The Tanketh Doth Return

We had another succesful raid tonight. I was invited and held off respeccing in case I was needed as prot and we had 9 healers signed!

Both NicePallyClassLeader and myself got to pally tank?

So we went in, we did our stuff, easily did trash waves - 2 tankadins FTW!!

I swapped over to healing for the bosses and walked out of there with another 4 badges.

Except I didn't walk out of there. A warrior and I went for a little walk up the hill behind the horde camp and tried to get to Winterspring!!

He'd jump down and if he died I would jump and bubble then res him and we'd wait for the bubble cooldowns.

We got to the edge of the instance, very flat-earth-esque!! We tried a running jump off the edge but got stuck on the edge in mid-air.

We tried to HS - "can't do that while moving" - WTF!! We tried the auto unstick - "Can't do that while moving" oopsy!!

We could have put in a ticket but we logged out and hoped we'd get booted from the instance.

Update 01/09/2008: When I logged in tonight I was outside the instance!

Badge Total: 36

Ninja'd Into Kara

I spent most of saturday on my new "Alt-Refer-a-Multi-box-Friend experiment" (news and views to come and then went out for a few beers.

When I got back at around 23:00 I made the mistake of logging into HolyWarrior.

Seems a whole load of mains were in Kara at Prince and they just lost their 3rd healer and it was NicePallyClassLeader tanking, so they needed 3 healers!

I told them I was still prot specced and went in in my healing gear. We took him out easy enough and I have another 3 badges that I am struggling to find use for. Total: 32

The Waters Have Broken

...no, TiceNits isn't pregnant. We got to go raiding again tonight.

I Gets to Tank
I wasn't really expecting it and I may have had a few too many beers, but we were heading for Mount Hyjal without a tankadin, or at least we were until I respecced protection!!

Woo Hoo - I get to tank Mount Hyjal!!!

Oopsy Respec
So I went and respecced far too quickly, throwing 4 points into the +defence talent before I realised that I was already way over defence cap and combined avoidance - DOH!!

Also throwing 10 points into ret to get the 5% parry of which I probably only need 1 or 2% to hit 102.4% unbuffed (with Holy Shield)

So a lot of points wasted that I could have put into holy for strength and intellect and holy damage for threat or ret for ... well ... retribution threat.

Dependant on talents I may be better off going for the 5% parry and swapping out the last of my avoidance gems for more stamina and damage gems.

Low HP? - lolwut?
Anyway, that's for a different post, we went into Mount Hyjal, I was ~15.1K HP raid buffed. I was hoping for more like 16-17K. As soon as I got there one of the priests told me to trade her the shield. WTF? OK, whatever. I did and she slammed the +18 stamina enchant on it that my last shield had but I had not had time to acquire. Cool.

And then I died and died and died.

Maybe I should let the hunters and warriors peel a couple of abominations off before I start aggroing the whole zone with Holy Wrath, Avengers Shield and Consecration! Not to mention the odd Righteous Defence on those mobs being kited to the NPCs.

But at other times I had every single mob from the wave on me and was fine. I put it down to innatentive healing.

One Down One To Go
Anyway, we took out Rage first go and then went for AnEnema.

Myself and another warrior were assigned infernal tanks and we got the trash down and moved into position. I died to the first infernal that the warrior had grabbed. Ouch.

We wiped and I decided that on the next attempt I would swap into holy gear and off-heal the infernal tank.

Oh Smeg!
We took out the trash and I managed to swap into most of my holy gear before the encounter had started but forgot to drink and had no healing spells on my bars.

I spent the whole of that fight with less than 1K mana spamming down ranked FoLs from my spellbook - LOL

We wiped at 13%.

3rd attempt. I tanked the trash. Swapped into holy gear and drank most of the way up to 100% mana. And still forgot to put my healing macro's on my button bars.

Hmmm Interesting.
So I healed from my spellbook again, but this time only downranked the FoL to experiment with mana expenditure vs mana consumption. I found that I could spam rank 3 or 4 FoL and my mana regen could nearly keep up. If I was actually holy specced the rank 3 or 4 FoL would actually heal for a worthwhile amount and I could probably spam forever!!!

Anyway, we killed him and got the 3rd and 4th badges for the night!!

Badgers
Badges Before Shield = 58
Badges After Shield = 25
Badges After Raid = 29

"Toto, I've a Feeling We're Not in Kansas Anymore"

Something weird happened to me last Sunday as I was dual boxing and transitioning my shaman, HotPants, from Booty Bay to Gadgetzan.

EvilBastard got on the boat at BB fine but the boat knocked HotPants off the quay. No that's not it, I've had that happen before. Before HotPants could swim back round the boat left with only EB aboard :(

So, EB gets to Ratchet and moves up towards the griffon master and then something weird happened. Can't remember what, maybe I couldn't click on the flight master, or get off my mount, or maybe I was still running up towards him; whatever it was it eventually resulted in me getting a DC.

So, I switch back to HotPants and get her on the boat and then go to log EB back in. When he reappears all the landscape is gone and he is falling through a landless void, but all the NPCs and mobs are also falling. Then he dies just like you would if you fell into the Twisting Nether in Outland.

