more manageable (read: less daunting) chunks!

First off we'll get to 365 and get make the shadow cloth required for the epic boots.

362 - 365 3 Cloaks of Eternity
18 Bolts of Imbued Netherweave
18 Primal Earth (180 Motes of Earth)

Shadowcloth Preparation:
2 made on Tuesday night
Persuade NicePallyClassLeader to blow another cool down on Friday night
2 Will be Made on Saturday
2 Will be Made on Wednesday Night (Tuesday if NicePallyClassLeader blows another CD)
3 Bolts of Imbued Netherweave
3 Primal Shadow
3 Primal Fire

Mats Required:
127 Motes of Earth

Progress:
127 Motes of Earth
2 Shadowcloth made by LiquidLock
2 Shadowcloth made by NicePallyClassLeader
2 Made by EvilBastard Saturday night
3 Cloak of Eternity Made


Materials Remaining:
8.9 Primal Fire
0 Primal Earth
2.8 Primal Shadow
2.3 Primal Water
8 Bolts of Imbued Netherweave - OUCH!!
1 Bolt of Netherweave
90 Arcane Dust

Strategy 1
OK, so that's not too bad, I just need to do a lot of mining in Netherwing Ledge, maybe I can persuade my 6 year old to do it!! He loves mining :P

Then make 3 Cloak of Eternity and remember to get the shadowcloths made.

Meanwhile kill any water elementals seen for Motes of Water to help in the next step

Note to self: Also get 1 x Primal Mooncloth and 1 x Spellcloth made and swap them with people!

Timescale:
Start: Now
End: Tuesday Evening

Conclusion:
I got bored grinding the Motes of Earth, due to the relative cheapness I may as well buy them at 4 gold each and best utilise my time grinding Motes of Water instead. So I bought the last 7 Primal Earths and went and ground 3 more Primal Water and made the last 2 Cloaks of Eternity which both gave me a skill point and went green at 365

Multi-Boxing And You

Some people have commented about my multi-boxing my Paladin and Warlock. Alex called me insane - thanks Alex :P

Also, TiceNits' alt came across a gaggle of 4 identical druids in the Night Elf starting area a few days ago.

It's been happening a lot recently that when I make a commment or do something I find something very similar on another blog.

Well, Alex, if you think I'm insane check out the 4 Shamans (or is it Shamen?) that I found over on The Bronze Kettle.

And also do a search on youtube. I know there is some footage of a 5 mage multiboxer on there somewhere.

Now these guys are doing it properly. They have multiple identical characters and they usually keyboard broadcast to separate PCs' which are running separate WoW accounts with their 4 slaves on them. The slaves then copy the actions of the master character simultaneously.

Now this keyboard broadcasting might be questionable, but it does seem to have been condoned by several GMs.

Now I'm not that much of a geek, or even that organised. I have my account and my sons account. My warlock is on my sons account. My PC is pretty uber and it can just about handle 2 WoW's running at the same time (except in Shat where the whole screen goes screwy!!) So I alt-tab between the two sesions. Works for me!

Tailoring Theorycraft Fun

In 3 more Points of Tailoring I will be able to make the second piece in the Frozen Shadoweave set.

To get to 365 Tailoring I'll hopefully be making 3 x Cloak of Eternity which are yellow at 362 so should give me 3 points. Crossed-fingers. If not all of the proc a point of skill then I'll just make Netherwweave Robes. These are green but only cost 6 bolts of normal netherweave. Why make cloaks?

Because I've made 3 of these tanking cloaks already and 2 have sold first time in the AH for 130 gold and the 3rd is up now with no competition at 150 gold.

The Mats are 108 Netherweave, which give 36 Bolts of Netherweave, which combined with 12 Arcane Dust gives 6 Bolts of Imbued Netherweave. Those and 6 Primal Earth give the cloak. I can't believe I have been selling off my Primal Earth from HolyWarriors mining - Arggg. So in total thats 324 Netherweave, 36 Arcane Dust and 18 Primal Earth.

HolyWarrior can get his ass to Netherwing Ledge and start mining!!!

Alternatively I could buy the mats. On my server a stack of Netherweave goes for about 3 gold, a Primal Earth for 4 gold and gods knows about the Arcane Dust - but I have loads. So that is 49 gold plus arcane dust then sell the cloak for 130 gold. Now that is a way to level tailoring.

However, the art to good auctioneering is not to swamp the Auction House, so you have to sell them 1 at a time. Well, it's a good job I have some Shadowcloth cooldown's to burn through. 16 Days to be exact just for the boots!

