Tits online

Had my first try at Heroic dungeons yesterday and things went smoothly. Two things had kept me out of heroics in the passed:

1. Old Lÿnn was only keyed for Coilfang Reservoir so there were many I couldn't do


2. I didn't know how I would do in them

I heard the potential to die was great and small mistakes cause wipes and pissed off party members. Now, I consider myself to be a decent enough PvE'er, but risk versus reward wasn't great enough for me. The risk being messing up and pissing people off. That is behind me now. I still have room to grow. I don't know everything but I at least feel confident enough that I can do heroic dungeons. I went through heroic Auchenai Crypts, Underbog and the Mechanar.

I had logged on early in the day and made an Undead rogue. I asked Gurch to add it to the guild and once I was in he asked if I was keyed for Heroic Mechanar. I wasn't yet but I had the rep for it. He was in a group that was looking for just one more DPS. I was added and off we went. I was surprised at how little trapping was necessary. That always makes me happy when I get to just focus on killing stuff, but at least I can trap when needed. The bosses were mostly the same with little twists and now they drop Badges of Justice for epic gear from Shattrath. We made it through the Mechanar with little trouble. Later in the evening, Gurch was leaving a heroic group he was in and they wanted to continue. He got me the spot and we ran the daily heroic dungeon quest in Auchenai Crypts and then went to Underbog. There was only one wipe between those three. Another hunter in the group for Auchenai Crypts aggro'd mobs from the sides of the early pulls. Phew! At least it wasn't me. Repair bill was horrendous, a total of about 10G. I'm sure it pales in comparison to the tanks' but...

I got two drops for new gear. I got a blue set of cuffs that were an easy upgrade. Then there was a pair of mail hands that dropped from the big spore guy in UB which I guess is for a hunter set. I would guess survival. They looked like crap to me. To break it down, I would lose over 1% in +hit percentage, over .5% in +crit to gain 14 AP (negligible), 23 stam and 21 int. I'm unbalanced at the moment having low HP and low mana but nice DPS numbers of 22.5% crit, 1300 AP, and 107 +hit. I linked my current gloves in party and the Survival hunter said the new drop was better. I took them but they sit in the bank now. Meh. I also got 12 BOJ, one large shard and a primal nether.

Storms Deck... ooooh

Wow, have I had great luck in instances. I've done a smattering of the high level normal instances including Steam Vaults, Shadow Labyrinth, the Arcatraz Shattered Halls and Black Morass and have made out like a bandit. The most notable being winning greed rolls on the Ace of Storms twice from the last boss of SV and an epic caster necklace from trash in Shattered Halls. The necklace has a supposed value of 666-800 gold, so says Auctioneer. I think I'll have a hard time dumping it off for that much but it's sitting happily in the auction house as of the writing of this entry. It is keeping one of the Aces of Storms company there. The other sits in my bank with his friends Two, Three, Four, Six, Seven and Eight. I investigated the reward for the Storms Deck quest and it seems pretty cool. I went to the AH and picked up the six cards mentioned above for a total of about 300G, not bad considering the completed deck sells for 1000G. I lack the five of storms and I have no idea how costly it will be. The sale of the other ace will help abate my gold loss to a degree. The trinket reward for the quest is the Faire card: Wrath. While equipped it will add 17 crit rating each time I make a direct damage attack that does not crit. The effect stacks up to 20 times and resets once I crit. I would replace a trinket that reads "Equip: Gain 21 crit rating, Use: Gain 200 AP for 15 (20?) sec". So I will start fights about .9% lower chance to crit and will be about even at one shot and have better crit rating after 2 non-crits. This would carry on ad infinitum during the fight as well after each crit. This isn't huge. I'm not wetting my pants in excitement for this but I figure that since the sale of one ace makes up more than half the cost of putting one deck together, I'll go for it. I'll do some Dr. Boom testing to draw my own conclusions.

Apart from that I have 2 pieces of the Beast Master Dungeon set. It's not great, in fact one piece went directly to the bank. I equipped the shoulders as it gave me a fraction more crit but the gloves were inferior to the Felscale Gloves I made for myself. From the Arcatraz, I got the fiery hawk lookin crossbow... maybe Netherhawk, I don't recall. It's very cool looking and made a nice upgrade to the dungeon dropped gun I had. There's a few more things I could really use but for the time being I'm pretty well geared until Karazhan. I'm keyed for Kara, we just need to find a guild.