OK, I think, I'll release spirit and I'll be back at the graveyard. Err ... No. Instead of his ghost appearing at the graveyard he is alive. Err ... but falling through the sky again. Except I'm not in Kansas anymore. EvilBastard falls to his death, again, but on the grassy plains of Arathi Highlands. Err ... WTF?

So, now he releases spirit once more but he doesn't go to the graveyard, the "Resurrect Now" window appears. Why? Because his body is about 20 feet in the air above his head.

He's standing right next to a big wall made out of logs. Hmmm, what could that be? Yep Hammerfall. Not the most friendly place for a gnome to be!

Resurrect Now! Falling gnome. Luckily it wasn't too far a drop this time and he lands on his feet and without looking back to see if the nasty orcs had spotted him he high-tails it out of there.

Oh, it doesn't stop there. Nope. As he is running away 3 Savannah Prowlers (yep - level 15ish lions from The Barrens) fall from the sky, glitch for a few seconds and then sit back down again. I guess to them a grassy plain in Arathi is not too far removed from a grassy plain in the Barrens, just a little more lush!

Interesting, screenshot or it didn't happen!

On he goes, figuring, sod this I'll just run to Refuge Pointe and fly back to Booty Bay or maybe Wetlands. More prowlers falling from the sky, and what's that up there? There are some of the raptors from the Barrens. And some of those Centaur things with their Hyenas. All looking like they are falling but suspended in mid air. What's that? A bonfire? Yes, there is a bonfire suspended up there too. And that? A chest! Haha. A Kodo and several of the giraffe type things! It looks like the whole of the Barrens has fallen through the floor and is now suspended about 50 feet above Arathi.

Alrighty, I'll put in a ticket and continue getting HotPants to Gadgetzan. She gets there and hands in her quests and collects the next batch and then off to Booty Bay again with me checking back on the progress of EBs ticket every once in a while.

Some time later I get a response from the GM and explain the situation again, I think he thinks I'm more interested in getting a free port back to Barrens, but I really just wanted to make them aware of the animals floating above Arathi!

He says "Hang on, we'll have you sorted in a second, hopefully without even logging you off" and up comes the loading screen and we're in ... Lordaeron! Hahahhahaha.

Off again into the loading screen we're back in the Barrens, not too far from Ratchet. In fact probably the same distance and direction from Ratchet as he'd run from Hammerfall.

Who's that standing next to me in blue robes and a green nameplate? I've never seen an NPC out here. Hang on, that's no NPC - that's a GM*

Time for a /thanks and a quick /inspect. Hehe, no Uber-DPS gear here. I want his gear!!

Hang on. That look looks familiar. Ah yes



*Weird thing about the GM was that the name of the one whispering me was one letter different than the one that stood in front of me. Say for instance the avatar stood in front of me was CornUcopia the one whispering me was CornOcopia. This makes we wonder if they have an avatar but maybe they just create a name to talk to you with

Refer a Friend

So Blizzard have a new encourage multi-boxers recruit a friend scheme. What you do is send yourself friend an invite via the link on the WoW web site and youthey get an email with a 10 day trial key.

YouThey also get a link to download the game which will probably take anywhere from between 6 hours and 3 weeks depending on yourtheir broadband connection, but your already have it so wtf?.

So, once youthey use the key to create their trial account(at this stage youthey don't have to supply payment details, yours and err yourstheir accounts are linked.

This has several advantages:

1. You can summon a player from the other account once an hour
2. For every 2 levels a character on the invitees account earns they can grant a level to a lower level char on the inviter's account.
3. When a character from each account is in a party together they earn triple XP as long as they are the same or lower level. NB. The XP appears to first suffer the grouping penalty and then this modified XP is tripled.
4. When the invitee purchases 30 days playtime the inviter gets 30 days free.
5. When the invitee purchases 60 days playtime the inviter gets a Zhevra mount.
   

(1-3 only apply to characters under 60)

I signed myself up for account number 3. And bought the battle chest for £20 under the assumption that the tight bastards will insist that you buy a retail version for the keys to activate the full account.

...oh and I finally got the shield I mentioned here.

Arena Week #8

Having bought my Season 4 gloves I was very eager to try them out. TiceNits and I only got to get 3 matches done though before we gave up for the week. With a rating of 1180. We is Crap!!

But I did get a mage and a rogue into the 3v3 team (by booting one of the founding members).

We had a good session winning 5 and losing 5. We got 27 points from one match and we finished off with a net increase of rating at exactly 1400. Nice!!

With my resilience at 354 those buggers had a hard time trying to kill me. One team zerged me at the start hoping to get rid of the healer. Oh no you don't. I held out for a very long time before popping my bubble at around 5-10%.

Too late for them they turned on my DPS buddies, but 2 of their number were already down to 10% themselves and were soon finished off.

A couple of times we met a team with 2 mages. Both POM/Pyro specced. That hurt. But what hurt more was the spelllock that they threw on me straight after, so no heal and no bubble. Dead.

A very fun evening to replace a raid with.

Bank Holiday Weekend

It's been late summer bank holiday over here in England today, which usually means that it pisses down with rain the whole weekend.

Well, for once we had a fairly good day here.