OK, so on top of the mats to get to 365 to make the boots, I'll also have make 4 batches of ShadowCloth. Which is 4 Imbued Netherweave, 4 Primal Fires and 4 Primal Shadows. There's about 19 Primal Fire in the Haley ToeSis' bank (thank fuck I didn't sell them!) and EvilBastard has a stack or 2 of Bolts of Imbued Netherweave so it looks like EvilBastard is gonna have to start farming the Voidies in Nagrand while HolyWarrior is mining Nethewing Ledge.

The boots will take me to 366 tailoring so I'll then have to make another 9 Cloak of Eternity. Thats 972 Netherweave Cloth, 108 Arcane Dust and 54 Primal Earth. Ouch! [edit] Argg Cloak of Eternity is yellow at 362, might have to re-evaluate 366-375. [edit 2] Looks like it will have to be Imbued Netherweave Robes. These go yellow at 370, so it's crossed fingers time again. It's the same amount of Bolt of Imbued Netherweave as the Cloak but it's 2 Netherweb Spider Silk rather than 6 Primal Earth. I don't know what's worse!!

It took me an hour to grind 2 silks the other day, I may have been unlucky!! Last night it took about an hour to collect a 3 Primal Earth while doing the Netherwing quests. I have to grind 18 Earths anyway for 362-365 so I suppose I'll be glad of the change by then!!

At that point I'll need to make another 7 batches of Shadowcloth with 7 Imbued Netherweave, 7 Primal Fire and 7 Primal Shadow along with 14 Primal Water and 4 Netherweb Spider Silk to make the Robe.

This gives us a nice round total of:

3 Cloaks of Eternity:
324 Netherweave Cloth + 36 Arcane Dust = 18 Bolts of Imbued Netherweave - CHECK
18 Primal Earth (180 Motes of Earth) - Have 2 Primals and 3 Motes

9 Imbued Netheweave Robe
972 Netheweave Cloth + 108 Arcane Dust = 72 Bolts of Imbued Netheweave
18 Netherweb Spider Silk - ARGGGH
9 Rune Thread (4 gold, 5 Silver purchasable) - CHECK


Shadowcloth:
11 Bolts of Imbued Netherweave - CHECK
11 Primal Fire - CHECK (17.5)
11 Primal Shadow (110 Motes) - Have 4 Primals

Robe and Boots:
Shadowcloth from above
6 Netherweb Spider Silk
28 Primal Water (280 Motes of Water) - Have 2 Primal and 3 Motes

So far I have the Primal Fire and the some Bolts of Imbued Netherweave. Hopefully the Cloaks of Eternity need Bolts of Imbued Netherweave as I have more than enough of that {Edit: yes they do]. Time to get mote farming. Earth from mines, shadow from voidies and water from Skettis water elementals and fishing. Argg. I can see a significant chunk of gold disappearing into the auction house after a while!!!

Hopefully the cloaks will continue to sell!

My First Look at Lady Vashj and her Macro

As you would have seen from last nights "Live Blog" we finished off the sub-bosses and opened the bridge to Lady Vashj.

This was the first time I've been to Vashj and I think the first time for the guild too.

Anyway here is the macro

/use Tainted Core
/script SendChatMessage("!!! YOU HAVE THE CORE !!!", "WHISPER", "Common", UnitName("target"));
/y <------- TAINTED CORE TO: %t !!!
/ra <------- TAINTED CORE TO: %t !!!
/s <------- TAINTED CORE TO: %t !!!

On our best attempt we got her down to around 60% and used to cores.

I've been looking at the stats for last nights SSC run as I have been doing upwards of 50% overheal on some fights recently so I was concentrating on cancelling heals if they become redundant.

Interesting the amount of overheal seems to be directly proportional to the amount of Stella Artois consumed - now that's some coincidence isn't it? :P

Overall the top 5 healers were all at 11% of raid heal. I was 4th but had the worst overheal at 35%.

On the Leo one shot I was 3rd with 36% overheal compared with NicePallyClassLeder who was 2nd with 47% overheal. I was only 1 Flash of Light away from beating her and 12K away from top spot, so if I hadn't been DPSing the demon form contributing a massive 1% (41K damage) then I would have been top of the healing meters!!

The Karathress wipe saw me down at 5th with 35% overheal again. While the Karathress death saw me at 2nd with 43% overheal, only beaten by the MT's paladin healer.

On the Vashj Attempts I was 6th, 3rd and 5th but they weren't serious attempts anyway.

An added side effect of this (well most would say the whole point in keeping down your overheal) is that I was never low on mana. Although I was also concentrating more on the health deficit of targets and only putting down a full HL if really needed.

SSC Live

OK Another live raid blog.

Background: Hydross, Lurker and Morogrim already down.

