NElf Chicks, FTW!

It's been a while

2008-11-11T11:28:00.001-06:00

Well I took a break and have returned to play WoW again. My return was due in part to patch 3.x.x which presented some early expansion material. The biggest introduction was the new talent trees. I had done no research except looking over the hunter trees a bit. A reversion to beast master was imminent with the introduction of exotic pets. BM hunters can now tame such previously untameable beasts as devilsaurs, wasps, core hounds and silithids. /cheer Throw in the introduction of pet talent trees and specs... /drool
In honor of red-head Max, it seems Blizzard introduced tanking pets. These guys are great. Upon respec'ing to BM I grabbed a devilsaur, silithid, core hound and gorilla. The dps pets seem the same as before with the introduction of pet family specific abils. The utility pets are cool but I don't see myself using them. This is the pvp'ers pet. Tanking pets are pretty darn cool, depending on breed. I grabbed a bear first to try out tenacity. He sucked. At level 65 he seemed to lose aggro instantly. I dropped his furry butt in exchange for the gorilla and oh my. Not sure what causes the difference as they were similarly spec'd on their talent trees, but can he tank. Before respec'ing BM and before I quit, my level 70 DPS (cuz that's what they all were basically)cat lost aggro fairly readily to my survival hunter. Ranged crits were plentiful and two in a row meant I was going to tank the rest of the fight. The level 65 gorilla can hold aggro most times. Silently in the background to this is the much lower crit rate and lower dps of my hunter and the increased pet dps but still...
Since I played around with the pets I didn't do much else on Lÿnn. My time with Grufft in the expansion consisted of spec'ing him feral, trying out the new pounce, spec'ing him resto and healing Magtheridon and Gruul and then letting him sit. Sadly, he is the toon that interests me the least at the moment.
Now we come to Desconocida, the rogue. She is where I have invested most of my week and a half back so far. I signed back in to a rogue that had two epics, the druid chest piece Shadowprowler's Chestguard and the Merc Glad offhand sword. After that she was almost completely quest greens and some instance blues. With a combat spec and a +hit over 250 she was developing some nice dps but still had a long way to go. This is what brought me to focus on her, she had a lot of easy upgrading that could be done.
Since coming back, I have taken her through several heroic instances. I got lol's at my HP every time but the DPS charts at the end spoke well when I was only 1-3% behind the DPS leader of many parties. I picked up a few more epics and BoJ's and got the two trinkets I was aiming for, the Abacus and Hourglass. I was collecting BoJ's to get the Isle of Quel'danas fast offhand dagger or the Angelista's ring. A random call from guild chat to run a guild Zul'aman run piqued my interest. I would never have dared take my rogue there before but the lolhammer befell ZA and it is now retarded easy. We made it all the way through and never wiped. Hexlord or whatever his name is dropped a nice dagger that no one cared for so I rolled and got it. Finishing the instance brought me enough badges to buy the offhand dagger. Immediately I regretted it. I had the fast offhand and my thought was to get ano0ther dagger so I could spec Subtlety for leveling in Wrath and if I wanted I could try a mutilate build... Did I mention it was the fast offhand. I had forgotten that mutilate rogues want a slow offhand. I would have been just as well off with the merc glad off hand I had as the offhand has no effect on Ambush damage. Meh...
I took my new daggers, which Alenko enchanted for me (thanks Max), and ran off to respec. Ambush crits that take off 50-60% of the mobs HP... oh how I missed thee. I practised on the Isle and fights typically go as follows: Ambush>Hemorrhage>Eviscerate>dead. To do my DPS justice, I really should replace hemo with Sinister Strikes as I'm not getting the full benefit of hemo. Some fights last about 3 seconds... they make me giggle. Just don't take a sub rogue into a raid or instance. Huge openers are great but my dps hits the floor after the first 3 seconds.
Two more days until Wrath of the Lich King is released and maybe another one or two after that I will buy it. I can't wait to make a chick death knight haha!!

Lions and Tigers and Bears.. Oh My!

2008-06-06T11:07:00.004-05:00

We're in ZA. Yay! Kind of. For all the good luck our core group had in our initial runs of Kara, we're getting our comeuppance from the Dragonhawk boss of ZA. Well let's back up.

The guild's first run went maybe as well as can be expected. I was unable to attend so I don't know much about it but they downed bear, eagle and dragonhawk bosses. I think they ended there due to the late hour. They didn't return to try and finish. Week two brought our first full clear. I was in attendance to see the bear, eagle, dragonhawk, lynx bosses go down as well as the penultimate boss, the five man fight the first night. We downed Zul'jin the following nights on our fourth or fifth attempt. Good job CN! Week two gave us much difficulty, which they didn't have in week one, with the dragon hawk boss. Week three was even worse. Learning curves aren't supposed to work this way. Jezzabel and I were in charge of the hatched dragonhawks. The first four to six resets were from the spawns not going as planned. By then I had a little better idea of how fast he hatches them. The next several resets were due to "bad luck". Something in each just didn't go as planned. The fight for us so far seems really touch and go. The littlest things send us reeling and then we reset. It's very frustrating. The continuation is tonight, but I'll be unable to attend. I've spent the last few nights gaming so I should take some nights off. We'll see.

PST is an Acronym not an Onomatopoeia

2008-05-27T11:26:00.007-05:00

I think I'm back to playing hunter for a while. I have been fairly unlucky with drops in Kara on Grufft so my bonus healing still wallows around 1200. It has barely improved in the stints of healing I have done there. I had some upgraded pieces but they left my bonus healing nearly unchanged while adding to stats. It seems to me that druids can squeak by with less bonus healing than other classes but it's discouraging to make three full trips through there not yield anything phenomenal. So discouragement there and a new hunter spec have drawn my interest back to Lÿnn.

I ran an heroic last night with Gurch. He is a very well geared Shadow Priest, so I was pleased to see that I beat him by a shade on DPS placing me second in the group. This is even with a gimp pet. I admit to bringing a level 61 pet to heroic Arcatraz. I have Shy-rotam's mate and darnit... instances are the best place to level them. We conquered Heroic Arc without many problems so I felt no remorse. I was narrowly beaten by an elemental shaman from our guild. I'm now setting about to re-gear for survival versus Beast Master to help put me back on top.

As BM spec hunter, I stacked three things typically. In order they were hit percentage (until hit cap), crit percentage, and ranged attack power. Hit is important because it is a point for point increase in DPS. Increase my hit percentage by one precent and I increase my damage by one percent. For nearly all of Kara, I was hit capped or very nearly hit capped. In ten to fifteen full runs of Kara I can say with utmost certainty I have missed fewer than one hundred shots. Crits came before AP for me because of the talents that come along with crits, like Go for the Throat. There was always a need for other incidentals that accompanied gear upgrades like stam, int and MP/5 but I never chose gear based on anything besides hit, crit and AP.

Things aren't a world apart with Survival but it does require that I re-gear. I need agility. Agi by itself was not as important with BM. I needed hit, crit and AP. Crit and AP do come from Agi but I have several pieces that had little or no agi but instead "Equip:" effects. These pieces have to go. I got rid of one such culprit already. My former neck piece offered no agi but I now have the SSO neck that gives +19 AGI amongst other things. This need for AGI comes from two talents: Expose Weakness and the one that gives me +15% AGI. I forget the name.

Now the sad news. I was window shopping the smith on the Isle and I need around 440 Badges of Justice to get the items I want. This has inspired me to be more diligent about the dailies that offer an SSO bag and possible BOJ and the heroic daily dungeon. I will try to get into as many Kara runs as I can but they have been pugs now-a-days since CN has been starting Kara an hour too early for me. Equally disappointing was the guild's last two "scheduled" Zul'Aman runs. The first was canceled and yesterday's was rescheduled to tonight. Ugh! I want in! this toon has been so lucky on drops, I know I can save myself some badges by getting some super neat ZA gear. /bigdotsigh

Survival of the Fittest

2008-05-24T11:01:00.004-05:00

So I like DPS. I really like being the lead DPS. It's an epeen thing. Damage meters have been my friend for quite some time as I nearly always pumped out the most damage in 5 and 10-man instances. DPS not being the only thing, I do consider my self an accomplished trapper as well and can consistently trap up to three times without fail... well if I don't get resists or early breaks. On a typical heroic I will have 2-4 resist and 1-3 early breaks during the whole instance. This, I would venture, is fairly normal for most hunters. I had no points in survival and no set bonus so my traps were as baseline as they come.

This has now changed with my new Survival Spec. Buru had hounded me for quite some time to put some points in survival so that I could CC in Kara. Taking points out of Marks and putting them into Survival significantly weakens BM's DPS with the loss of 5% more crits, 15% more damage on crits, additional pet focus on crits, and increased AP for melee from Improved Mark. I had tried to respec Survival to see how I like it for solo'ing and pet threat was an issue. My cat was just not keeping up with my threat at all with the new spec. Having to jump shot during solo PVE is pretty lame so it was back to BM.

Since then, I still had a hankering to try something different. I have finally spec'd back to Survival and it seems like it is here to stay. I learned recently that range = threat mitigation. Stand far away and I gain less threat than standing close up. That being said, for the first time as a hunter I dropped 3/3 points into Hawk Eye. I have railed a lot of ppl that have this in their spec. Never a Survival hunter but every BM hunter for sure. What a waste these three points are sitting in longer range when they are much better spent in the marks tree. And I won't take the threat reduction argument from BM hunter. They have less threat issues than Marks or Survival because less of their damage comes from their bow. I have put out a lot of damage in raids and only once do I recall cresting the tank on a boss. Feign death is your friend. Hit the dirt for no apparent reason 1 minute into a fight and you're probably set for the rest of the fight, depending on aggro resets and length of fight.

So now, instead of topping the charts on DPS I have to imagine the usefulness of buffs and debuffs. In this respect, I bring four things to the table: Expose Weakness, Improved Hunter's Mark, Scorpid Sting, and Screech. Expose Weakness and IHM work in tandem to raise melee attackers AP against my debuffed target by nearly 300 currently (and EW will continue to scale with increased AGI), Scorpid Sting drops the chance a melee attack will land by 5% and screech reduces target's AP by 210. On top of those things, I still get to put out a lot of damage, especially in the form of crits, nearing 45% crit chance while raid buffed.