So what did I do this weekend? Well I had a wedding reception to go to on friday night, so no Kara run for me.

Saturday morning brings a hangover and a combination of battlegrounds for the Spirit of Competition pet and some shaman levelling.

Saturday evening brings a trip to the boozer...

...leading to massive Sunday morning hangover.

I don't remember doing it at all, but when I got in from the boozer on Saturday Evening I must have logged on and taken my Shaman into AV hoping to get the pet. She did get the pet. My Elephant logs show me getting it out of the mail at 01:37 Sunday Morning!

Whilst struggling with this hangover I get asked to come tank Steam Vaults normal mode.

Respec Prot? You're blooding kidding. I throw the tanking gear on and go tank the whole thing specced holy! I even looted Underworld Loam which for some reason I need for a quest :)

Sunday afternoon is where hair of the dog is required so back to the boozer and this drags on into the evening!

Monday is mostly spent with more shaman and rogue levelling utilising the Tour Guide addon that was mentioned recently on Tauren Army.

I love this addon, you can even go into the data file and add or change things.

I of course had to go in and put various blow job quests in for TiceNits!!

So there you go, no raiding news, links to a couple of great addons, Shaman and Rogue almost complete in Hellfire Peninsula and level 62 or thereabouts and yet more proof of how awesome paladins are, Holy Tanking FTW!

Edit: Typographical errors.

Everyone is doing it, even though it's origins are suspect.

So here is my list...

Look at the list and bold those we have read, italicize those we intend to read and underline^ the books we LOVE.

So here’s my list:

1 Pride and Prejudice - Jane Austen
2 The Lord of the Rings* - JRR Tolkien
3 Jane Eyre - Charlotte Bronte
4 Harry Potter series - JK Rowling
5 To Kill a Mockingbird - Harper Lee
6 The Bible*
7 Wuthering Heights - Emily Bronte
8 Nineteen Eighty Four - George Orwell
9 His Dark Materials - Philip Pullman
10 Great Expectations - Charles Dickens
11 Little Women - Louisa M Alcott
12 Tess of the D’Urbervilles - Thomas Hardy
13 Catch 22 - Joseph Heller
14 Complete Works of Shakespeare
15 Rebecca - Daphne Du Maurier
16 The Hobbit - JRR Tolkien
17 Birdsong - Sebastian Faulks
18 Catcher in the Rye - JD Salinger
19 The Time Traveler’s Wife - Audrey Niffenegger
20 Middlemarch - George Eliot
21 Gone With The Wind - Margaret Mitchell
22 The Great Gatsby - F Scott Fitzgerald
23 Bleak House - Charles Dickens
24 War and Peace - Leo Tolstoy
25 The Hitch Hiker’s Guide to the Galaxy^ - Douglas Adams
26 Brideshead Revisited - Evelyn Waugh
27 Crime and Punishment - Fyodor Dostoyevsky
28 Grapes of Wrath - John Steinbeck
29 Alice in Wonderland - Lewis Carroll
30 The Wind in the Willows - Kenneth Grahame
31 Anna Karenina - Leo Tolstoy
32 David Copperfield - Charles Dickens
33 Chronicles of Narnia^ - CS Lewis
34 Emma - Jane Austen
35 Persuasion - Jane Austen
36 The Lion, The Witch and The Wardrobe - CS Lewis
37 The Kite Runner - Khaled Hosseini
38 Captain Corelli’s Mandolin - Louis De Bernieres
39 Memoirs of a Geisha - Arthur Golden
40 Winnie the Pooh - AA Milne
41 Animal Farm - George Orwell
42 The Da Vinci Code - Dan Brown
43 One Hundred Years of Solitude - Gabriel Garcia Marquez
44 A Prayer for Owen Meaney - John Irving
45 The Woman in White - Wilkie Collins
46 Anne of Green Gables - LM Montgomery
47 Far From The Madding Crowd - Thomas Hardy
48 The Handmaid’s Tale - Margaret Atwood
49 Lord of the Flies - William Golding
50 Atonement - Ian McEwan
51 Life of Pi - Yann Martel
52 Dune* - Frank Herbert
53 Cold Comfort Farm - Stella Gibbons
54 Sense and Sensibility - Jane Austen
55 A Suitable Boy - Vikram Seth
56 The Shadow of the Wind - Carlos Ruiz Zafon
57 A Tale Of Two Cities - Charles Dickens
58 Brave New World^ - Aldous Huxley
59 The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-time - Mark Haddon
60 Love In The Time Of Cholera - Gabriel Garcia Marquez
61 Of Mice and Men - John Steinbeck
62 Lolita - Vladimir Nabokov
63 The Secret History - Donna Tartt
64 The Lovely Bones - Alice Sebold
65 Count of Monte Cristo - Alexandre Dumas
66 On The Road - Jack Kerouac
67 Jude the Obscure - Thomas Hardy
68 Bridget Jones’s Diary^ - Helen Fielding
69 Midnight’s Children - Salman Rushdie
70 Moby Dick - Herman Melville
71 Oliver Twist - Charles Dickens
72 Dracula - Bram Stoker
73 The Secret Garden - Frances Hodgson Burnett
74 Notes From A Small Island - Bill Bryson
75 Ulysses - James Joyce
76 The Bell Jar - Sylvia Plath
77 Swallows and Amazons^ - Arthur Ransome
78 Germinal - Emile Zola
79 Vanity Fair - William Makepeace Thackeray
80 Possession - AS Byatt
81 A Christmas Carol - Charles Dickens
82 Cloud Atlas - David Mitchell
83 The Color Purple - Alice Walker
84 The Remains of the Day - Kazuo Ishiguro
85 Madame Bovary - Gustave Flaubert
86 A Fine Balance - Rohinton Mistry
87 Charlotte’s Web - EB White
88 The Five People You Meet In Heaven - Mitch Albom
89 Adventures of Sherlock Holmes - Sir Arthur Conan Doyle
90 The Faraway Tree Collection - Enid Blyton
91 Heart of Darkness - Joseph Conrad
92 The Little Prince - Antoine De Saint-Exupery
93 The Wasp Factory^ - Iain Banks
94 Watership Down - Richard Adams
95 A Confederacy of Dunces - John Kennedy Toole
96 A Town Like Alice - Nevil Shute
97 The Three Musketeers - Alexandre Dumas
98 Hamlet - William Shakespeare
99 Charlie and the Chocolate Factory - Roald Dahl
100 Les Miserables - Victor Hugo (abriged)