20:30 Raid Start

21:30 Leo 1 shot

Plans: Red Havoc Boots
Gloves of the Vanquished Hero
Tsunami Talisman

22:00 Starting Karathress

22:05 Wipe 1

22:10 Attempt 2 start

22:18 Karathress down

World Breaker
Leggings of the Vanquished Defender x 2 (warrior Priest Druid)

22:35 Lady Vashj Explanation

22:40 Start

22:45 Wipe 1

23:05 Wipe 2

23:15 Wipe 3 Raid Over :(

Black Morass - Guild Style

After the late night Black Morrass fiasco last night I decided to try and get a guild run organised on the forums during the day.

NicePallyClassLeader volunteered as did one of the main tanks and the mage class leader.

So if boredomn didn't turn up we still had a full 3/5 SSC Epicced group to get BM done before the evening raid.

Boredomn turned up, as did everyone else and we cleared the area. NPCL forgot her chrono beacons so had to go back for them (with EvilBastard!). We started the event. We kicked Ass. TN's alt and Rune left the instance attuned for Kara raid on Wednesday night!!

WOooooHooooooo!!!

Late Night Black Morass

At Around 00:00 server time The Gang(HW, Rune and TiceNits' alt) grabbed a guildie mage (Boredomn - one of the guys that came over from Fucking Tossers) and a random warrior from LFG.

We head into Black Morass and clear to the last boss pretty easily.

We are taking him down pretty well and he is at 18% when I alt-tab over to Rune to throw another shadowbolt out when the boss does his freeze time thing again. No biggie. Except this time the warrior had taken some big damage while I was alt-tabbed and HW was frozen when I got back, I'm desperately hitting my Full Rank Holy Light button when we "re-animate" and non-crit after non-crit are healing him while the warrior must be taking crit after crit after crit.

It doesn't take long for the bosses lucky crit streak to out-damage my very unlucky lack-of-crit streak. The Warrior dies. I am in holy gear, I take a few hits and die. Rune dies. Boredomn dies. TN's alt Feigns Death.

We start running, TN's alt tries to kite it but gets hit with Aspect of Cheetah on so gets stunned and dies.

HW and the warrior run back and Medivh's shield is at 15% as we get inside, by the time we re-engage his shield is at 2%.

With low HP and low mana we don't last long with a repeat of the unlucky crit-hit/nocrit-heal combo.

We resolve to give it another go but Boredomn has to go. We manage to get a rogue in and try again. This time TN's alt has to do the adds and this does not go so well. By the time the first boss is up we have adds all over Medivh. We get the boss down, but now we have the next 2 portals open.

Wipe. Goodnight. Shite!

Arcatraz Key Fragment and the True Hybrid Pally

TiceNits, Rune and Holy got a mage and a fury warrior from the LFG - DOH!!! - and went to Arcatraz.

I knew the warrior was no tank from the start but he was willing to give it a go and I should be able to heal him through a normal Arcatraz.

Well, pull 1 - OK, pull 2 - OOPS, he agrro'd adds and even I couldn't keep him alive.

Just as we line up for attempt number 2 the Mages says "Sorry, Got to go" and hearths.

OMFG the Bastard - he was the only one with the key! We have 3 mobs in front of us. I say "lets give it a go" and before I can say "I'll seduce one" he charges in. I have no time to get succy out and haven't really got time to do anything but heal anyway. We're doing alright, but we should have waited for the mobs to fight the beastie things. 2 reasons: the mobs will not be at full health when we engage and secondly, more importantly, the fucking beastie won't add to the fight and wipe us!!

OK, so we need the key and another member. I reckon I could tank this, so the warrior could dps, or I could dps or heal. So we are looking for anyone.

That's the good thing about an epic geared pally. Pre-heroics you can pretty much do anything as Holy Spec :) Bung your Ret gear on. Pew Pew nice! Clearly your healing is gonna be primo, but with some tanking epics you can tank these buggers. You may remember that HolyWarrior tanked Vorpil and Murmur in Shadow Labs.

So we managed to get a priest, no key though, so we waste some time getting in and we hope we ain't gonna die!! EvilBastard soulstones the priest and off we go. Neither the warrior nor the priest know that I am playing 2 characters in this group - Haha!

On the first pull the warrior doesn't equip a shield (I didn't notice if he had before - probably why he died so quick) and HolyWarrior is in Ret gear and pulls aggro pretty quickly - see - ret dps (while holy specced) must be pretty good to pull aggroo off a nub fury warrior, seriously though - I had salv on!

The priest complained that I was pulling aggro cos I required healing! I said that OK I'd tank then. They thought I was joking but just before the next pull I threw on my Tanking gear and pulled.