Did I mention I can trap like a champ? I have points to improve the longevity, damage and animal content of my traps by 30%. That puts Freezing Trap at 26 sec. I took 2/3 points to reduce the cost and casting time of traps. The reduction in time of 4 sec brings my trap cooldown to 26 sec. Isn't that neat? 26 sec trap, given no early break that I can recast in 26 sec. And what about those early breakers? If I'm in trouble I pop Readiness and all my Hunter Abil's come off of cooldown. This also comes in handy for multiple trapping, making it possible to freeze trap 2 mobs at the onset (3 actually if it is allowed)

All-in-all, I'm pretty happy to put my full on DPS whore days behind me and look forward to my new utility spec.

Gruul Down

2008-05-13T17:51:00.004-05:00

I had my first taste of the next level of progression last night and WOW! Max heard an ad that Syndicate was looking for a hunter and a something else. I was able to /tell in time and got in. It's quick and easy... or at least it was with the guild I went with. Gruul is currently on farm for them so they're accustomed to the fight. I dislike saying it but I don't think Colombian Necktie is close to ready for this. I did pretty well putting out a smidge over 750 dps... and I was 9th on the DPS list. Ouch! We have some things down. There needs to be one bear tank and 3 warrior tanks (I think Buru would be our only contender). There's a butt ton of heals and a mage tank as well. Mage tank needs a bunch of HP. I think he/she tanks a caster so armor is not necessary. These are all requirements for the five ogre boss fight before Gruul. Three of the same token dropped from these guys for warriors, druids and something else that's not hunter so who cares. Wow thanks for being random.
Moving on to Gruul. The fight was a breeze as DPS even keeping my pet alive was facil. There's two different things that the whole raid needs to worry about. I know the name of one 'cave-in'. There will be small pieces of rock that can be seen falling to the ground in an area of effect. If you stand there you take damage. The other is a thunderstomp of sorts that adds a ticking movement debuff and throws each person to a random area. Once each raider lands they have to speard out. In three or four ticks the raiders turn to stone and shortly thereafter explode causing damage to others nearby. Apart from those attacks he's tank and spank. He dropped a hunter/who-cares/who-cares legging token and I lost the roll. Meh. Well it was an easy 5 badges.
Afterwards we f'd around in Black Temple which got old. They voted that over actually accomplishing Magtheridon. A sum total of 2 purple gems dropped and we wiped a few times. Whoopee!
All-in-all great raid learning experience in Gruul's.

A proper update

2008-05-08T15:01:00.005-05:00

Well, Lÿnn has been progressing nicely. After 6 or 7 full trips through Karazhan, I have some pretty solid gear. Romulo's poison, the Curator's Signet ring, t4 helm and more. I'm nearly all epic with the exception of shoulders and pants, both of which are pretty decent blues so they don't detract. Sweeney recently shared an interesting site with me: be.imba.hu. It gives suggestions for improving your toon and shows where the toon would be able to perform adequately. If I recall correctly, it places me part way into SSC, ZA, and TK but not yet ready for BT, Hyjal or the Sunwell. I have done a good job at building the toon and have a capped hit rating and crit percentage just over 29%. It has shown on all our Kara runs as I lead DPS every time (I think). The last part of the puzzle has always been Ranged Attack Power for me. It seems a bit backwards to many I'm sure. My RAP sits just over 1600 whith AotH is active so it's not horrible. I emphasized crit more than RAP because I have several talents that utilize crit like Go For the Throat. When raid buffed, I pump out a lot of focus for my pet with that abil.
Colombian Necktie is coming along nicely, we have several new members and are currently working on a second string of people and getting them geared for progression. We even have a Gruul's Lair run tentatively planned for Monday. It was originally a ZA run but some people discussed and their consensus was that we're not ready. We have another guild that Khanjin has been talking to so that we might have sufficient people but I'm not sure any solid deals have been made. Speaking of, I better get to our website and see if sign-ups are working.

Kara yay!

2008-04-03T12:52:00.002-05:00

We've been doing Kara. We do well. We beat Wizard of Oz without a mage. We killed Prince. I got a new bow. Yay!
An admittedly poor update but I've had less blogging enthusiasm lately plus I've brought a new toon up through the ranks. I started blogging it here

LW 375!!

2008-02-18T19:17:00.006-06:00

As the name of the post suggests, I have attained level 375 in leatherworking. I had been at 368 for quite some time but made the push to 375 so I could learn the recipe for Boots of the Crimson Hawk which I had purchased from the AH for 350G. I burned a lot of leather making drums to get to 375. At 372 the recipe turned green but the small amount of mats required made it the best for leveling. After crafting the boots, I made an ad for Cat's Swiftness to add 6 AGI and a minor speed increase. The speed increase is barely noticeable so I may replace it with +12 AGI.

In other news, I am attuned for Kara and Ogri'la now. I have been into Karazhan once in a PUG. Alenko went along which was cool to have someone I knew there. We fought only two bosses that I recall. First was Maiden of Virtue who dropped Gloves of Quickening, I was the lucky recipient of those. We also killed a Attumen the Huntsman who dropped Steelhawk Crossbow which I lost the roll for sadly. The only other drop was a Belt of the Tracker which everyone started to congratulate me so I took it. It didn't seem great at the time (and to be honest, I still like other stuff better) but I looted and equipped it.

TBC

Your typing skill has decreased by 1

2008-02-07T11:40:00.000-06:00

I have temporarily switched my focus to Desconocida from Lÿnn. She is now up to level 20 putting her as my highest alt on Stormrage server. She still has a bit to go to catch up to my rogue on Anub'arak who is level 36. At level 20, I can get poisons. I didn't remember that there is a quest to acquire the skill so I was bummed when the trainer wouldn't give it to me. It originates in Orgrimar so next time I log, I will be headed there.

This brings up one of the few detractions to rogue, there's more things to level. It's not horrible; rogue only has two additional class skills but it does mean a little extra time 'crafting'. The first is truly easy. Poisons consists of making and applying poisons. The mats are all store bought as far as I can tell so it presents just a small time sink. The other skill is lockpicking. Strewn throughout the game are areas intended to level lockpicking. These areas are wrought with boxes with short respawns that hold small amounts of coin and allow rogues to skill up. It's typically a sore point in an instance when an accompanying rogue can't open a locked chest, so I want to make sure I do this.

The plus side of rogue is very cool so the extra class skill levels is overshadowed. Level 18 presented one of my first fav's, Ambush. When cheap shot comes in, it will probably replace ambush, but for the time being it's an awesome opener. A few times last night, while fighting mobs 2 levels lower than myself, an ambush crit took the first 60-80% of the mobs' HP. What a riot to start a fight and they're hurting so badly. Dual wield is next on my list. Yeah yeah. hunter has dual wield but I never really use my weapons and typically a two-handed weapon provides better stats than two one-handed weapons. This aspect makes me consider more things when gearing my character than I have to with hunter. Lockpicking will be cool in the end, when I can finally open the boxes I find by myself. And then there's Stealth. Nothing is more fun than walking past waves of mobs to get to the one guy I need to kill for a quest and then walking past them on the way out. Stealth FTW!! Stealth = Win!! <3 Stealth!!

Rogue has been fun and has refreshed WoW a bit for me, but I will be taking a quasi-break for a while for the birth of our daughter (tomorrow is the big day!!). I won't be completely out of action, but I'm certain I will play Desconocida exclusively as I can pop in and pop out more easily than on a higher level character.

The instance that never ends

2008-02-01T11:34:00.000-06:00

Another trip through a heroic dungeon and holy cow did it take forever. I went through heroic Underbog last night with a group that Khanjin was in. We had Daes for a tank. He's a well geared pally tank I have run normal instances with a time or two and he's done a remarkable job. His style of tanking is aggro everything and screw crowd control. With his gear and talent this works phenominally well in normal dungoens, it wasn't quite as effective in the heroic. It may have been that it just took a little while to find as groove. By the end all was going well and we were only cc'ing one mob at a time, by means of Succubus or Banish. We had a few wipes and even had to go repair part way through but ultimately put all the bosses to rest. Badges and rep were my rewards for the evening. The last boss dropped 2 or 3 things that Alenko could have used had he been along but he was healing as Khanjin. He was pretty bummed.

Once that was all done, after 3 hours (ouch!), I ran a couple of EOTS's to try for the PvP daily. Both times we ran up against Alliance pre-mades and got trounced. I don't think I got even 450 honor.

Being thoroughly discouraged, I logged on my new undead rogue named Desconocida... and yes it's an undead chick character. I have leveled her to 10 and equipped her with some auction house greens. My intent is to make someone to open boxes and level Jewelcrafting. I'm not great at alts as I don't have tons of time to invest in them. We'll see how far she goes.

Tits online

2008-01-30T10:50:00.000-06:00

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

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

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

2008-01-28T14:07:00.000-06:00

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.

(untitled)

2008-01-24T15:25:00.000-06:00

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

2008-01-23T11:18:00.000-06:00

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...

2008-01-18T11:55:00.000-06:00

...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?"

2008-01-14T14:16:00.000-06:00

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

2008-01-11T11:10:00.000-06:00

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?

2008-01-10T20:25:00.000-06:00

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

2008-01-07T12:09:00.000-06:00

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:

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.
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!!

2008-01-03T13:56:00.000-06:00

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!!"

Turbo Chicken... /cry

2007-12-30T19:39:00.000-06:00

Well I laid out the 85G to buy a turbo chicken yesterday. Man that hurt. I still can't help but feel I'm getting screwed somehow. Training was 510G and the mount was 85G. I thought the last time it was about 490G. The only difference this time around is somehow I only managed to get revered with BElf-land.
Valanos' Longbow landed in my mailbox yesterday. I got that off the AH for 45G so that's all done. I just need a decent scope for it now.

Blood Furnace PUG

2007-12-29T11:22:00.000-06:00

I did my first true instance with my BElf hunter two nights back. We were going through Blood Furnace and had a decent set-up. The tank was a level 70 Arms or Fury Warrior that used an Epic two handed axe. I would guess that he was Fury because I was putting out equal damage to him so he probably stayed in defensive stance the whole time unable to use his Fury talents. There was another BElf hunter level 63, a BElf priest level 62 and a BElf rogue about our level. The warrior and the other hunter knew each other well and ribbed each other throughout the whole instance. I even jumped in a little on the hunter. He was getting down on his wolf pet, how much it sucked and how often it died; I told him he should rename it Corpse. A good time was had by all...