* Started but not finished...yet!
^ Can't figure out how to underline
There are no italics. I don't specifically intend to read any, however, I do have the feeling that I should at least read the classics, ie Austen, Dickens, Hardy et al.

21 Read. Oh dear.

Beta Conspiracy Thyroid(sic)

It just occurred to me that Beta Key allocation is far from random.

How many people in and out of game do you know that got into Beta? I personally know 1 person, and his wasn't a random Beta allocation, he got into "Friends & Family" Alpha.

I read quite a few blogs, roughly the same number as that of people I know in game.

So making a comparison I'd expect maybe 1 or 2 bloggers to have received a Beta Key - if that!

But there seems to be a disproportionate number of bloggers that have gotten into Beta. Hmmmmm

What's the best kind of publicity? Free of course!

Where's my Beta key Blizz? Oh yeah, my blog is anonymous - DOH!

Brutal......

I bought Season 4 Gloves :)

Brutal Gladiators Ornamented Gloves or something.

They are better than my T5 gloves - WTF?? - I will be raiding with 2 pieces of PvP gear and that does not include the trinket!!

Picture to come...

Happy Birthday To Me!!

I never remember birthdays, and now I have forgotten my blogs very first birthday. DOH!!

My Blog was 1 year old on the 14th August, coincidentally also the anniversary of TiceNits and I. I bought her a 19" flat widescreen monitor. My blog got bugger all!

Maybe I'll refer myself again and Triple-Box.

Wine Not WoW

Todays entree card is about Wine. What? You may have noticed that I am very strict that only WoW or gaming entrecards usually appear on my blog. But I do have an interest in wine making so when I got the advert request I accepted it.

It's my blog and I can do what I want. Nuh!

Serious WoW content to follow later.

Epic Arena

OMG We had one hell of a marathon arena last night. We started with a 2v2 rating of 1268 and an unknown quantity of arena points, But what I do know is that I need around 250 arena points to be able to buy a piece of Brutal Gladiator gear. That will be very nice.

So we started off with 2 wins against a Shaman/Warrior team and then beat a Hunter/Priest combo to reach 1313 rating.

The Marathon.
The fourth match began facing that same Hunter/Priest team. The priest was going down and I got silenced and I was spamming the Holy Shock waiting for the silence to wear off and finsih off the priest.

The First Mistake.
What I didn't notice was that TiceNits was getting her arse handed to her by the other hunter. She and the priest went down simultaneoulsy. Oops.

Leaving me with the hunter. I spent a little while being kited by him nad seeing the interupts caused by his pet. I actually probably spent too long doing this before deciding to despatch the bloody annoying cat.

Nigh Night Pussy.
I focused on the cat and went all out kiting it around a pillar to keep the hunter out of LOS of his pet so he couldn't mend it. It worked a treat and it went down pretty quickly leaving just me and the hunter.

So the hunter starts kiting me around the arena, throwing arcane shot on me and I'm Holy Shocking him. We are both soon out of Mana and it looks like a war of attrition is inbound. I'm trying to melee him down and he's trying to keep me at range with some slowing shot and viper traps.

Bloody Arcane Shot.
It took me quite some time to realise that it was his Arcane Shot that was knocking off my Blessing of Wisdom all the time, but I eventually learnt to keep an eye on that and reapply if I had the mana.

His viper traps were annoying and I could either just ignore them and keep after him or drop a rank 1 Consecration if I had the mana.

Mana Issues.
His shots were wearing me down but I had just enough MP5 to be able to pop a quick Flash of Light when health dropped too low. Soon into the fight I realised it would be won or lost on how much MP5 I could get so I was try to get SoW up as soon as I had mana and before he could drain that 1 pixel of blue from my mana bar with whatever bloody annoying shot does that.