Alenko had been in negotiations with the guild of a real life friend to get himself, Gurch and I into a Kara raiding guild. It fell through sadly because the guild is French speaking and they would not accept English-speaking-only members, that would be Calimon and I. It meant a lot to me, that Alenko decided against going into the guild without us. Instead we must now recruit. We invested in a guild bank to help with recruiting. Alenko bought the first tab of the guild bank and Buru, Calimon and I threw in 100G each to help buy the next tab. Now all we need are recruits.

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Nothing much new to report for Lÿnn. Ran Warsong Gulch with Alenko and Gurch last night for the BG daily. We won and I did fairly well on the "MVP" list, the list at the end of the BG that lists everyone's stats. I was ranked third on the list which is ordered based on damage done, HP healed, kill shots and flags captured. Overall I got about 800 honor and 12 G and we had a fun time.

Afterwards I finished questing in Evergrove to max out my Cenarion rep I could get there. I think the remainder of my rep for Cenarion will be SV and coilfang turn-ins. /grind While questing, I had dropped myself into the Shadow Labyrinth LFG queue. I was left there untouched until about 12:30 AM when I wanted to go to bed. I thought to give the group a try, so I headed off to Auchindon. We breezed our way through and drops were all plate and a shield. The only drop I care for from there now is a nice crit, AP cloak that drops from the Ogre boss. The reason for running the instance was for my first Kara key frag which I got of course. Two more frags and some other questing/instance stuff and I can try Kara... probably PUG's at first. PUG Kara is scary.

I'm going to Disney World

Finally hit 70... well a few days ago. With all the fun crap to do I have missed out on writing it. I finally strapped on V-bow (I mention this bow a lot and I realize it's not the be all end all but it's a cheap world drop that's easily attained. I'm actually dying to get a better bow so as not to be in the company of others here). It has some crappy +5 damage scope, I think, and to be honest, I should probably leave it that way until I find a replacement.
I've knocked a few other things off of my to-do list, Blackened Spear being the biggest. On a successful Shadow Lab run, Murmur dropped a Sonic Spear with no other competition in the group. /glee My gear is shaping up nicely. I have 90-100 +hit and 20.01% crit (few just made it). Some of those two stats came at the expensive of additional RAP, but even that is doing well at about 1200. In comparison, NElf Lÿnn has about the same RAP and only about 17.5% crit and barely any +hit. Having a better understanding of gear has made it easier to gear myself better on the way to 70.
Flying mount came one day after 70. The 8-12 gold per quest completed sure is nice. Not only did it help me get that last little bit of gold for flying mount but my bank is finally huge and full of Netherweave bags. The bags were courtesy of Alenko who must have made about 8 bags for me and my alts. In return I now send him just about all me extra Netherweave to help him level Tailoring. It's also a tip for disenchanting my green items. I mail him my greens whenever I venture back to town and send him the Netherweave as a tip. He sends me back the enchanting mats he gets from the disenchants, which I hope to turn into useful enchantments in the near future.
Speaking of crafts, leatherworking is finally past 355. I noticed that Heavy Knothide Armor Kits were selling for about 10-11 gold on AH and that one stack of Knothide Leather was about 7 gold. One stack of knothide makes 1⅓ Heavy Knothide Kits. Wow, so I got to level a craft and make a little profit to boot. Now I have my sights set on the leather set that I can get from Consortium Rep. It's chock full of crit, hit and AP and has some gem slots to boot. I have also purchased the Cobrascale Leg Armor and Clefthoof Leg Armor recipes and I should set about making a Cobrascale kit for myself.
I purchased two other rep items, a set of shoulders from Maghar and the leather chest from Cenarion Expedition. My next rep goals are Cenarion for better arrows and the exalted flying mount, Thrallmar for better shot (if my next upgrade is a gun) and the exalted bow, and Consortium for the leather patterns.

45 minutes until level 70...