... until we wiped. There's some crummy pulls in the hallway shortly after the first boss. They include two engineers in some and their proximity mines suck. The warrior wasn't allowing us to crowd control so we were muscling through each pull. Sadly we weren't downing the engineers quickly enough. We not only wiped but everyone (besides me <3 Feign Death) died a time or two coming back; it seems they couldn't avoid a group of mobs we bypassed despite the fact the mobs were anchored in the same place they had been when we skipped them. /bitter All in all a pretty depressing run by the time said he had to go and dropped instantly. Thanks for the warning.

It never ceases to amaze me how little people think about ditching parties in WoW. The fact that you can easily solo to the highest level in the game really pampers some of these chumps. How can you ask for an invite to an instance and then leave forty five minutes later. Instances can take a long time. Make sure you can commit before you get involved please.

I did manage to pick up a new leather cowl. It looked pretty sweet until I replaced it last night with a new ass lookin leather skull cap. It brought up an interesting dilemma for me. The new skull cap offered slightly less RAP (eight less I believe) and a minuscule reduction in crit (.06%) in exchange for 1.42% increased chance to hit. I debated a little but ultimately it was an easy decision. The loss in RAP translated to eight tenths less damage per second. It brought my +hit percentage to around 6% which completely negates misses against even level mobs and leaves me with about 4% chance to miss mobs three levels higher than I. Once this debate was done, I looked in my bag to find Marksman's Gloves, or some such, and I was given the same quandary. This time I was trading .9 damage per second for about 1.3% increased chance to hit. I'm up to more than 7% increase to hit. Considering that I typically fight mobs one or two levels higher than I am, I'm sittin pretty and should see virtually no misses. Now why couldn't they make the +hit hat look cool. /pout

I had the chance to train skills last night from level 62 and added Steady Shot to my macro bar. It took the place of Arcane Shot which moved to my upper left bar, still within reach but not one I'll be using much any more. Steady Shot rocks for mana efficiency. It's much cheaper than Arcane but has a casting time of half a second I believe. That's fine by me. I've got more time than mana. Next level starts the new skills every level period. Crud. I'm lazy enough as in making it in one or two levels later to go gte new skills. If I remind (haha @ Max) some of those levels are not worth going back to town for.

Last bit of news: I have a bid in on a V-bow. There was one on AH that had a lower initial bid so I put in. We'll see if my bid stays. I'm going to make a to-do list and add it to side bar today. V-bow will be one of the items on this list.

My Afterthoughts on BElf

2007-12-26T12:27:00.000-06:00

In a word: yuck!
I made the character quickly when Kerikov logged on and said come to Stormrage and make a new Horde char. I think they had been playing for 20 minutes or so and I wanted to make my char as quickly as possible to get in there and start doing noob quests with them. I knew I would have to do a lot of traveling too before I could even get to them in Deathknell. I hurriedly made a BElf chick, my first BElf ever so I didn't know what they were all about, without even changing so much as her face. Now I sit regretting that she's not a troll. Troll get +1% crit when using a bow and they get beserking which increases their attack speed.
Enhanced bow crit along with beserking would be so much better a racial benefit than the AoE silence I got. I thought that it would scale much higher than it did for the MP that it returns to me. I think I can get back about 300 MP. I'm not sure if it scales depending on level or a stat but 300 does a sum total of meh at my level. Even +1% pet damage would have been a godsend by comparison. Once I get to doing more BG's I may yet again change my mind about my racial but for now I may as well map something different onto those two buttons.
The whole attitude and actions of the BElf chicks are very high schooler. That's pretty annoying, but they do have a cool /cheer. Very energetic. Maybe it was supposed to be high school cheerleaderesque.
It's obviously too late to do anything now, and I'm completely opposed to rerolling. What a waste that would be. I'm truly not bitter about my bad choice, but I'm fairly certain this will be my last BElf.

I Heard This Blog Sucks Live!!

2007-12-24T09:22:00.000-06:00

Last week has been pretty slow progression. I've been pretty sick or having to take care of sick people. The only great accomplishment is during one of my not as sick days I went out and spawned Shy-Rotam to make her my pet... twice. The first time I kept my pet out because I thought she and her mate spawned a la vez. It seems she calls him at 50% health. By the time I figured her mate wasn't coming and I tried to abandon the trash pet I picked up so I could freeze trap and tame, she did call him. /sigh His AOE fear caught my taming at about .5 sec remaining. SOB!! 1 hunter - 1 Pet + 2 level 60 mobs + O mobs fooled by Feign Death = Dead Hunter. I was forced to farm up another of the super crappy drop rate Sacred Meats and pop her again. The second time she got concussive-shot-freezing-trap tamed. Hooray. The new pet is a very cool color and fairly unique. Green glowing eyes too... ooooh.

Last night I did some xp'ing and a little crafting. I had to go back and farm 120 rugged leather to make it to level 300 LW and get some knothide recipes. The problem is the knothide recipes require mats that are super shitty to farm or buy, so back to rugged leather it is. I hit 375 last night in First Aid and level 100 fishing so I can use my spiffy fishing pole with +25 fishing. I have a slim 100 levels of fishing until I can fish up something to level cooking with. That 100 levels represents something like 400 fish. Ouch! Definitely a level 70 lfg activity.

As far as level, I am about to hit level 62. It's fun to watch the progression of stats since I have hit the Outlands. I was surprised to see that most of the increase in damage my char gets is from flat AP increases. I had forgotten how many pieces have increased AP along with increased Agi. I thought the first group of loot consisted solely of +Agi. Quest loot has comprised most of my upgrades with the exception of a blue leather belt I found last night. I was pretty shocked to find it. I went to vendor crap in my bag before heading out to do more questing and noticed it. Saw the stats were perfect for me, +Agi, +hit, +AP, and that it was BOE. I couldn't for the life of me remember where I had gotten it and why I hadn't yet equipped it. I checked back in chat log and tada, there it was. Huh!

I'm always torn a bit on equipping leather. Armor which translates to a loss in my pet's armor. This particular belt was a loss of 17 which translates to a little loss, but my body piece is leather too. Ugh! I was 250 Armor lower than what I replaced. I don't know how much pet armor that translates to, and I didn't care to look either.

Charts. Yay!!

2007-12-19T15:32:00.000-06:00

Assuming I keep up to date on the snapshots thing these charts should automatically update.

Snapshot # 2 level 59

2007-12-19T00:09:00.000-06:00

Level 59.3

Str 51+9
Agi 125+148
Stam 86+143
Int 68+12
Spr 68+14
Armor 2423
Damage 264-266
Ranged DPS 163.5
Speed 1.62
RAP 693
+hit 10
Crit 10.41% (quest rewards was a crossbow so my crit % was down due to lower crossbow level)
4098 HP
2730 MP

Spectre
Str 129
Agi 72
Stam 326
Int 29
Spr 71
AP 405
Damage 130-159
DPS 112.7
Armor 5578

The changes seen between Snapshots 1 and 2 are due to only 3 items that I received as quest rewards. Some big jumps here: RAP increased by 189, ranged DPS increased by more than 30, HP increased by almost 900... wow!!

Snapshot #1 level 58

2007-12-18T21:36:00.000-06:00

Level 58.3

Str 50+9
Agi 122+140
Stam 85+95
Int 67+18
Spr 67+29
Armor 2205
Damage 223-286
Ranged DPS 132.8
Speed 1.92
RAP 502
+hit 10
Crit 11.49%

Spectre
Str 127
Agi 71
Stam 303
Int 29
Spr 70
AP 334
Damage 117-146
DPS 102.9
Armor 5578

Outlands goodies, here I come!!

2007-12-18T11:33:00.000-06:00

Nearly a month to the day, my toon is ready for the Outlands. I made it to about 58.5 last night questing with Alenko in the Western Plaguelands. Grouping for quest XP makes leveling a synch but causes hunters a unique problem. My pet is now 2 levels lower than I am. Nothing horrible. He can typically tank something 4 levels higher than he and maintain aggro. At 5 levels, he starts to get more growl resists. Combine this with lower damage output due to level difference and I typically have to feign death once per fight to wipe my threat rating. No huge concern but if he falls too far behind, he becomes useless. If he is seven levels behind the mob he's not only ineffective as a tank but also has negligible dps.

No worries. As happened before, I grow a little tired of the Ghost Saber skin. There is a very cool tiger that is summoned out in Winterspring named Shy-Rotum (sp?) that has an icy blue appearance. I can tame him when I am level 60 and that will bring him immediately into line with my level. This will negate the level disparity and nab me a cool new pet all in one step.
I'd like to take a snapshot of my stats in before-Outlands gear and then track my stats level by level. This will be kinda neat to see how quickly my stats jump due to quested gear.

Guild Drama

2007-12-13T11:23:00.000-06:00

I've heard of it before, I think anyone that plays an MMO through to endgame content has heard of it and many encounter it: Guild Drama. I was lucky enough to not encounter any major guild drama in Anduril while playing FFXI. It was a very stable linkshell with people that were typically more interested in playing than gearing. They had a stringent recruitment process. Very few new players were allowed into the LS to help avoid the watered-down feeling of linkshells that allowed too many people in. It's a fine line that they walked. They need to keep enough active members so that we could consistently make scheduled runs but not induct so many people that we lost the feeling of a team. Very few LS's ever accomplished this. The fact that I can look at Anduril's roster and still see many of the same names that were playing when I quit 2 years ago speaks volumes. Most other LS's have probably imploded by now. Backstabbing, behind the scenes bitching and pissing matches over who should get what gear over whom wreak havoc and limit the shelf life of most endgame LS's to 6 months or less.

Not until reading a post by Big Bear Butt Blogger did I realize what sort of a fiasco endgame grouping can be.

http://bigbearbutt.blogspot.com/2007/12/guild-drama-endgame.html

It's a long read but well worth it. The big thing that lead to problems was the lying. Big Bear Butt reminds me of myself in some ways. First off, it seems he has a general confidence in his guildies or people he's played with on a long term basis. He also seems to hold a belief that is crucial to end game players if they truly want to succeed: it's not all about you, gear needs to go where it makes the biggest improvement. DKP systems are fantastic but sometimes people just need to refrain from bidding because it's going to make a bigger difference in the other players' gear. Last... I think he's kinda old like I am, old for an MMO that is. He mentions his wife and receding hair line so...

I certainly hope that when I get to endgame raiding (what seems to be the quintessential endgame activity), I don't run into shit like this.