The warrior could not get aggro off me and he didn't take a single hit! And guess what? I nub forgot to put retribution aura and righteous fury on till halfway through the fight. I think the priest must have done a quick inspect of my gear and combined the epics with the fact that I was probably easier to heal than the warrior and could obviously tank and suggested I be MT!!

So we cleared all the way up to the Karazhan Key Fragment without a single death!

Well, TiceNits and I were happy we both had our Kara key fragment, but the priest wanted to go on. I had not specified that we were only after the fragment so we decided we should really carry on.

We cleared the rest of the room and the next and started on Delilah or whatever her name is. The warrior charged in ahead of me and gained such an aggro lead that I could not recover, because I blew all my mana trying, popped Super Mana Potion, threw all that threat on and didn't grab agrro.

No Aggro = No Hits = No Healing = No Mana = No Threat = No aggro. You all know how that one goes!

OK, it wouldn't be so bad, but it takes a couple of whirlwinds for him to remember to interrupt the heals afterwards and she is at full health! It doesn't help that I am too busy trying to grab aggro to be able to throw more than the odd shadowbolt or seed of corruption out. The healer is completely OOM. I can't back off and heal cos I am in tanking gear and blew all my mana and potion cooldown so the warrior dies. At this point I see the futility of this exercise and fake a DC by Alt-F4.

Rune and TiceNits' alt hang around hoping that someone else will call it if HolyWarrior doesn't come back. The priest mentions that HW didn't seem to be there all the time. Haha - that might have been something to do with the fact I had Alt-Tabbed to do something with Rune - but they don't know that! TiceNits' alt wears the same guild tag as HW so I suggested she says that HolyWarrior does sometimes have connection issues!!

The warrior decides he's not going to hang around and calls it quits. I feel guilty about screwing the priest over but she seems confident that she'll be able to pick up a group to finish off the instance, which as a healer she probably will. But after all the useless bastard PUGs I've had recently I really don't care anymore! Besides, it was only 1 other person being let down, because the warrior was keen to dump the group pretty quick!

Anyway, time for a celebratory 5 pints down the pub, and then get a Black Morass group together!

Things To Do in WoW When You're 70

See what I've done there? Do Ya?

So, what do you do at Level 70?

Well before the raid I went and got my Epix Flying Mount :)

Next off, I've had the Imbued Netherweave Robe waiting to be donned so that went on.

On Thursday I had gotten my tailoring up to 60 and specialised in Shadowcloth. I popped over to The Altar of Shadows (twice - first for the quest and then to actually make some cloth) and got my 2 pieces of Shadow cloth (Specialisation gives you 2 for 1!) from:

1 Bolt of Imbued Netherweave
1 Primal Fire
1 Primal Shadow

I also bought the Frozen Shadowweave Shoulders pattern. This will be my first piece of level 70 epic armour, but the trouble is it need 4 pieces of Shadowcloth. I have 2 pieces and it's on a 4 day cooldown. The cooldown expires on Monday morning :(

Well, after the raid I was chatting to NicePallyClassLeader and her warlock is shadowcloth and her cooldown is up and she'll gladly go make me 2 Shadowcloth.

So off she pops on her 225 skill flying mount, I give her a good lead then shoot off to the Altar of Shadows and I am waiting for her when she gets there!!!

She makes my cloth and I am a happy warlock. What other mats do I need? 10 Primal water and 2 Netherweb Spider Silk. What do I have on bank alt? 3 Primal Water and 0 Netherweb Spider Silk. I have to buy 7 Primal Waters at 20 gold a pop. OUCH!

After all this expenditure I am not buying the spider silk so off I go to farm it. 2 pieces takes me an hour to farm. Argggh.

But I am now the proud owner of these beauties!!

So what now, well I get straight onto the Shatari Skyguard quests by talking to the bint next to the flightmaster in Shattrath and off I go to the Barrier hills to kill Ogres.

Now what new level 70 warlock spell do you think I'm going to use against these Ogres. Why - Seed of Corruption of course. Ohhhhhh JOY! Send voidy into group of 3 level 71 ogres, let him get a little agrro and then pop, pop, pop with the seed of corruption and then pop, pop, pop with Siphon Life then bang, Bang, BANG and AGRRO - OH SHIT!!!

Well that was fun, but 20 Ogres down and it's time to report back to SkyGuard Bint.

"Go take these bombs to Firewind Landing near Skettis please EvilBastard."

"Okey Dokey Skyguard Bint, if you don't mind I'll take my friend HolyWarrior."

"Whateva, just get your fat arse over there and bomb some eggs!"

So off the 2 of them pop to Skettis to do the 2 dailies there.