At one point when I was playing the LoS to try and get enough mana for a BoW, SoW and a judgement I realised he wasn't following me around the pillar. I looked at his portrait and thanked god I had enemy casting bars on; he was trying to Revive Pet. Knowing it was game over if he succeeded I had to close on him fast.

I ran straight into a slowing trap but had enough mana for a bubble and thankfully it was off cooldown. I got to him in the nick of time and stopped that cast.

The Next Mistake.
There followed a lot more kiting and running and viper traps and arcane shots and slowing things and then I got behind a pillar and he stopped following me. Then he dropped from combat and I lost mytarget on him.

At this point I just stood there for a few second trying to get some mana up. I soon realised that if I couldn't see him I couldn't tell if he was trying another revive pet so I had to get back to him. By the time I had him retargetted he had about 20% more mana. Ouch, thats gonna hurt.

The Finale.
We have some more kiting fun and he is now dropping a lot more viper traps and I haven't got the mana to bubble or heal much. Then when I am on about 10% he must have got lucky and pathed me into a trap just as his cooldown came up and I went from one trap into another, with no mana for bubble, heal or even a rank 1 Consecrate. He got me the bastard. Just before I dropped I managed to get a /dance off.

Lessons Learnt and Questions.
I realise now that the first thing I should have done is swapped from mace and shield to my Hammer of the Naaru, I was hitting him for less than 100 white damage, the 2 hander would have done him for several hundred. It would also have a better chance to proc the mana return.

Can you drink in arenas? I couldn't use potions but he got a lot more mana back that 5 or 10 seconds we were out of combat than I did!

I never popped avenging wrath once. If I'd popped that and had the 2-hander up at the start of the fight he'd have been in a lot worse position when we got to our attrition race.

I also never popped the Talisman of the Alliance that I had just bought and even put onmy hot bars. DOH!

I could have won that easily. The fight seemed to last half and hour. TiceNits got up after about 10 minutes and went and watched TV!!

The Rest of the Evening.
We never met them again for the rest of the evening. We lost the next 2 matches to a Shaman and a Priest, then beat a rogue who came in on his own. Then we lost the last 3 matches taking our rating down to 1230. Ouch!

So the end result was a 6-4 loss but the matches were a lot better and my 350-odd resilience really showed with much better survivability.

3v3
Later on I got Boredom the Mage and a new team member (a non raiders warrior alt) into 10 3v3 matches.

This went much better than our 9-1 drumming a few weeks ago, we actually went 5-5 but overall lost 3 rating points so the 3v3 rating is now 1379

Trial of the Naaru: Magtheridon

Come raid time last night we had about 15 people in the raid and it was decided we'd go to Maggy and fill up the raid with friends etc. WooHoo! Hoping this was going to go better than last weeks tries I hop straight into ...

... another Arathi Basin. LOL.

Eventually we got the raid filled out an in we went. We cleared down to him easily enough and then assigned clickers and tanks and off we went.

Fast Channeller Deaths.
We started the last channeler with 20 seconds left before Maggy release and this was geneally agreed to be a very good sign and the channeller dropped just as Maggy came -a-calling!

I ran in Seal and Judgement of Wisdom going and never drop below 75% mana. Then the cave in thing came as we were bouncing about and the tank went splat as all the healers were getting bounced or running.

I personally got thrown right in front of him and I was running hoping not to get an unlucky cleave thing, and I couldn't bubble cos I just used it on the last bouncy thingy.

He was well below 20% when I threw a DI on another pally.

Assign Backup Clickers.
We repeated the channeller deaths before Maggy came out and started on him again, very nice.

Unfortunately TiceNits, who was a clicker, died just as she clicked her cube at 20%. The raid took a whole wedge of damage but no deaths, people shouted for someone to cover her cube but no-one did.

I spotted the absence of a clicker just before Maggy started casting and me and another pally ran for her cube. I just got within range and was clicking on the cube as the Blast Nova killed us all. Wipe number 2 with Maggy's HP % appraoching single figures :(

I was sure that backup clickers had been discussed at the beginning, but apparently it was decided not to bother. I was a little vociferous about this in TeamSpeak and backup clickers were assigned.

That's the way to do it.
Once backup clickers were assigned we began attempt number 3 with my hopes of "Champion of the Naaru" fading fast.

Channellers down before Maggy released again and into the fight proper. The roof fell in and I got thrown in front of Maggy and nearly died. Box clicking going very well and BANG - Maggy down!!!!

Loot was rolled for (as we had a lot of non-guildies) on a prio for mains basis. The T4 chest was actually an upgrade for one of our pallies who comes to MH and BT with us, so he got it no argument.

I won absolutely nothing except for a quest complete and 3 more badges of justice.

Round Up
So Sunday afternoon's Arcatraz run netted HW another 4 badges so taking the total up to 55 and then the 3 from Maggy brings me up to 58.

HolyWarrior handed the Trials quest in and got 25 gold, a ring with fire resistance on it (and stamina) lolwut??? and the title Champion of the Naaru!

So now we just need Vashj and Kael down so I can finish Vials of Eternity and get the Hand of A'dal title!

Millhouse Manastorm and Other Weekend Fun

Had a pretty productive weekend and it's only going to get better.

Saturday was mostly consumed with battlegrounds and trying to put this list of "acquired" / "working towards" / "what do I put in this slot?" together.