Lesbians WTF

2007-12-12T11:20:00.000-06:00

The title of this post comes from a humorous exchange last night while partying with Alenko. Typically Buru, Alenko and I play while on Ventrilo. It makes chatting so much easier since we don't have to type, but occasionally it's fun to type stuff out for comedic reason. I tried to do just that but messed it up and made something even funnier, IMO.

We were running around by High Priestess something-or-other in the troll temple just North of Revantusk Village (I'm not entirely sure that's the name of the place). He sent his succubus to seduce a female troll. He hypothesized that since the succubus could seduce the female troll, that would mean the female troll was a lesbian. A pretty fair assumption. I wanted to give a little chuckle, so in raidwarning I typed "lesbians ftw" or at least I intended to type that. Instead "lesbians wtf" came up. The intended message of "lesbians for the win!!" being replaced by "lesbians what the fuck?" isn't wildly humorous but man did that strike me as funny in the moment. Anything can be laugh out loud funny at 11PM.

I hit level 50 on Monday evening and celebrated Tuesday afternoon, by making a Tauren Druid. Odd way to celebrate, I know. It was for a little break. He made it to level six before I was done with my break, and then back to hunter.
Previous to-do list now looks like this:

~~Train level 46 skills~~
~~Attain level 50~~
~~Cook all the Raptor Meat that I just took out of the bank~~
Spring the gold for guild bank
~~Find Claw Rank 7 (mid 50's)~~
Make the Tough Scorpid Armor set items I need

Alenko said he has little interest in the guild bank. He figures we'll develop our chars and then look for a larger, group focused guild so we can knock out instances and maybe raids. Colombian Necktie will still be nice to have for our alts and a guild bank can help us share crafting items and usables between chars, but we'll see.

Scorpid armor is coming along too slowly. I was able to make the breastplate, which I really wanted, right away. The other pieces were either too high leatherworking level, not as good as my equipped item, or I didn't have the recipe. I found the glove recipe on AH last night for 80S so I picked that up. I had used up all my leather on leveling so I'll wait to make them. New to-do list would look like this then, once again, no particular order:

Spring gold for guild bank
Craft Heavy Scorpid Gloves for myself
Find next cooking recipe to level on, like Enormous Omelette
Attain level 58 and go to Outlands (6 more to go)
Get Claw Rank 8
Level up First Aid with the Runecloth that is now dropping
Turn in 3 stacks of Runecloth in Undercity for XP and a little rep
Quest in Felwood and then on to Winterspring
Complete quests for hunter trinket in Azshara, 2 or 3 in Azshara and one in Sunken Temple
Level new Druid to level 10 and make him Balance spec 1/0/0
Tame the cat in Winterspring that has the same skin as one of the riding mounts

The Hinterlands did pretty well for me in terms of gear and XP. I was lucky enough to group with Alenko so we could complete all the troll temple quests there. The best quest reward being the trinket that grants +20 AP and + 10 hit. Holy crap is that a nice upgrade from the empty slot I had. I received a new bow from another quest with a slight drop in AGI but a nice increase in DPS. Two random drops that were upgrades (pretty uncommon) a set of mail shoulders and mail belt. 50 to 52 went by pretty quickly. And to think, I considered skipping the Hinterlands.

Things won't change after the wedding

2007-12-10T11:32:00.000-06:00

I think I have an inkling of one aspect of what it's like to be in an abusive relationship. It's very common for a person in an abusive relationship to want to go back to their the abuser if they have left. There were always good times to remember and maybe that's what brings them back. Maybe it's the comfort of knowing the status quo versus establishing new relationships. Well here it is: I kinda miss PvP.

I played first on a PvE server during one of my many 10-day free trials. I played a Horde char and was astonished to see an Alliance player in Ratchet, which I mistakenly thought was for Horde chars only. The little human char was running around, going to the same quest givers and same shops I did and it just seemed wrong. Obviously, I now know that Ratchet isn't just for Horde but this single incident helped me choose PvP when it came time to make a real account. It just seemed to go with the game better. There are two sides that are warring and it makes sense that when they see each other they should fight. Let's not confuse this with role playing, which I berated in the earlier post, PvP just makes sense... sort of in the same way that using a cat as a melee weapon doesn't make sense.

I already admitted to Kelviel, who is now Buru, that I feel like I'm cheating in a way. I run through areas that are wrought with Alliance and no one bats an eyelash. I still /rude to a lot of Alliance and few do anything back. There's no built up animosity. They even jump in and help me when I have links.

Having said all of this, there is still an abusive side to PvP. Griefers. Typically, when I played on PvP, I didn't kill players that were grey to me unless they threatened me (maybe farming what I was farming or waiting until I was low health to attempt killing me)or were a nuisance (off topic: I correctly pegged this word's etymology as Old French). O sure. I've had occasional spats of ganking retribution, (e.g. you killed my low level char so here comes my level 70 druid to stealth kill you), but for the most part I will leave them alone. Griefers are the asshats that kill you then corpse camp you. They are there to cause you grief. These bitches are equivalent to hackers in my mind's eye. They're intentionally malicious yet reap no benefit of seeing the frustration or damage caused. They make me want to create a second account and pay $15 a month just to have a horde char on my same server to tell them to knock it the fuck off. You have to remember that there is someone on the other side of that character that just wants to spend some leisure time playing a game. Kill me once? Great! That's how the game is. Hang around to kill me a second time when I did nothing to you? Super shitty and someone in real life needs to beat the piss outta you.

I digress. I do enjoy certain aspects of my new PvE. No interference is priceless. You want to complete a quest? There is no worrying about how many Alliance are there already doing a quest. They won't kill you. I still get to PvP in BG's so I'm not totally missing out on the warring aspect. All-in-all, the new server is saving me a lot of stress so it's fine by me.

Milestones

2007-12-09T11:39:00.001-06:00

Level progression has slowed down a little to let crafting catch up. I am up to 47.5 now. I still haven't made it to go train level 46 skills despite the fact I've been running through Org. I'm sure I'm not missing out.

I completed the Triage quest out in Hammerfall and burnt up most of the built up mageweave I had making Mageweave and then Heavy Mageweave bandages. The rest of the cloth went to Alenko. I've got cooking up to 225 now. That was a pain. I had to go back and farm crawler meat and clam meat back in Ashenvale. After that, it was Hillsbrad for the best cooking farming: turtle meat. It typically drops two at a time and recipe requires only one. Once I had hit 225, I got artisan cooking quest and finished that up. With those things out of my way, I'll be rushing to 50. I hope I get good skills then.

50 will be cool because the levels until Outlands will be so few. I can head out there at 58 and get copious amounts of xp and items with gratuitous stats. And instances..., PUG's may not happen every night but having Alenko around will make things a bit easier. He always seems to get parties together so well. I think he does well for FList management. It will be nice to run instances with Alenko and Kelviel again.

Speaking of instances, I did get a decent PUG for Zul'farak (sp?) yesterday. I got a drop from a rare mob and finished out the divine-o-matic quest to get the Mason-something-or-other ring with +13 agi. yay. Interestingly enough, I got the very same foot item on old Lÿnn on a run with Kerikov and Bayard or Haziel. On that run I got the +AP head item too, but not last night sadly.
There will always be better stuff and I hate the look of the wolf headpieces anyways.

Current To-do List (no particular order)

Train level 46 skills
Attain level 50
Cook all the Raptor Meat that I just took out of the bank
Spring the gold for guild bank
Find Claw Rank 7 (mid 50's)
Make the Tough Scorpid Armor set items I need

I can see clearly now the rain is gone...

2007-12-06T12:56:00.000-06:00

Inspired by BigRedKitty and Big Bear Butt Blogger, I thought to write a post about being a male that plays a female char. I've loved this theme for at least the last five years or so. For me, it all started with Final Fantasy XI. There are four races if I recall correctly: hume, galka, taru taru and mithra. Hume and taru taru had the choice of picking male or female characters while mithra and galka were limited to only one gender. Mithra were female and galka appeared decidedly male, but in the back story were asexual. I chose a mithra for my main because I originally wanted to have a thief. What could be more stealthy and agile than a cat person. Truth be told, even if they had male mithra, I would have chosen a female.

I thought nothing of this choice as the character I played never reflected me in real life. In fact, what I generally enjoy about video games is that they do not resemble my life. Why the hell would I want to play a game about going to work 40 hours a week and paying bills? Since the video game does not resemble my life, why does my character need to resemble me? Better yet, why does it need to represent me projected into the video game world?

Many a time have I clarified my gender to other gamers. They make some sort of comment or emote and I realize that they think I'm a girl. I would correct them because I didn't want to have them continue calling me 'hon' or whatever else unless they were female. Quick replies usually came: "Oh, are you gay?" The concept that I choose female chars because I am gay is laughable. One player I know who is gay has chosen all male chars... does that make him straight?

I typically responded that if I have to look at a char that I will be playing for hours on end, I'd rather it were female. I would rather check out the new armor I get when draped across a pair of cartoon boobs than the chest of a male char. Let's not confuse this, however, with being attracted to my toon. I don't /login to /poundoff. I thought this was a justifiable argument, but it seems that a large portion of the male gaming population thinks this is a trite cover-up of my true intentions.

This is the first illogical prejudice or stereotyping that I have truly been a target of. I was perplexed by other players forming their opinion of me based on one decision. After my recent bout of reading WoW blogs, I think I understand them a bit more and hope to help them understand my side a bit more. It would seem there is a large population of gamers that feel their characters are a reflection of themselves or of a fantasy that they create in their own minds. They play male characters because they wish to project themselves into the world. They feel more a part of the game when the character represents them in this way. If I felt this way, I think I would be equally stupified by someone representing themselves in a manner that is contractictory to their real form.

As an example, on a role playing server, if I rolled a chick char and a male char /flirt'd with me, I would flirt back... that's a little weird to me... not the flirting but the whole roleplay shit. I think it's all farked. You are, in many cases, a grown individual that's playing pretend... FARKED! It's the equivalent in my mind's eye, of grabbing 2 Barbies and 6 beers and sitting down with Joe, my good friend, and having an afternoon of playing dolls. Do I share my opinion, do I judge people that roleplay, do I chastise people for thinking that their character is in some way a little version of themselves on the monitor? NO!! I roll on a server where people don't say things 'ooc' because we are not our characters.