EvilBastard also picked up the quest from the Ogre in Lower City so will soon be popping off to Blades Edge to start the quests up there in preparation for being able to do the 4 Ogrila/Skettis dailies there too!

He hasn't visited Mordenai in SMV yet to start Netherdrake quests, but that will be soon. Just gotta get keyed for Kara first.

And finally check out my HP and Mana wearing my new gear, it's nearly as much as HolyWarrior in his Healing gear!

Sunday Raid, But I Wanna Play My Lock :(

We didn't go for an afternoon raid but we did go to SSC in the evening though and 1 shotted Hydross for...

Pattern: Boots of the Crimson Hawk
Band of Vile Aggression
Wraps of Purification
Brighthelm of Justice

I managed 7th in the healing stakes with 7% raid heal and 52% overheal. Ha Ha Ha! Can you tell I wasn't really concentrating?

Then we went after Lurker and Ahem, *cough* I was frigging about and couldn't quite get to the water in time (again!) for a spout and died at 30%. AGAIN - Concentration!

He dropped:

The Seal of Danzalar
Choker of Animalistic Fury
Bracers or Eradication

I repeated my Hydross healing but with only 49% overheal this time.

Some trash dropped Serpentshrine Shuriken and then we had a lol-wipe on Morogrim, Err I might not have healed the pally murloc tank in time *ahem* *cough* thinking of level 70 warlock fun to be had *cough*.

Then we had a real wipe where the drood tank died and I had to run because I got "Watery Graved" whilst running to somewhere safe to die :(

We finally downed him on attempt 3 and got:

Luminescent Rod of the Naaru
Serpent-Coil Braid
Warboots of Obliteration

Healing Stats: On the 3rd attempt I managed to get up to 4th with 11% of raid heal and 43% overheal.

Not too bad a raid really :)

I Can Fly

So what is the first thing I am going to do now that I am newly 70? Well, I'm gonna get my flying mount of course.

Not just any flying mount you understand. What with my Auction House Alt, "Haley ToeSis" sitting on 2700 gold and HolyWarrior doing his full complement of dailies for a long time after getting his Netherdake to amass 6800 gold and EvilBastard himself sitting on 890 gold...

... Correction, before sorting out cash for mounts EvilBastard went and did his level 69 and level 70 training and purchased Grimoires. Now he sits on 700-ish Gold. Sheesh ...

... Anyway, 2200 gold from the Auction House Alt and 3700-ish from HolyWarrior briefly tops up Evil's cash reserves to 6700-ish gold.

Hmmm, so what are we going to buy with all that cash?

I wonder.

Maybe I could go on an auction house spending spree or maybe I could help out TiceNits' alt with her flying mount.

Let me think, hmmm, you got it...



OUCH! Now, once you have that costly 300 riding skill what are you gonna do with it?

Lets go and have a chat with our old friend Brunn Flamebeard.

Steamvaults

With Shadow Lab under our belts and less than 2 bars of XP to go before level 70 we really wanted to get the Steamvaults Key Fragment before the afternoon raid.

TiceNits and I got a guild level 67 tank and some DPS lined up for the quick run and hung around forever for the guild alt shammie. The DPS got bored and went into a heroic so we gave up on him and then shammy took the tanks brother (a level 70 mage) and HolyWarrior instead.

We had a pretty awful start with a badly timed fear throwing the tank out of HW's cleanse range and got a nice Bog Lord come chew on us on top of the 2 Naga we already had.

EvilBastard was tasked with seducing mobs on several pulls and that was interesting. Seduce mob, alt-tab to HW and throw out some heals. Guess when seduce is about to run out and alt-tab back to EvilBastard and re-seduce, target tanks target and start a shadownbolt, alt-tab, heal heal heal, alt-tab, re-seduce, bang bang, alt-tab, heal heal heal. A bit manic, but no-one died.

Then we had another 2 wipes on bad pulls of elementals and EvilBastard hadn't put SS up. DOH!

We decide to skip them but TiceNits falls off a rock and her pet runs around the rock to catch up with her and pulls some Naga - Wipe. No SS - DOH!

With only 9 people signed up for this afternoons raid and NicePallyClassLeader the raid leader and many healers unable to go anyway, the raid is cancelled so we decide to go for a full run rather than just the key fragment.

We go and get the Kara Key Fragment and then decide that it'll increase DPS if if I'm not dual-boxing. I say I'd prefer if we can get a healer and leave EvilBastard in the group and we manage to get a guild-alt Dwarf Priest.