HolyWarrior now has well over 40K honour, in fact it was probably closer to 60K when I went on the spending spree and got the boots, bracers, necklace and trinket.

Sunday morning was mostly spent finishing up that honour grind and then some battlegrounds on various characters trying to get that damm medallion (I have only achieved that on HW so far) while waiting for TiceNit's to be ready to go get her Dreadsteed on her lock.

Trial of the Naaru
Meanwhile, a guildie asked if I wanted to do a heroic. I replied that I only wanted Arcatraz for the Trial of the Naaru quest otherwise I was grinding honour. He agreed and got a group together.

A pally tank (which I think I probably outgeared) and a mage were added to our 3 guildies of SPriest, Rogue and myself and off we went.

First few pulls were easy but then the tank lol-pulled practically the whole of the first bosses room; at least it looked like that. With me trying to get well back I couldn't get a heal onto him in time and he went down, shortly followed by me as I threw a DI on the priest.

Onwards and upwards and the priest dies a without me even noticing a dip in health - one shotted by something. On Delilah the rogue goes down on the very first whirlwind so no healing interrupts :S But we got her down anyway and moved onto her mate who followed her back to the Nether. Unfortunately the SPriest died again while my screen was full of flames!

Finally we get up to the last boss where Millhouse is hanging out. I notice he is PvP so I flag up so that hopefully I can heal him (I don't know if I needed to, but I did anyway) and I can.

We got him down easy with no deaths and I kept Millhouse alive so my quest completed. The boss dropped a very nice set of tanking bracers. Plate, Defence and Intellect. Definitely nice pally tank loot. I let the tank have them but I was sorely tempted to roll. Next Stop Maggy for the last of the Trial quests. What are the odds I'll never go there again?

Dreadsteed Fun
So eventually TiceNits got sorted out and we dragged a guildies alt lvl 70 hunter along with EvilBastard and HolyWarrior to Scholo and Dire Maul.

We had a wipe on Rattlegore trying to get the key because the hunter pulled Rattler just as EB slapped a Seed of Corruption on every mob in site, Rattler went down but the mobs took us out as HW was out of mana from his Corruption, Holy Shock and Exorcism fun - oops! We moved on to Ras and TiceNits' lock sorted out whatever it need to do in the alchemy lab as we toyed with Ras before putting his ass firmly on the floor.

So that done we made our way to Dire Maul. EvilBastard had to go the long way as he was 3K rep shy of being able to take the CoT teleport.

Turned out HolyWarrior was the only one with the Crescent Key, which we didn't even think about until we were at the instance :P Phew!

After a fairly un-eventful run around Dire Maul west taking out 3 of the Pylons, we took out the big tree Tendris Warpwood, or whatever his name is, and then moved into the ghosty area.

A long and drawn out kill all the mobs in the area and the last 2 pylons were down and Loklithaera - (whatever his name is) was at our mercy. For about 20 seconds and then he was just Korean food.

We mana'd up got ready and started the event. It was actually Eb that started it so TiceNits didn't have to fork out too much on the mats!

It got close at the end, EB died just before the ritual was complete and HW was out of mana. Luckily TiceNits has bought the Lodestone so she could refresh the thingies as well. Ritual Complete, EB ressed, everyone mana'd up and lets call that horsey. Several seconds later Horsey and his Master dead and TiceNits' lock has her Dreadsteed!!

YAWN

...and we're not talking Yet Another Warlock Nerf cos he is definitely NOT boring. Anyway where was I?

Oh yes, Thursday night. Still not enough healers = No Raid.

Maggy Pug

Last night one of our pallies asked in guild chat if anyone was up for Maggy.

I put EvilBastard up for it but had trouble getting into the group because the raid leader had a stupid a character in his name, you know, one with silly ^ on it or something.

Finally got in though and off we went for a pwning session.

There was a good few guildies in the raid but it was a majority PUG so I wasn't holding out too much hope. If only HolyWarrior had rescued Millhouse Manastorm then he might be about to get a new title.

Each attempt we'd be on the last or the penultimate channeller before Maggy would release and we easily finished them off and got onto Maggy himself but we'd wipe a few minutes in.

Several wipes and I never made it above 14th on the damage meters!!

40K And My Warhammer

I wonder how many mis-directs I'll get because of that post title?

Anyway, HolyWarrior reached 42K so will be able to acquire the PvP weapon and shield. But there is so much stuff out their that is more of a PvP upgrade that I'm going to have to re-hash my list of stuff here that I want as an update to this post.

Head -
Neck - Guardian's Pendant of Salvation (10EOTS 15300H) - Check
Shoulders -
Back -
Chest -
Wrists - Vindicator's Ornamented Bracers (20WSG 9199H) - Check
Hands -
Waist -
Legs -
Feet - Vindicator's Ornamented Greaves (40EOTS 13923H) - Check
Ring -1
Ring - 2
Trinket - 1 - Talisman of the Alliance - Check
Trinket - 2 Medallion of the Alliance - Check
Libram -
Shield -
Weapon -

Updates as and when

Seasonal Battleground Rewards

The spirits of competition are out and about for the 2 weeks of the Olympics. Apparently they come around every 2 years but I don't remember them 2 years ago when I was mostly PvPing trying to get to Field Marshal.