So to set the record straight: I am not my character. I am male. My hit percentage with a bow and arrow at 30 yds is maybe 5%. I can't dance, ... well the BElf one dances pretty poorly so she can't dance either. I have a pet cat but when I tell him to attack things, he continues to sleep on the couch. If I put on a shirt that says +7 stam, I am still just as easy to kill as before. I can't make traps that explode. I have a 100% resist rate when I feign death. I don't have long hair, long ears, ridiculously long eyebrows, or boobs. I AM NOT MY CHARACTER.

Your Name Here

2007-12-05T12:06:00.000-06:00

Well it seems that Alenko enjoyed the same fast leveling that I did in STV and DUstwallow. He sped through levels 37-40 negating much of the buffer I had made. By the time he catches up, we may be able to run some noteworthy inastances together like Mauradon or some of the Black Rock instances.

I hit level 45 last night by doing a fwe more quests in Feralas. I was a bit dissapointed by the troll witch doctor quest I completed. Collect 2 tree trunks, 6 minerals, 20 sinews and 40(!) metal pieces. The first two were easy and I enjoyed a nearly 100% drop rate. The 20 sinews I got from Hippogryphs in Feralas and I farmed the metal at the same time. The metal had the lowest drop rate... lame since I needed 40. Since I was in the area of the Hippogryphs, I continued my slaughter of their kind to get the metal. A full on long time later, I'm not sure how long but irritatingly long, I finally got piece number 40 and ran off to turn in the quest. I wouldn't have spent so much time on it, except that it was a red quest. It netted me 6600 xp so I was a little pissed. That seemed low for all the pissfarting required but it's done. I think it's part of a multi-branch chain so we'll see what the other troll witch doctor quests get me.

After I hit 45 and did all my turn-ins, I went to level crafts a bit more. I was alraedy startiong to stockpile thick leather and mageweave as well as a bunch of lion and raptor meat and raptor eggs. The heavy leather I had was sufficient for me to hit level 200 and start crafting with thick leather and hides, good thing since I'm already starting to skin off some rugged leathers. I noticed that I had an orange cooking recipe that required clam meat and one that needed crawler meat. These can be farmed at the same time by killing crawlers in Ashenvale. All of my cooking took me to level 124... pretty low and crappily one level short of a new recipe that uses zesty clam meat, another mat that's easy to farm. My mageweave sat since I haven't done the First Aid quest to get my next rank. I dislike the quest so I put it off for far too long. Thankfully, the horde side quest looks a bit easier to do. It's in a larger building and is in one group instead of the U shape that Alliance has to contend with. My final task of the night was to turn-in 60 wool that have been sitting in my bank. That went to the Undercity cloth collector to acquire more rep with Undercity. I'd much prefer the skeletal horse to the chicken mount I have.

Move over STV, now there's something meatier!

2007-12-03T09:41:00.000-06:00

Dustwallow Marsh and Stranglethorn Vale were very good to me. They allowed me to whizz through levels 32 to 42 in record time. There were quite a few new quests in Dustwallow Marsh at Tabetha's and Jarl's homes and a new goblin city named Mudsprocket. The goblin town allowed much quicker travel to the southern section of Dustwallow, which without using a flightpath is horrible to traverse. After completing most of the quests in the Horde/Ogre village quests I swapped to Stranglethorn. After running through most of what Grom'gol and Nesingwary had to offer, it was back to Dustwallow and Mudsprocket quests. The last quests between these two areas were in Booty Bay with a few Grom'gol leftovers.

I stopped at 42.9 last night. Just a little more to go for 43 but I decided to go to bed with Melissa instead. Right before logging, I got a bit of crafting in. I had stacks and stacks of heavy leather taking up loads of inventory space. LW is at 190 now. I'd like to kick this in the butt and get over to Tanaris for some scorpid scales. The Tough Scorpid Mail set is pretty nice for Hunter and is made with LW. I didn't rush over to Tenaris right away. I swung by Camp Mojache to pick up a FP and the !'s were too much to resist. I enjoyed leveling in Feralas on NElves but Feathermoon is so far out of the way, it was a pain to do turn-ins. No such inconvenience on the Horde side. Camp Mojache is fairly centrally located. Nice. I knocked out a couple of quests there but when I next log, I may just head over to Gadgetzan. It's a tough decision, Camp Mojache provides Horde rep which is key is getting a mount that's not super lame like my duck. Gadget has familiar quests and Scorpid Scales.. hmmm. Decisions, decisions.

Dirty Laundry

2007-12-02T10:18:00.000-06:00

The deed is done. There is no denying what I have done or turning back the clock to change what has come to pass. I feel dirty but the shower does not wash away this feeling.

All kidding aside, I went back and played my Night Elf a little. I wanted to go run AV once and see if Alliance had pulled their heads out of their proverbial asses. They have. We won AV by defeating their War Chief or whatever he is. A net of 488 honor. We'll see if it ever gets used. Unlike the AB run on my BE, I was middle of the MVP pack. They put people in order by the sum of damage done and healing done. My gear isn't super enough to give me awesome DPS but I do well enough.

I returned to my BElf later that night and took her one more level to 41. She's progressing nicely and thanks to a loan from Khanjin, she has her very own riding chicken... yuck!

I was debating Ferocious Inspiration versus the pet dodge talent at 41. Kelviel and I had a bit of discussion. I decided to take the dodge skill at that time. On further analysis, I chose FI. While only 1% more damage once proc'd versus a constant 3% dodge, I like the damage better because I rarely take on too much. I'm pretty proficient at taking on a crowd of mobs if I have to but it doesn't happen often. My pet almost always stays above half health without me healing him so... damage it is.

Vacation Is Nearing the End

2007-11-29T08:23:00.000-06:00

I hit level 35.25 last night and had a pretty good evening (read morning past midnight). I started out at 33 (I think) and wanted to get that spiffy new hat from T Bluff. On my way out to Growless Cave to summon and kill Frostmaw, I came across 5 !'s in Tarren Mills. Most of the quests were in the vicinity of the Growless Cave Yeti so I knocked them out:

Kill the traitorous UD held at Lordemere Interment Camp
Collect worn stones from newly dead Dalaran citizens
Kill 6 Dalaran Summoners and 12 Elemental Slaves
Get some low drop rate bracers from said Ele' Slaves
Find the wand of an unsuccessful lich
Re-energize said wand in 3 flame braziers
Stick wand in graveyard of Southshore
Skin, Skin, Skin (no it wasn't Wet T-shirt night at the T Mills Inn. That would be pretty nasty, might I add: decaying boobs of the UD, green and blue boobs of the orc and trolls, and cow boobs?!?!) needed more mats for Leather Working

I also headed to the Uplands to kill Baron Vardus for a WANTED quest. That earned me a pretty red dress which I promptly sold for 47 silver. Look quest givers, I know it may seem impersonal to give money as a reward, but wtf am I gonna do with a dress that grants +23 fire damage? Go on an Immolation Trap rampage? No. Though it retrospect, I shoulda tried it.
Anywho... I finally made it back to T Bluff to get my hat with a gain of 4 agi to the ass-lookin hat I had. By this time, I was almost 35 and drooling at the sight of the new crossbow in my pack and the first 20% chance for my pet to proc frenzy. Used HS to jet back to Grom'gol and kill a few Lashtail Raptors. Track Beasts reminded me of the croc skin series from booty bay. I saw Elder Saltwater Croc, the final croc, on my radar ran over to target him to guesstimate if I could beat him. Lo and behold, they knocked his gold dragon off. He was now a 38 instead of a 38 elite.I finished up step two in the chain and headed back to kill him. Instead of a harrowing fight that would use all my resources (were he still elite), I killed him while using a crossbow at level 15 skill and had Aspect of the Cheetah active the whole time :P It took 3 shots to apply the first Serpent Sting lol. Cake. So let's review: new pants (yesterday), new hat, new crossbow and new boots. Time for bed.

Peacock Feathers

2007-11-28T19:10:00.000-06:00

or Why I Love Hunter
This post is inspired by the last post. It's kinda fun going through all the talents and abils that make me love the Hunter class. Where to start... well the beginning I guess. I'll go in order of where talents fall on the talent tree. Some differ from my current tree because there is one talent pre-70 that helps grind: Endurance Training, 10% increase in pet's HP and 5% increase in toon's HP.
End BM Spec

Improved Aspect of the Hawk (IAotH): my auto shots have a 10% chance of increasing my attack speed by 15%.
Unleashed Fury (UF): flat 20% increase in pet's damage done, both white and orange damage
Ferocity (Fer): 10% increased chance for pet to crit
Combo #1 Fer + UF: 10% increased chance to do crits, crits that are 20% more damage
Bestial Discipline (BD): 100% increase in pet's focus regen rate. More focus means more Claws. This is a focus dump move. That means the pet will continue to use this move once per second until focus is used up.
Combo #2 BD + Fer + UF: Bestial Discipline grants more focus to pet, which generates more Claw attacks which have a 10% increased chance to crit, crits that are 20% more damage
5/5 Frenzy: pet's crits increase pet attack speed by 30%
Combo #3 Frenzy + Fer + UF: this one is the first continual loop but starting with Frenzy looks like this: Frenzy makes pet attack 30% faster when proc'd, attacks that are 20% more damage and have a 10% increased chance to crit, crits that are 20% more damage and proc Frenzy (thus the loop)
Bestial Wrath (BW): pet does 50% more damage for 18 seconds
Combo #4 BW + Frenzy + BD + Fer + UF: when Bestial Wrath is activate, there is an 80% increase in damage from hits, crits and Claws, Claws which happen (roughly) twice as often and provide additional chance to crit, crits which occur 10% more frequently proc Frenzy which causes attack speed to increase by 30%, increased attack speed means less time until next crit and translates to 30% more white damage
5/5 Serpent's Swiftness (SS): 20% increase to my ranged attack speed and 20% increase in pets attack speed
Combo #5 SS + IAotH: 20% increase in attack speed means next IAotH proc comes 20% sooner, IAotH once proc'd increases in attack speed to a total of 38%
Combo #6 SS + BW + Frenzy + BD + Fer + UF: SS increases pet's attack speed by 20% which means crits come 20% sooner, crits which proc Frenzy, Frenzy that brings pet's total increase in attack speed to 56%, which means crits from hits come 56% sooner, crits which cause 80% more damage while BW is active, while BW is active, hits and Claws cause 80% more damage, Claws which come (roughly) twice as often, Claws provide extra chances to crit
The Beast Within (TBW): while BW is active, I cause 10% more damage
Combo #7 TBW + SS + IAotH: 20% increase in attack speed means next IAotH comes 20% sooner, IAotH once proc'd increases my attack speed to a total of 38%, attacks which cause 10% more damage while BW is active
Lethal Shots (LS): 5% more ranged attack crits
Combo #8 LS + TBW + SS + IAotH: 20% increase in attack speed means next IAotH comes 20% sooner, once proc'd IAotH increases my ranged attack speed to a total of 38%, attacks which cause 10% more damage while BW is active and have a 5% higher chance to crit
Go for the Throat (GftT):my ranged crits generate 50 focus for my pet
Penultimate Combo (includes all previous steps): 20% increase in attack speed means next IAotH comes 20% sooner, once proc'd IAotH increases my ranged attack speed to a total of 38%, attacks which cause 10% more damage while BW is active and have a 5% higher chance to crit, crits which generate 50 focus for my pet, focus which become more Claws, Claws that already come (roughly) twice as often, Claws that cause 80% more damage, while BW is active, BW which increases by 80% the damage from hits and crits, crits which cause Frenzy to proc, while Frenzy is proc'd attack speed is increased by 30% and next crit comes 30% sooner
4/5 Mortal Shots (MS): the damage increase from my crits is 24% more. Instead of double damage which is 1x + 1x damage, I cause 1x+1.24x damage.
Ultimate Combo (once again includes all previous)*: 20% increase in attack speed means next IAotH comes 20% sooner, once proc'd IAotH increases my ranged attack speed to a total of 38%, attacks which cause 10% more damage while BW is active and have a 5% higher chance to crit, crits that cause 23% more damage, crits which generate 50 focus for my pet, focus which means more Claws, Claws that already come (roughly) twice as often, Claws that cause 80% more damage, while BW is active, BW which increases by 80% the damage from hits and crits, crits which cause Frenzy to proc, while Frenzy is proc'd attack speed is increased by 30% and next crit comes 30% sooner
Holy Hell!! I even left out some stuff that have lesser effects like Ferocious Inspiration, which increases all of our damage by 3%. This stacking effect is the heart of Beast Mastery DPS and doesn't even include shots and stings. I left them out because they don't scale with what I have here.