So off to Hydromancer Thespia and I have to banish one of the elementals and keep it banished. Hmmm, I had never been called to seduce targets in a group before and I have never been asked to banish either! So pull happens, I banish, we fight, Banish expires and I re-banish, 3 times! I can't remember the name of the addon, I think it's FocusFrame, but it is invaluable for crowd control. Boss 1 - one-shot. Loot [dunno]

EvilBastard hits 99% and for the first time since level 60 leaves rested XP.

A couple of pulls later and ...


Onto Mekgineer Steamrigger and I have some AoE fun on the packs of gnomes before him and then we take on the boss. After a long fight he goes down. Loot [crap].

Our miners take the adamantite and fel-iron, not me for once, and we head off to Kalithresh. We all know the strategy but we're a bit rusty and we're too slow on the first tank and he enrages. We keep on going and keep him off the 2nd tank but we're exhausted by then and we wipe before the 3rd tank. We re-group and vow to concentrate and take him out easily on the 2nd attempt. The tank gets a ring and I get [something].

WooHoo another key fragment and EvilBastard is level 70.

Shadow Labs Down - Just

EvilBastard, TiceNits' alt and a guild alt who needed keying for Kara were all suited and booted and ready for Shadow Labs. All that was needed was a PUG tank and Healer!!

Believe it or not we got them within about 15 minutes so HolyWarrior didn't have to dual box.

We enter, we do the first boss easy and clear the Blackheart room. We have a try on Blackheart who wipes us and then the healer leaves. So I have to bring HolyWarrior in as healer after all. EvilBastard doesn't get much of a look in dps wise but we take him out.

We move further in and get to Vorpil's room where we have a wipe because the tank doesn't move around enough and then he leaves. Arggg. We manage to get a guild alt tank in and he wipes us by trying to kite Vorpil around in circles - WTF? then he disconnects. Its getting quite late and TiceNits really wants to give up, but we get a guild SSC healer and HolyWarrior is gonna be the tank. We give it a go and I manage to kite him up and down fine, but on the 4th summon his voidies are right on the summon point so he heals from 20% to nearly full and we all die. We decide we need more DPS so this means EvilBastard has to leave the party and not get any loot and we'll bring in an SSC rogue. HolyWarrior tanks again and he goes down easy.

We keep the rogue in for Murmur, as EvilBastard just needs the spawn after him, and off we go. We buff up and HolyWarrior tanks away. There were some scary moments on him, when Holys HP dropped to near on 0. The Shammy died pretty early on, followed by TiceNits. Holywarrior needed to throw a couple of heals on himself and eventually died with murmur on 4%. Guild SSC Rogue and Healer takes him down that last 4% - Happy Happy EvilBastard.

The Rogue leaves and EvilBastard comes back and we wipe out the last spawn on the Kara Key Frag Guardian thingy with ease.

My estimate of 85% wasn't far off. Even without being in on the last 2 boss deaths, which of course dropped loot for him :(, he was 87% into level 69. By the time he had handed quests in he was 91%

Roll on Steamvaults tommorrow.

Oh, did I mention that HolyWarrior was tanking Holy specced? Yes, he was!

Durnholde Down

TiceNits (on her 68 hunter), EvilBastard and HolyWarrior (Yeah I had to dual box it) got a guild tank and rogue in and we wasted Durnholde.

We had a bit of a hiccup because Thrall would accept my previously completed quest and give me the new quest but wouldn't actually start the escort.

Figuring we prolly had to do everything we went and did all the burning houses etc and then he would start the quest. CRAP! So much for a quick escort.

Apart from a partial wipe when tank was AFK between Thrall screw up and burning buildings we did it without casualties. TiceNits, HW and EvilBastard died but rogue vanished and tank was a drood and out of range so came along and saved the day with a rez :)

So we easily cleared up the escort and once EvilBastard had handed in the follow up quest back to Andormu in CoT he was on target with 69% into level 69.

Shadow Labs hopefully tomorrow. *waves*

WhereTF in WoW I

Soon to be called simply WTFiWoW.

Foton over at AFK Gamer gave me this idea and I have found some pretty cool places in the past, so here is my Cameo of his Where in the WoW?.

We'll start with a nice and easy one. To give you a sense of scale, that white dot on his nose is me!

More Pissed Raiding

We decided to screw up TK last night.

We also decided to try A'lar first with very little melee dps.

It makes sense for me to go waster Lootreaver and Solarian first. We can easily do them and get in an attempt on A'lar before trash respawn, but if we waste time on A'lar first and then go try Looty and Solly we could get ourselves into respawn trouble.

Well, we had 3 attempts at A'lar, into phase 2 each time and down to some respectable percentages but he didn't go down. People were dying to the flames because they just didn't move out of them. I even died on the third attemp. I moved as soon as I saw it but 2 ticks killed me HUH?? Also DPS were killing adds when A'lar was not about so wasting the 3% kill bonus. Pricks.