Anyhow, this year you can get an Olympics-esque tabard just for going into a battleground and if you win one then you get a chance to get a gold medallion which summons a Spirit of Competition.

My 6 year had one on his level 19 warrior before HolyWarior got his!!

TiceNits still hasn't got one, she spent most of Sunday in losing battlegrounds on her level 49 warlock. /cry

I am now trying to get it for EvilBastard, PS the Rogue and BitchSlapper. Once I have it on them I may even try to get it on all my characters.

On a side note, raid cancelled again due to summer.

Arena Weeks #5 and #6

Totally forgot about Arena week 5 - oops!

So into Arena Week #6 we have 1000 odd points and a rating of 1271.

I didn't manage to get any 3v3 action, but TiceNits' and I did our 10 2v2s.

We start with 3 wins giving us 43 points and this is swiftly followed by 3 losses to one of the teams we beat earlier. They swapped their rogue out for a hunter and easily beat us taking 49 points in total from us.

Next up we get 2 more wins with our second +17 of the evening and a +10 and follow that up with 2 losses of -12 each.

5-5 with only -3 points lost overall

So we finish with a rating of 1268.

The Weekend

Just a reminder to myself what happened at the weekend, unless you're bored at work I wouldn't carry on reading if I were you. You have been warned...

I spent quite some time on Saturday in the battlegrounds and my honour is now up to 32K so shield and mace will soon be mine.

I was planning on picking up the prot shield assuming it would be good for PvE tanking and therefore saving my 33 badges. No, that is not a PvE tanking sheild.

I had a Stag Do to attend on Saturday night so that was a lot of WoW time lost but I made that up on Sunday.

Sunday nights raid was cancelled as expected due to lack of people.

Last Raid For A While

The holiday season is taking it's toll. This is probably going to be the last raid of August as we now have 4 healers on holiday.

We managed to fill out a raid but only had 5 healers. NicePallyClassLeader had a poll. MH or BT. The overwhelming choice was BT.

So, off we trot to Mount Hyjal. LOL.

We kick off not too late and we get to WinterTwat in good time. I get ice tombed practically the instant the fight started, in all the rushing of bodies to get into position and Rage being positioned I did not even notice. I died! Oops!

Next off TiceNits got the tomb, she ice blocked out. Then again; she trinketted out of it. Then again ... err ... just like me last week. 3 in a row, only 2 ways to get out of it, both on cooldown. One dead mage.

He dies anyway. So onto AnEnema.

As usual I had forgotten my Shadow Resistance gear so I was the infernal tank's healer. I got targetted and ran about a bit and then got killed by it. Ooops. Maybe I should have run around it rather than trying to go through it!!

Shortly afterwards we wipe. We start the whole trash grind again and get to the boss, who helpfully resists a distract, but we get around that, and this time we killed him.

Too Late for a 3rd boss so we grab the epic gems and call it a night; after I start the 3rd bosses trash waves of course.

4 badges so 51 now (still haven't bought that sheild yet). Apparently the ZA one is great.

The Cow King Is Dead

I have finally done Magisters Terrace Normal. I am probably the last level 70 in game to enter it, but I finally did it, and I remembered to take the quest in with me.

I can't really remember too much about it as I may have had a few drinks by then, but I do remember the floating around bit on the final boss. Was pretty cool.

Afterwards I got invited to a raid of 7 or so guildies to do a follow up of our little excursion around Durotar and The Barrens on Sunday.

We started off with undercity and tried to take down the bosses. Not so easy so we wiped out the bankers and the auctioneers and then went to pillage Brill. Once Brill had been wiped from the face of Azeroth a few level 70 hordies turned up so we had some fun with them until the killed us.

A quick corpse run and then a sprint to the Zepellin got us to Durotar again where we wiped out Razor Hill, took a run to Crossroads for a little more fun and then headed over to Thunder Bluff.

We ran for the boss killing everything on the way. Before even discussing tactics ran straight for him. 8 of us took him out. We had a little horde company but nothing significant. It took a little while, but we got a faction boss down!!

Hopefully the next step is Silvermoon.

Az'Galore is Cheeky Bugger

Well after lots of frigging about and 75 mins we did manage to 1-shot the fecker though, but yet again he dropped 2 of one T6 hand token, 1 of another and no T6 pally token :(

2 badges takes us up to 47.

So onto ArchiMonkey and 15 minutes later we have not started.

21:30 and we start. 89% we wipe!!

21:55 almost instant wipe #2

22:30 Lost count of wipes.

23:00 Last attempt before server shutdown. Needless to say: we wiped at again.

1 word: Bollox!

Failed Raid. Summertime Blues?

As summer comes round many people have been reporting that raids are tailing off as not enough people can sign up. It has started to happen to our guild and hit last night.

We had a Mount Hyjal Az'Galore and ArchiMonkey raid planned but not enough sign ups. Come raid start time we had 20 people in the raid.

Did we give up and go grind something? No. We went and took our first look at Kazzak. Yep - we've never even tried him and as such out wowjutsu rating is unnecessarily low.