* I don't theory craft. If by some chance you are reading my blog and I didn't give you the link please feel free to leave all condescending comments and corrections at this site: I_could_give_a_shit.com
I wrote this for my own musings and to share with people who might care about my musings. TY, Paul

I Am Jack's Complete Lack of Surprise

2007-11-28T16:47:00.000-06:00

Leveling of Lÿnn the BElf Hunter is coming along nicely. I attained level 33 last night in Stranglethorn Vale. STV is a great place for questing. It is quest laden between Grom'gol Base Camp and Booty Bay. Our guild now has two level 70's which are Alenko and Kelviel's characters from other servers that they transferred. They are Gurch and Khanjin. Gurch was kind enough to run me through Gnomeregan last night to get my Gnomer pants which have +18 Agi. It took a little less than 20 minutes or rather it would have if I hadn't f'd something up. The equivalent Alliance side quest reads like this: Go kill end boss of Gnomer. So we ran through, passing as much as we could and went on to kill the end boss. I dropped from party to warp to my bind point since my Hearthstone was not cooled down. It was once back in Org that I realized the Horde quest reads: get safe combo from last boss, open safe and get rig plans.
There I sat with the combo in my inventory and no plans. Luckily enough Gurch logged off in Gnomer. So he logged back in saving the instance so I could warp back in and open the safe. Phew!!
[Triprunner Dungarees] Yay!! Thanks Gurch. He was also kind enough to make 3 Runecloth Bags for me which greatly upped my bag space. He donated a blue crossbow that was in his bank (I think reserved for his own hunter) which coupled with the 20G that Khanjin spotted me makes me set for a long time.
The preceding levels have brought me some wonderful abils:

FEIGN DEATH!! I imagine I'm annoying Alenko with that by now. I said it a lot a few nights back when I was drinking and gaming. It truly is huge. Anything that can completely wipe all threat... you gotta love that
Intimidation- One big threat move for pet to help them command a mobs attention... and stun them for 4 seconds
2 points in Bestial Discipline which doubles the focus regen rate of my pet which means more claws and usually having focus ready when growl coolsdown. All-in-all a flat increase in pet's abil to tank. Partnered with Intimidation and Feign Death and I die a lot less
Dash Rank 1- pet focus move that ups his run speed by 40% for 15 sec. A nice way to sprint up to the mob and start tanking
Re-spec to move one point out of Bestial Swiftness and drop it into Unleashed Fury- 4% increase in pet damage per point
Did I mention Feign Death?

There may be more but going through levels quickly I kinda forget. I had a good laugh a couple nights back. Alenko told me that he and Kelviel believe I am rushing ahead in levels to avoid getting left behind. He was spot on. When last Alenko and I were leveling together as Xyln and Kerikov, I chose to switch chars and I ended up several levels behind him. Kerikov and Bayard (Kelviel's Anub'arak char) both made it to 70 and I ended up switching back to Xyln and caught up in time for them to take a break. I missed out on some fun 5-man's due to my switch and I don't want to miss out again. They have no intention of racing to 70 so I have no fear. If I get a chance tonight, I will be doing some more STV questing and hopefully attaining level 35. That is the level of the blue crossbow Gurch gave me. Level 1 crossbow skill will mean a lot of misses. All that will happen after I head north of Hillsbrad to kill a quest mob. The quest will net me a spiffy new +agi hat that doesn't look like my current hat, a witch hat.
Current spec next level will be the last retro point in Ferocity and the level after will be the first point in Frenzy, a crit triggered buff that ups pet attack speed by 30% for 8 sec. By the time I put the last point in, my pet will have this buff almost continually each fight. Ferocity feeds Frenzy which feeds Ferocity. The last part of the talent puzzle will be Go for the Throat, pet gains 50 focus for each of my ranged crits. 50 focus generates 2 Claws and 2 more chances to crit. The coup de grâce (Alenko and Kelviel will be proud) comes a level 60: Devilsaur Tooth guarantees the pet's next hit will crit. The item is from the hunter level 50 Sunken Temple class specific chain. Pop this before a fight and pet will start with 30% increase attack speed (translates to 30% increased white damage). By that time, I will also have Ferocious Inspiration, whole party receives a 3% buff to all damage, and Serpent's Swiftness (this talent would make me damp were I female), 20% increase in both of our attack speeds (that's right, 5 points and my white and pet's white damage increases by 20%. The stat is truly, as stated, attack speed increase and not a damage increase) so that means pet crits more often and I crit more often.
/pitch wood
Well once this cools down, I think I'll post a gratuitous feather preening post about what feeds what, like the Ferocity feeds Frenzy thing before.

Tarren Mills Questing

2007-11-24T01:52:00.000-06:00

I logged last session in Tarren Mills after running a couple of quests in Durnholde Keep. Most of the quests I've gotten in TM have centered around slamming the nearby human community of Hillsbrad. They're getting a little repetitive which is a pain in this case because the mobs are very concentrated. Each new quest requires a bunch of clearing and patrol alertness. These don't mesh well with my low patience style of play. I believe I am all done now with ransacking Hillsbrad and the last thing left for me to do is assault the mine. I had to put it off because when I first tried the mobs were 5 levels higher than me. They should be only 3 higher now so off to the mines tomorrow.
I managed to forget training again. I'm glad I did though. Heading to Orgrimmar after my evening's quests netted me Hunter's Mark R2 and a new rank of Serpent Sting along with some crap skills. I do have the Beast Lore skill now to let me know where I can train the next level of Claw when it comes up.

No Fancy Title This Time

2007-11-23T07:45:00.000-06:00

I managed to level from 17.5 to 21 last night. I finished Tranquilien out and even got a nice blue cloak from the rep vendor before I left. Levels 18 and 20 brought some great things:

Freeze Trap- Although it lasts for only 10 sec
Aspect of the Cheetah
Multi-shot
Bestial Swiftness Talent- I just found out that I can't train the first rank of Dash until 23. Ouch.
Dual Wield- I seem to use this less than other hunters. Just give me a 2 hand axe with better stats and I'm fine. My melee weapons aren't for fighting or for looking cool. They're supposed to add stats
Ghost Saber- which I have named Spectre
Track Undead

I think I'm gonna take some time this morning and go back to earlier areas and skill skinning a bit. The Ghostlands didn't seem to provide me quite enough practise and now I find myself unable to skin my current quest mobs.

I AM A NIGHT ELF MOHAWK!!

2007-11-22T09:49:00.000-06:00

It's Thanksgiving day and we got a bit of snow. How wonderful. It's crummy wet snow that has zero chance of sticking around past our next sunny day but it speaks of good things to come.
Last night took Lÿnn from 12.5 to 16.5 as far as levels. The quest laden Tranquilien was pretty nice to me and I even netted two rep items. I had never seen a rep based vendor before outlands before. I'm not sure if this is new since V2.3 or if it had always been there. They were very nice items and pretty cheap, about 22s combined. One item was already replaced by the end of my session. Yay! Green items rock.

You and Me and Kitty Makes Three

2007-11-21T08:58:00.000-06:00

I leveled from8.5 to 12.5 mostly without incident last night. I am now the owner of a shiny new pet cat. Thank goodness. I was pretty sick of getting my ass handed to me by the level 5 critters I randomly attacked. Ok, so the critters didn't really kill me but I was dying more often than a naked priest. It was mostly due to my impatience but I no longer have to worry.
My new cat came equipped with Claw Rank 2 so I should be set for a while. I really miss Dash. I think the first rank of Dash can be trained around mid-20's and at that is a small increase in speed. Bestial Swiftness, 30% increase in pet movement speed while outdoors for one talent point, is looking mighty good in light of this. I believe I can take that point at level 20. Looks like I will have to respec in the end, anyways.
I say that the levels came mostly without incident. The one big problem I had last night is that BElf hunters need to get the pet quests in their starting area and I was in Durotar. I quickly realized why the Horde have the zeppelins for moving between major cities. It was Blizzard's way of apologizing for making Horde cities overly difficult to navigate. Undercity looks very cool with the sewer theme but it has twice aggravated the hell out of me while I was searching for something. I finally got warped back to BElf land and spent another boatload of time looking for the hunter quest giver. With other races, the hunter trainer is at the first or second town which is right in line with the path towards each race's starting city. Not BElf. There's a shack way out of the way. My pissfarting tour of BElf land wasn't a complete waste. I did collect a bunch of !'s along the way. It's easy to snag all the quests in new areas now; quest givers are nooberifically marked on the minimap since V2.3. Woot!
My damage by the end of the evening was listed at 17.x for autoshot and pet weighed in at 11.1. I guess it'll be a while before I see one of those 1500+ aimed shot crits.