So off we popped to Looty and wiped on him. Huh?? Yep, well, we reset him at about 20% actually, but not before a good half of the raid had died! Second attempt was standard and he dropped a couple of tokens and the fel piston thing again.

So what does this mean? Well. We COULD have spent 1 raid taking out Looty and Solly and a second raid on A'Lar and then Gruul or Lurker. But now we have spent 1 raid on Looty. The second raid will have to fight all the way back through trash to get Solly and then have a couple of tries on A'lar. So we've lost a boss kill this week. Hmmm.

Paladin Healing Gems

On my check list of things to do this week I had at #2 "Write a post about Paladin Gems" well, seems a new blogger, Shadow and Light, has beaten me to the healing gems part of the post, so not one to duplicate effort, read all about healing gems here. Thanks Naelum/Nilum.

Turns out he is also a Waradin or is it a PalLock? No that's too near Pillock!! There seems to be quiet a few of us out here. Maybe I should create a new category in my blogroll for Waradins!

Tanking Gems incoming...

Update:
Shadow and Light has a Healing Gems Part II post up now.

Frigging PUGs part 2

After the abortive Durnholde run earlier at least I have gone from 14% to 32%.

OK, so I am sitting outside CoT with HolyWarrior in the group and the nice guy that said he would go to Durnholde again. We managed to get a shadow priest into the group so we're just looking for either a tank or healer as HolyWarrior should be able to tank Durnholde normal in his current Holy spec.

Guild is quiet and we just can't fill out the final spot. I spot a group going to Shadow Labs and politely disband the party and head off to Auchindoun.

We have to wait for the fifth member to finish AV but he eventually gets there and off we go.

We're not doing to bad, we have a couple of resets and a couple of wipes. We cope with the first boss easily enough and move onto Blackheart the Inciters room. After lots of frigging around with AFKs we start pulling and wipe on every single pull. The Hunter goes AFK, and we finally boot him and get a mage in.

We've been in here for an hour and a half and I have to go in half an hour. I hate people who disappear mid run. If you join a group you put that time aside exclusively for that run. It's just common courtesy.

Now I didn't think it was unreasonable to put aside 2 hours to do this run, it should NOT have taken that long and I really did have to go at the 2 hour mark. The warrior had to go for dinner for 5 mins. The hunter had such an extended AFK that he was kicked from group and there was AFKs all over the place. Well, when I warned the group that I had to go in 30 minutes, hoping to spur them into action, but the priest kicked me from the group saying that my gear was too bad and my dps was too low. :S

HaHa. I am level 69 mostly decked out in level 69 blue warlock specific gear with 4 pieces of the Netherweave tailoring set (giving me both set bonuses) and 2 pieces of the Imbued Netherweave set (the last piece is level 70). There is no better gear I could get. OK, this level 70 epicced shadow priest was doing nearly double my damage, but I was on a par with the level 70 partially epicced Huntard.

Bollocks to them, I just hope the guild can get a run together. TiceNits needs to go Shadow Lab so hopefully she'll flutter her eyelashes and get a group together!!

If you are a Dwarf Shadow Priest (level 70) playing on a European Server, your name starts with a B and this scenario sounds familiar to you then I have one thing to say to you:

"Fuck you and the horse you rode in on, I hope you fall from grace with your guild and end you miserable days begging for gold in Lower City you putrid piece of snail sputum."

Anyway. Now EvilBastard is 50% into level 69. I don't think there is any point questing now. He should ding before the Arcatraz step in the Karazhan attunement chain. He better do as you need your fly mount to get there!!

I still have a little rested XP left so with a bit of luck he will be 65% after the Durnholde run. 85% After Shadow Labs and then ding 70 towards the end of whichever Coilfang instance you need to go to.

If not then I'll be grinding sunfury signets in SMV until level 70 and then pop to the mailbox to pick up 5000 gold on the way to the flying mount trainer to get my epic flying skill on my second avatar :P

If there is no guild group available for Arcatraz then I'll be starting the Skettis and Netherdrake quest chains for the faction mounts and the loadsa money dailies; which I'll be dual-boxing with Holy Warrior!!!

Frigging PUGs part 1

Yeah yeah. I know. I brought it on myself. But I was off sick yesterday and EvilBastard was 12% into level 69 so I fIgured that I would put myself into LFG for Durnholde (in preparation for BM) and Shadow Lab for Karazhan attunement quests and then go questing in Blades Edge Mountains.

2 quests handed in, another nearly done and 14% into 69 and I get an invite to Durnholde. Off we pop, seems like a competent group. We set fire to some huts and get into the keep. The leader and someone else rushes down into the basement and starts the escort before anyone else even gets down the stairs.