Ironically by the time we started on him we had invited a few friends and ex-guildies and we had 30 in the raid. Typical.

So we one-shot him - Wahey!!

We've also never done DoomWalker, so we went and one shot him too!! Well, at least that's 2 more points on our wowjutsu rating!!

I was buzzing him on my flying mount before we started and he smacked me one. He took me from 10,400HP down to 100HP - OUCH!

So having done that the raid shrunk considerably but 7 of us went for Onyxia. I have only been attuned for Onyxia a few weeks and I really wanted to see her.

I died near the start of the fight, to some fire, I think it was a phase transition. DOH! But even bigger DOH was that then I released so I never got to see all the fight :(

But she was one shotted easily with just a shammy healing and me and the other shammy dead, so 5 manned for most of the fight!

Then we went off to find some old-world bosses. First stop Hinterlands and Emeriss was up. He is apparently very hard but we gave a good account of ourselves getting him down to 66%.

We decided to go try the others (even with my warning that they may not be up). So we got out bodies back and started running towards Aerie Peak. About half way there we run into a PvP flagged level 52 Tauren Warrior. He must have been cacking his pants as 7 level 70s ran past him and he realised he was still flagged (probably from ganking some poor level 40 Dwarf).

I pulled a quick U-turn and rode back after him (epic mount FTW), stunned and holy shocked him and a goodly chunk of his health was gone already. He valiantly popped retaliation just as 6 other level 70s dis-mounted and finished him off!

Plenty of laughs as well as "poor guy" in Teamspeak as we continued onto Duskwood to find a distinct absence of Dragon :(

Ashenvale, no Dragon. We popped to Azshara to see if the ghost dragon was alive. Nope, a ghost. He is not one of the 4 world bosses and I am not entirely sure what makes him come out, maybe it's a quest. Anyway, onwards to our last hope, Feralas. But no dragon there either.

Guess it's gonna be a Crossroads raid then!!

We stormed into Crossroads and obliterated it. That was fun :) A poor little level 10 came running at me and I 1-shotted him on my way out - Hahahaha!

We all mounted up and got in a follow-train and headed out. Very funny!

Next stop, Razor Hill and some more carnage. A quick little trip to the Orc starting area, but only a few guards to wipe out there.

Onwards to Ogrimar via Razor Hill. A quick stop to wipe out all the guards and trainers there. NicePallyClassLeader gave a level 9 flagged orc a /hug as we went past. I couldn't resist though and I turned back for a quick 1-shot Holy Shock ROFLMFAO!!

By now we were all in hysterics over Teamspeak.

Back door into Ogrimar and got most of the way to the coliseum, having stopped for several guard fights along the way, before the Horde got enough players organised to halt us in our tracks.

By the time most of us were dead and I was down to a few hundred HP my bubble did it's last few cooldown ticks and I was able to Bubble-Hearth to safety at the last minute.

The others were not so lucky and had to do that god-awful corpse run from Razor Hill and then had fun trying to rez out of sight - unsuccessfully. LOL.

All in all a hilarious evening which had by sides aching from laughing so much. See, a failed raid doesn't have to mean no fun, and we got DKP and badges from the 2 Outland world bosses so not a bad night at all really.

45 Badges (33 saved for Shield).

Update: wowjutsu no longer has Kazzak or Doomwalker /sulk

Paladin Shadow Resistance for Mount Hyjal and Black Temple

There are some fights early on in Mount Hjyal and Black Temple that can benefit from some shadow resistance gear if you are a healer. I don't care about anyone else :)

AnEnema and Kaz'Rogal in Mount Hyjal spring to mind right now.

Enough shadow resistance for these should be provided by the Medallion of Karabor(+40 SR) (a reward late in the Black Temple attunement chain) and by a crafted cloak called Night's End(+40 SR) with the +15 SR enchant on it. Top this 95 up with a Shadow Resistance Aura (+70 SR) and you have 165 Shadow Resistance.

Later on however everyone in the raid will need a hefty chunk of shadow resistance for the Mother Sharaz encounter. Being capped at 365 is probably best.

For paladins the gear required is:

Shadesteel Bracers (+40 SR)
2 Primal Life
2 Primal Shadow
4 Adamantite Bars
1 Void Crystal
1 Heart of Darkness

Shadesteel Girdle (+54 SR)
3 Primal Life
4 Primal Shadow
8 Adamantite Bars
1 Void Crystal
2 Heart of Darkness

Shadesteel Greaves (+72 SR)
4 Primal Life
6 Primal Shadow
12 Adamantite Bars
1 Void Crystal
3 Heart of Darkness

Shadesteel Sabots (+54 SR)
2 Primal Life
4 Primal Shadow
4 Adamantite Bars
1 Void Crystal
2 Heart of Darkness

For a total of:
16 Primal Shadow
11 Primal Life
28 Admantite Bars
4 Void Crystals
8 Heart of Darkness

Along with your enchanted cloak and the Medlaiion of Karabor this will give you a whopping 315 Shadow Resistance! Without shadow resistance buffs. So stick Prayer of Shadow Protection(Rank 2) top of that and you are at 385 - actually 20 over the cap. You can now lose the cloak enchant in favour of something more useful.