Slow Day at Work... Can you tell?

2007-11-20T12:54:00.000-06:00

Post number three for today and it's only 1PM. I'm pretty stoked about this new char on a PvE medium pop server thing. I'm about one step down from giddy as a schoolgirl even.

For fun I thought to list things I'll be looking forward to while leveling hunter a second time:

Getting a Ghost Saber and keeping it this time- I had a Ghost Saber on my other hunter but dropped it around level 50 for the druid kitty look alikes in STV. I regretted this in the end but there was no way to undo what had been done
All those subtle pet changes from talents, such as higher HP, higher armor, higher crit, higher damage slowly turning my pet into my DPS kitty
Not having to re-spec since I know how I want to end up
Not having to re-spec my pet since I know how I want my pet to end up
Using a mark/attack macro with my pet from level 10 on. How did I make it to 70 without using macros?
Searching out mobs with the new ranks of claw
Skinning and LW
Blazing through levels with the better understanding of hunter
The first time I Feign Death <3<3
Serpent's Swiftness. 20% white DPS increase in only 5 talent points. In a word: sick
Ammo upgrade levels
Mid-60's and finally acquiring Aimed Shot.
Finally getting level 70 and misdirecting those very same Aimed Shots onto my pet
Dire situations and popping a trinket, Rapid Fire and Bestial Wrath
Nesinwary's in STV not being camped by level 70 asshat griefers
Cobra Reflexes which causes Frenzy and Ferocious Inspiration to be applied for most of my fights

Ahh the little things. I took Druid to 70 before my hunter but in the end, hunter truly is more fun.

Life as a Teenage Blood Elf

2007-11-20T11:08:00.000-06:00

Just wanted to post a bit of an introspective and opinion piece on my first night on a blood elf.
Things started off a little rough. The plan was to level in Deathknell, the starting area for undead. This suited me as I have done the first two areas of UD territory twice and have an idea of where quests items are and such. Being a blood elf, my char started in a far off land, so someone /begged a lock to summon me to Undercity. I spent twenty minutes trying to find my way out of Undercity. I had never been there before, so cut me some slack. Once on the road (yes Max the road) I made my way to Deathknell for some zombie-skeleton-and-spider-killing-armband-and-box-collecting fun. We blew through Deathknell and moved on to Brill. Knocked out a couple of Brill quests and then the others logged. During our quests I had time to make a few observations about BElf, hunters and other miscelania including the following:

BElf chicks are too skinny. NElf chicks look better. They have hips
BElf chicks hold bows kinda cock-eyed and it looks pretty lame. No worries. Not like I'll be using ranged weapons much :(
BElf racial abil seems pretty nice. It has three facets: deplete a mob's mana, stores the depleted mana for my use, area of effect silence
I will miss Shadowmeld a bit but it will be less apparent as I used it more for PvP purposes
Hunter-pet = Not as fun. I died 5 or 6 times trying to kill the human captain in the little castle area south of Org. A pet would have made it much easier. Only one and a half levels to go before pet quests so no biggie
There is not a hunter trainer in the UD starting areas despite what Max told me
Moving a Horde char from major city to major city is a synch with the zeppelins
I miss my V-Bow but 8.1 DPS is funny as hell

Now all alone, I headed out of the UD area to go get trained in Org. I had done a few Horde chars in Durotar during 10 day trial periods so I headed to Razor Hill after getting Serpent Sting, Hunter's Mark and Arcane Shot to do a bit of questing. I logged off shortly after hitting level 8 and becoming the highest level char in the guild. I doubt I will still hold that title by the time I get home tonight. Meh.

Switch to Stormrage

2007-11-20T10:02:00.000-06:00

Max signed on last night for the first time in about two months. He and a real life friend of his also named Max were the two people I have played with most in my time on WoW. He had some good news and some bad news. Good news: he and Max were going to be playing again. Bad news: they and a couple other people were re-rolling Horde on Stormrage (medium pop, PvE). Was this really bad news or the final impetus I needed to change servers and sides?

I'm happy to announce that there is now a Blood Elf hunter named Lÿnn. She's soon to appear at an Armory near you; I only made it to level 8 last night before logging. Wow, is it a pain in the ass to level hunter without a pet. I can't wait to get a raptor at level 10. Hunter is such an easy char to level solo.
Being on Vent, talking to people I know and playing a lowbie char is heaps more fun than playing a high level char and running instances with random people. Ahhh we collected doom weed, killed zombies, started a guild and looted mass quantities of copper. Max, the lucky bastard, got a small red pouch too. I'm green with envy. But seriously, bag space and money are the two reasons I never made any real chars on different servers. It will come in time. /sigh
This will be a nice change. I never cared much for the Horde races and having to party with them is gonna be weird. I laughed last night when killing zombies that I kept targeting Max's undead lock, Alenko I believe, cuz he looked just like the other zombies. The PvE server will be nice. No more griefing. Hot damn that sounds nice. I still remember running from Astranaar to Darkshore zone at level 15 or so and a much higher level troll hunter having some 'fun' with me. Ashenvale, where Astranaar is, is a contested area and that son of a bitch killed me 15-20 times while I ran to Darkshore which is Alliance territory. What in the hell is wrong with you that you go and do that? I must ask though, what in the hell was wrong with me? I should have swapped chars and played somewhere else for a change, but I kept rez'ing on sheer stubborness. I thought for sure the asshat would leave me be at some point, but it wasn't until my 5 minutes in Darkshore did he finally go away. Dishonorable kills need to be re-instated. O wait!! Nevermind. I'm on a PvE server now.
/joy

Murmur Down!!

2007-11-19T11:24:00.000-06:00

I should not be proud of the title of this post but sadly I am. Last night rocked. I was fortunate enough to score a completely competent party looking to run Shadow Labyrinth. Sweet! I need the first Kara key frag from there and Sonic Spear. I am lucky enough to have a nice spear that gives me a little higher RAP but Sonic Spear has better AGI and has a nice +hit. I think Sonic Spear is a very commonly sought hunter weapon and I am no exception. We had two people that were well versed in the instance, two that knew some (including myself. I had never been past the second-to-last boss, the orc lock) and one brand new. There was a well geared BM hunter in the group who seemed to employ a similar dart board selection method for some of his talents as the hunter the other night. This hunter had better selections than the first but didn't finish anything out. There were a couple 2/5's and a 1/3 I think. /shrug
Most of the pulls through the whole intstance went well. The other hunter was great that he let me practice chain trapping instead of just doing it himself. I'd give myself a 4 out of 5 score for my night's trapping, losing points because I did break one of my own traps and once forgot to drop my next trap. Easily fixed by freezing the mob right there at my feet, but by the time the trap takes effect, I'm at 30-40% health. I need one of those bubbles that all the clothies seem to have. Our first wipe came at the hands of the orc lock. The tank hadn't done this fight before and went down the southern hall after we got sucked in to the altar. This essentially took the boss right towards his AOE bomb/heal voidwalkers. We were tearing him up on DPS and took him to about 40% health before he teleported us the first time. Two rounds of misdirection really let us tear into the boss. We wiped right after the second teleport. The second attempt went a little bumpy but well enough that we downed him. The pulls leading up to Murmur are overly easy with 2 or 3 mob pulls and even a one mob pull. Murmur wiped us on the first attempt but we killed him on the second. I'm stoked any time I finish an instance with a PUG. I just wish the Sonic Spear had dropped. No one got anything useful except for key frags and rep from this run. Well that and experience in running the instance.

Never Roll on a Low Pop Server

2007-11-17T11:28:00.000-06:00

I'm feeling some major frustration for rolling on a low population server. At first it seemed quaint. I'll pick a low pop server and have less run-ins with idiots and gankers and everything will be bliss. That sounds like a great notion but in truth my server is horrible. Anub'arak seems overrun by Horde and they're geared to the teeth. There is obviously enough horde on this server to get stuff done. It's killing me though to drop into the LFG queue, spend three hours in queue and then result in no instance run. Yeah I know "go make your own party", right? Sounds easy enough but come roll on Anub'arak and give it a try. With no one else LFG you continually end up with a party consisting of any three of the following: hunter, lock, rogue, ret pally that can't really heal or tank, Shadow Priest that refuses to re'spec Holy, or even cast a heal for that matter, despite the fact they've reached 70, Feral Druid that can't heal and doesn't want to tank cuz they won't get to drool over their kitty burst damage, and people of negligible intelligence. And there you sit in your party of three DPS'ers typing "/4 LF2M tank and healer for any frickin thing". Last night's endeavour, however yielded an ok party. We had a Holy Pally, Prot or Arms Warrior, Ret Pally (can we sign petitions to force them to re'spec Holy or Prot? are 'DPS' Pallies even any good?), another BM hunter and myself. Now the invention of The Armory was a wonderous thing. First off it lets you know what spec people are without asking them, not a truly important thing except for BM hunters. I always hope to be paired with a Marksman Hunter to see how I compare on the boards. Especially one of those "I'm MM b/c MM>>>>>BM for DPS." type of MM hunters. So I see a hunter in the party and I immediately pop over to the Armory to check their spec. The hunter that we got last night was listed as Beast Master but to my horror, on closer examination I could easily make out that this was one of those all-to-common Huntards. /gasp His talent tree looked as though it were chosen by dart throws. He had points in all sorts of random spots. Touting a crossbow with 44 DPS, and a Ranged attack power of just under 700, I knew this guy was going to be low man on the damage charts. Even below the tank. There's no helping people like this either. I reached out with "Hey there a nice gun you can get from the Nesingwary chains in Nagrand. How close are you to completing those?"
"I think I have them done. Since it's a gun I'm pretty sure I sold it", comes his reply.
/cast Aimed Shot Huntard
/cast Aimed Shot Huntard
/cast Aimed Shot Huntard
O come on Blizz, just let me shoot him once, PLEASE!!!! That gun is 11 DPS higher than his crossbow and has better stats. How can someone be so nonchalant about a DPS increase? I'm stoked with an increase of .4 DPS or more.
No worries, let's just get to Shattered Halls and run the instance. Second hurdle of the night (first being just get a party): Horde are camping the summoning stone. This mystifies me. If you have all the gear you need, all the rep you need and are so bored that you're griefing people that want to do an instance, then go reroll. Try out priest. That will keep you busy for a long time. Granted it's a PvP server but do you have to be dicks about it? Well, after one wipe on the way in, because SH has that damn door, we get inside and start. This was my first time running Shattered Halls and it's a bitch. Give me three good crowd controllers (a nice mix would be rogue, mage and hunter), a qualified tank, and an adept healer and this will be a synch. After the first few pulls I realize what we in fact have is a well geared, well qualified Warrior paired with a truly competent healer, a ret Pally that is putting out DPS just below me (I was at 33% total party damage and he was at 30%. I guess he proved the "are Ret Pallies decent DPS'ers" question. This one is clearly the exception and not the rule) the huntard who is at least beating the healer for DPS and myself. The hunter was not a capable chain trapper so we are in essence crowd controlling one mob. On 5 and 6 mob pulls down the long hallway, our pulls are chaotic and result in at least one death a pull. We make it down the hall, which I'm told is the most difficult part of the instance, and there it is. The glaring red lightning bolt next to the healer's name. D/C'd. A minute or so later she's back and explains laptop had come unplugged and wore battery down but all is well now... except for sudden lag issues. She tells us she's running at 5-6 frames per second, but says she can work through it. Next pull is at the end of the hall and has three or four elites and three normal mobs. She D/C's again during that fight which became a wipe although mine was a fake death. She comes back. Mana and HP up and it's back in the fray. I can only guess one of these mobs has a new lightning bolt of doom debuff because there goes the healer again. /cry We gave up.
I hearthstoned outta there and stewed since it's so impossible to get any 5-mans together. I really need to join a guild with a focus on such things. My dead guild is yielding me no benefits.
It's Eye of the Storm this week so I thought to go give it a shot. It's always a decent amount of honor if I hang out in the middle and kill people. At the start we get our two caps quickly and we're about tied up to 200-200. At about that time we lost BOTH of our caps. The horde controlled all four towers and they were running flags on us!!! New changes to EotS make flags worth more if they have more towers. Final score approx. 250-2000.
/disgusted
/deletechars
/rerollhorde
BElf Chicks FTW, anyone?