Once outside the leader says to let Thrall die because someone didn't pick up the quest. Thrall dies, they rush back inside and down the stairs. This time I manage to get down the stairs and see the Yellow ? for a split second before they start the escort again. I say that I haven't got the quest but they say it doesn't matter (well they said it after about 5 minutes and we were nearly at Tarren Mill). It's been a long long time since I did this quest on HolyWarrior but I am sure it does matter. The quest text says speak to Thrall when you have burnt the buildings. So I alt-tab to Thottbot and lo and behold "Hand quest into Thrall" who gives you "Escape from Durnhole"

I tell the group this but only one person says he will go again. Now, what I should have done was either sit down and watch or simply leave the group, but I am too nice for that so I help them finish the quest. And shock horror, they don't appreciate it or even say thanks to everyone and definitely ain't gonna run it again.

Arseholes. I would name an shame, but that would give away what server I was on!!!

At least I have the complete on the first quest so hopefully I can just get a guild run to just to the escort. We'll see!

Loadsa Money

WOOOOHOOOOOO!! I don't think I've ever sold something for quite this much before :)

I think I picked this up whilst doing a heroic a few days ago and finally got round to putting it up for auction.

Auctioneer said it had seen it 11 times and recomended about 389 gold. I thought "Yeah, right. Someone has been trying to boost the price of this to scam people using auto-buy on bottom scanner". But I decided to stick it on anyway, just in case. I am Sooooooo glad I did :)

Paris Fucking Hilton?

Oh My Good God. She is partying in the bar in Shattrath. Hasn't she got anything better to do?

Doomilias is a Genius

Ever since patch 2.3 my latency has been floating between 100-300ms on a good day. It used to be around 40ms. This is due to Blizzard trying to be clever and introducing Nagles Algorithm for their network comms. Look at that 99ms ping between here and Paris. Not too bad I suppose. But look at my WoW Latency below: 271ms, that's not good

You don't need to know what that is, I don't and I work in IT, just that it screwed up everyone.

In patch 2.3.2 they removed it - prolly cos everyone was calling them pricks; I was!

But apparently what they couldn't do with the patch was sort your own PC's Nagle settings out. Yesterday I spotted on A View From Behind a genius post and a link to sort your settings out, so I downloaded and installed it and this is what happened.

Not much difference on the general internet, the ping change was probably random, but just take a look at my WoW latency now!! Nice! Thanks Doom :)

Pretty Crap Raid

Edit coming, this is just a draft...

20:32 Raid Start
20:35 I get back on
21:11 Leo Down

Gloves of the Vanquished Defender - T5
Gloves of the Vanquished Hero - T5
True-Aim Stalker Bands
Plans: Red Havoc Boots

21:30-22:20 Wipes 1-3 on Karathress

22:35 Fathom Lord Karathress down

Soul-Strider Boots
leggings of the Vanquished Defender
Leggings of the Vanquished Hero
Pattern: Boots of the Crimson Hawk

23:00 Morogrims room clear

2 attempts and wiped

Best Addon EVA

OMFG - hahahhaha!

Courtesy of Yet Another Warlock Nerf we have Reslack - this addon automatically accepts all rezzes, summons and ready checks for you :) As he says ... "If you download and install before your next raid, i can almost guarantee a /gkick!"

10. Things to Do This Week w/c 03/03/08

1. Get EvilBastard to level 70 and Kara attuned
2. Write post about Paladin Gems.
3. Update pally macros to ignore error messages and figure out why early FoL cast cancels casting spells but HL macro doesn't - wierd. Also use trinkets in emergency heal macro. And look into if swapping out Librams after spell cast work on spell cast in macro as Mystic Chicanery has suggested, I'm sure it does, but until I see it with my own eyes...
   
4. Get a group of guildies to go do raid escort in O'grila and get lots of unstable flasks of the Physician - cos we're going Gruul again for some reason
5. Get a Guild group to finish off 4 dragon elite scale quests in Orgrilla. If I can get EvilBastard to 70 then only really need a tank and TiceNits.
6. Do the 3 Sha'tar heroic quests from Adal.
7. Level EvilBastard's fishing, cooking, first aid, tailoring and enchanting - yawn.
8. Do some level 59 twink BGs with PS the Rogue.
9. Dump all Arcanite Bars and Crystal on AH as transmute is going in patch 2.4
10. Keep an eye out for cheap void crystals on Auction House as patch 2.4 allows them to be split into large Prismatic Shards and price is bound to rise. Wish I coul remember who I got this tip from; as soon as I remember then I will credit them!!
    

Also as a reminder... Remember to get gems from consortium every month