...probably less, since I have two turnins completed for SMV. After running Auchenai Crypts last night, Alenko and Buru were so kind to do this instance one more time, I finally completed the "Kill Exarch Mala-something" and was getting close to 25% left until 70. Buru needed help on a few group quests, two of which I had never done, so I went along for more XP. Group quests always have better rewards and more XP. By the time we finished, Fubar predicted 45 minutes until level 70 but at 1AM and having to work today, I hung it up. Can I just submit a GM ticket for them to make me 70... I've put in my fair share of time. /sigh

Oh well. Not much longer, obviously. I finally took the Valanos' Longbow out of my mailbox and took a look at other equipment that has been "stored" there. Most of the stuff got vendored, as I have found, quested or gotten better drops from instances. Next step will be to get some stuff enchanted. That will be a riot. I never shelled out the cash for good enchants before... CASH!! Crap, I still have to buy my flying mount. Well maybe I can get Alenko to d/e some stuff and do some enchants for me. I can hook him up with some armor kits in exchange like the clefthoof leg armor for 30 Stam and 10 Agi. He likes stam. Locks and that suicidal Lifetap.

"Can I Get Mark of Kings?"

I'm just one level from using my V-Bow... I hit level 69 last night while in Auchenai Crypts. Auchenai Crypts has done very little for me so far. There is a group/dungeon quest that I now have for the place which sucks since we have successfully run the place twice. I think there is something that Buru wants from there so hopefully we'll go again soon. 69 does bring with it the chance to run the last tier of instances including Shattered Halls (which I want to do a lot for Thrallmar rep), Steam Vaults, Shadow Labyrinth and Black Morass (not certain that this is 69-70 but I know it's CoT 2 so it stands to reason).

I did levels 68 and 69 a bit different than I have in the past. I finished out Nagrand at level 68 so I decided to try something a little different and head to Shadowmoon Valley. I've done very little questing there and I have never done any quests before level 70. Questing is pretty standard wherever you go, but Shadowmoon Valley has a Scryers town and thus Scryers rep quests. I will most certainly head to Evergrove soon though for the Cenarion rep and Area 52 after for more Scryers rep. While in Shadowmoon, I started the Spectrecles quest chain with Buru's help. We finished the easy stuff then headed to the Altar of Shadow or some such. We died on the way but thankfully, the quests can be completed while dead... even if your body isn't close by.

Interestingly enough, while checking out the change in stats over the last few levels, my char has taken a pretty steep drop in RAP in exchange for some very nice crit pieces. Before I hit level 69 my crit was over 21%. Wow! Luckily my DPS didn't drop drastically due to this and of course it is hard to see the final result because more crits equal more damage. Now I just need to fill out my gear with things that carry +hit, +crit and +AP.

LF1M Vending Mage-chine then gtg

To my joy, my new pet, the red wind serpent, will eat conjured bread. /glee This works out well for me as it seems their happiness goes down more quickly in instances. I imagine it is related to how much work (read: fighting) they do and of course pet deaths aren't horribly uncommon. Granted I can buy a stack of bread for it to eat in Shattrath for about 2 gold, but I'm already shelling out money with every shot... and once I'm done, there's still a repair bill. I'm probably not far behind the tanks for my final costs of a dungeon. That is for the time being of course since their repair bills skyrocket as they get epic gear. I'm fairly certain mine isn't wearing equally fast since I take very little damage.

My flying snake still has no name. I had thought of some names but nothing elates me. Macabre is probably the front runner, but only time will tell.

Buru, Alenko and I ran two instance last night. With the help of two other people, of course, we ran Auchenai Crypts (sp?) and Setthek Halls. The crypts were up first and I hadn't run this before. It was pretty uneventful as the only thing I gained was XP and a drop or two. The drops were nice for casters. One drop was utter crap, probably Shaman gear, so it got sharded and I won the roll. I think I will just hold on to it for enchanting mats. There was a ring that dropped from the final boss that was more hunter than anything. I rolled on it but was still unsure if I'd use it. The stats were trade-offs, e.g. lose AP and gain crit, but I liked my rings better.

The matter was moot after running Setthek Halls. The last boss there dropped a very nice ring with much better stats. Inside, I completed a quest to collect some random crap from bird men and was rewarded with Terrok's Quill, a polearm stacked with 54 AGI. It dropped my AP by about 16 but rewarded me with about .5% more crit. My current crit rating unbuffed is about 20.3%. Better than my NElf and I think my DPS and AP are already as good if not better.
After the two instances, the three of us knocked out some group quests, one long chain in particular, and then logged. A very swell night indeed.

Flying serpents... who ever knew?

I have acquired a new pet. A red Outlands wind serpent. I took an excursion to Blade's Edge Mountains two days ago with my heart intent on a red Outlands raptor. I ran to the area that has the raptors and ditched my trash wolf pet I had picked up right outside of Thunder-whatever. I dropped my trap, shot it with Concussive shot and proceeded to tame a new level 65 raptor. I turned around right after the tame and saw... a level 66 red Outlands raptor -.- /abandon, /droptrap... WTF!? A red Flying serpent. I had been thinking of picking one up to see how thunder breath measures up to claw as a focus dump. They look sweet so it was an easy choice to tame it instead.

Running around Nagrand, I have noticed that the new serpent registers DPS higher than my cat. I think the magic focus dump is better. I notice a lot of mitigated yellow damage from my pet especially the first claw. I think they're glancing blows or some such. Lightning breath doesn't seem to suffer this downfall (except when fighting certain ele's, and then he doesn't even cast it because it has no affect). Well into the Outlands I head, to give it more study.

alt+0255

I have resolved the issue of my low level ranged weapon. While farming skulls to kill the undead dragon near Auchindon, the Gunblade dropped. It was nearly 10DPS higher than my crossbow and provides better AP bonus although it is all in the form of +AP so I lost crit due to losing +AGI. Meh. With my current set-up I have 18.5% crit which is doing well for me. I think that's higher than Lÿnn the NElf. The gun will still be replaced at 70 by Valanos' Longbow and probably sooner by the gun from Nesingwary's.

Buru thought that I should sell the gun, considering it is a blue and a low drop. I know it would have sold well on AH but I wanted the gun for two reasons:

1. I needed to level gun skill. It was at 1 and I will soon get the gun from the Nesingwary chain. This gave me the opportunity to do most of the levels while farming and questing last night.
2. It's the Gunblade... ya know FF9. Well it looks no where near as cool but... ahh nostalgia

I need money for a flying mount but it will come soon enough without selling all the cool drops I get.

Questing last night was fun. Buru and I finished out some group quests, none in common sadly. I was really frustrated by one. Evil Draws Near has a player collect 20 Doom Skulls from the drenai around Auchindon and then use a relic from a previous quest to call down a huge undead dragon. Very sweet looking. The dragon was 65 elite so I felt pretty confident that I could kill it. It would have been no problem except all the frickin mob respawns. Twice I farmed 20 skulls and twice I faked my own death to avoid a real death. Grr! I asked Buru for help and he showed up on Gurch, his priest. I think he was a little annoyed when I asked if I could kill the dragon solo. He responded only "-.-" He let me, and he killed the one add I had while I downed the big dragon. I so wanted to kill the dragon on my own since I had solo'd the other 2 group quest mob's in Terrokar, Terrokarantula and some dumb bird. Terrokarantula was tough. I killed it when I was even level to him and he is a 65 elite. My pet was at 1% health when the giant spider went down. Woot! up next: Onyxia.

Must... Reach... Utility... Belt!!

Wow, this last stretch to 70 can be a real pain. This is the second time during this blog that I am pushing to 70. By this I mean trying to muscle through the laundry list of quests that must be completed to eek out each level. I really want to hit 70 as this opens up several new things to do, foremost on my list are BG's. I miss Alterac Valley and Eye of the Storm and I can't wait to give Arathi Basin and Warsong Gulch a try also. I really hope the horde in my battlegroup do as well as the Horde in my old battlegroup. Unless I find a PvP, 5-man instances guild, I will most likely be PUG'ing these things. Alenko has spoken much about getting into a guild that is oriented at doing these things and I'm on board, but how does one find a decent guild? Most guilds seem to be filled with random people that know little or nothing about each other and this fosters an attitude of not caring for your guildies. They often times are loaded with people asking for low level instance runs in exchange for empty promises of returning the favor. I'm have zero interest in running anything that garners me no rep or loot, unless I know the person well. We'll see how this unfolds.

Buru has now been in the Outlands for 3 or 4 days and has tanked a few instances I was in. We even got Alenko in on a Slave Pens run. Buru made out with some pretty nice tanking items from one of our Slave Pens runs. I was hoping for the Coilfang Needler to drop as an upgrade to my current x-bow. Sadly, it did not drop after two runs. Oh well. I may just have to bear with my current one until 67. I purchased a back-up plan for level 67, a 57-58 DPS bow with +AP and +Agi. I'm not worried about it since I still topped the damage totals for all my runs. Most of those were with large margins except when Alenko came along. He was the only member to get close to my damage output. He was at a disadvantage in the instance. Most mobs were dying too quickly for his DOT's to take full effect. I'm sure he did more damage on bosses than I did. Bosses are supposed to be where locks shine: "more DOT's, more DOT's!!"