ROFLMAO!!

2007-11-16T19:18:00.000-06:00

You've seen it before, but man is it funny. This is easily one of those things you think is hilarious or farked. I happen to find it hilarious.

Level 20 priest

2007-11-16T14:01:00.000-06:00

Getting a priest to level 20 now tops my accomplishments in WoW. This is a seriously grueling class to level. Level 20 brought some great new toys including but not limited to:

Flash Heal- a heal that seems to have bad HP/mana efficiency but heals... are you ready in a flash. its 1.5 sec cast can really save my butt, I often die from letting my HP get too low and then 2.5 sec for lesser heal may as well be a half hour
Shackle Undead- undead cc- situationally useful
Fear Ward- I think this was previously a Drenai/Dwarf priest racial only but Horde complained until Blizz gave it to all of priests.
Mind Soothe- Bah! I bubble run anyways but also situationally useful
Mind Flay- My first shadow priest talent tree abil. It's channeled and does 75 damage in 3 sec and slows movement by 50%. I think this will be big later. More opinion to come after testing.

Talent point at level 20 is one point in Mind Flay as mentioned before.
Last order of business before logging, buy a darn dress. I'm a clothy; I want to look like a clothy. Accomplished. If I can find the screenies folder, I'll post a pic.

Well, I finally did it. I took the plunge :(

2007-11-16T12:24:00.000-06:00

I knew it would happen. I predicted it long before my hunter made it to outlands.
Back story: My first char to 70 was a druid. Druid flight form is instant cast so I run up to a cliff, I jump off, I hit crow and voila: I'm flying.
So Lÿnn was in Stormspire, I ran to the elevator, jumped off and frantically searched for crow. Oddly enough hunter does not have an instant cast flying form. It's a long fall. I swore the whole way down.
It's funny now.

Not your father's AV... reactions on 2.3

2007-11-14T12:25:00.000-06:00

Or: All your caps are belong to Horde

Well version 2.3 is officially out. and my thoughts are...
Let's wait on that and give some quick updates with a smattering of V2.3 comments about each char:

Xyln (Feral Druid) is still 70. My general reaction on druid changes in 2.3 are positive the biggest being Heart of the Wild. Previously HotW gave a 20% increase to STR in cat form. Now it gives 10% Attack Power. This is nice because it let's up on my STR focus in cat gear a bit. +STR gave me a big boost in AP and left me a little short sighted in crits and +hit. Now I can feel ok about taking gear that has AGI to get the higher crit % or take some of the +AP +hit gear and still get a boost from HotW

Lÿnn (BeastMaster Hunter) is now 70 and Xyln(pet) is very close to 69. I can't wait for Xyln to hit 70 and get her last rank of growl. She's starting to lack on the tanking against my DPS. Changes to hunter? IDK were there any significant ones? Yes!! We're now debuffers albeit mana costly debuffers. Aimed shot now has a -50% healing debuff attached to it with no loss in damage and Arcane Shot can now dispel one positive effect. Neato... but Volley looks way lame now :( In a move I cannot fathom, Blizz has removed "the dead zone". Well I can fathom to be honest, this is all for PvP. The dead zone made a lot of dead hunters. No dead zone ups their survivability. It makes PvE a little weird. I still find myself running out past 8 yds to pewpew when all I need to do is take a step back.

Mordra (Assassination Rogue) is still 36 and remains mostly unplayed for the time being. I think she is in good contention for my next lvl 70 'break'. In V2.3, Blizz reduced xp needed to level by 20% for lvl's 20-60 and some group oriented quests between 30 and 60 now have nerfed mobs so they can be completed solo.

Vendress (Shadow Priest) has gone up one level in recent history to level 19 last night. She is frustratingly difficult to level. Another blog gave me hope when I read that in the 40's she can take 2 mobs at once with little difficulty. Hunter, Druid and Rogue have me spoiled b/c they are very easy to level and not hard to get out of bad situations by escape or by squeaking out a victory (i.e. I recently killed a chain of 5 level 70 mobs with Lÿnn and during most of the fight I had aggro from two mobs.) As for other V2.3, she experienced a nice-ish change since the version update. Starshards is now a no-brainer to add to my tactics. It is now instant cast and costs no mana. That instantly changed my tactic to PW: Shield, Smite, Mind Blast, SW:Pain, Starshards then wand until done. Nothing beats a free DOT that's not channeled. There were a bunch of changes that sounded like "this will set off this effect and this won't anymore"... I didn't know WTF any of them were, so the Priest patch was awesome IMO.

I have a new char Denae (Dranei Retribution Paladin, if one point in the Retribution tree makes her spec'd) She's not NElf but she is a chick so she makes her way here. She came about for two reasons: I have wanted a dranei for a long time but never had one stick, and I wanted the possibility of a plate wearing healer. My intent for Vendress is that she be a healbot if and when she gets up there. My impression so far... I'm not super keen on Judgement which I'm guessing is going to be an imortant part of my damage dealing, so she sits at lvl 10 for now.

In other V2.3 news, Blizz has killed Alterac Valley. I've heard it said many times and I've thought it a lot. Alliance sucks at Battlegrounds. I'm not talking vacuum cleaner sucking, I'm talking about the-king-of-all-blackholes sucking. I mean blown out of the water everytime I ran Arathi Basin, Eye of the Storm or Warsong Gulch with scores typically resembling 500-to-2000. I read in a blog that someone claimed she had heard "all her horde friends" saying Alliance always wins. I don't know on what planet that could happen on but ok...

So I don't run pre-mades ever because I'm on a shitty little server with low population according to blizz and I think a desperately low alliance pop. If I waited to run pre-mades I'd never go. I drop myself in queue and wait for a Pick-up BG. The people that will be in the BG when I get in are always random. So how is it, that a random selection of Horde pitted against a random selection of Alliance always mop the floor with my team? Law of averages should favor us at some point right? Wrong! In all my runs, which don't amount to a lot of runs but probably close to 50 total BG's, I've been part of winning EotS once, WSG once and AB never. The only one Alliance did fairly well at was Alterac Valley where I experienced a winning percentage of about 40-60 with the larger percentage going to Horde. It was the place for Ally to farm honor. Well... no more. I ran one AV and was disgusted. The random collection of Ally I was thrown in to was handily beaten by the Horde. The days of zerging what's-his-name are officially gone. Cap'ing is required to drop the Horde reinforcements and once something is cap'd, it absolutely must be protected. It now takes 5 min instead of 4 to cap anything there and the Horde were aggresively re-cap'ing. Holy cow, I had never seen that. It turned into an all out PvP war where the Ally's turlted on the bridge but once they got passed us on the bridge, it was all downhill. End result was low 300 honor. Not horrible like EotS, WSG or AB but still low for what I was accustomed to. I haven't quite figured out why I want to BG so much though. All the rewards I've come across, discounting gems and the regain-control-of-your-toon trinkets are crap. There is a new PvP set available but it is ridiculous expensive. I would have to play for a couple of years to get that much honor and badges. I'm better off running the dailies for badges of justice or w/e they're called.

AV-athon

2007-11-08T20:08:00.000-06:00

Up tonight, I'd like to grind a bit of rep in AV. It will be Xyln at first and I'll put on my bear gear or die a lot.
Nov 12- Finishing this one. I did decidedly well for tanking. My HP, and def are in a decent range to make me an ok tank and in most of the AV's I ran, I tanked the first 'general' or whatever he is. Tanking AV's are not super fun b/c you never know if people are really going to heal you. I've never run as a healer, (I have considered strapping on my healing gear and going as a feral healer :P), so I don't know what it's like to be there healing. Do they keep good track of the tank? What if my healer's croak from Horde; they must be prime targets.
Regardless, I farmed some honor but not as much as I was hoping.

Democracy rules

2007-11-07T17:04:00.000-06:00

Joshua is buggin me to pick a char. He gets to decide tonight between Vendress and Lÿnn
Joshua chooses...
Vendress.
I think it's that very same goofy Halloween mask that helped him decide.
21.5% into level 17. Vendress still looks decidedly rogue-like. I hope to get a nice robe soon. This is my only clothy. I want her to look like one.
Quests

Tharnariun's Hope 1350XP
The Absent Minded Prospecter 1150XP
A Lost Master 1550XP

Notes

Deaths: aggravatingly many tonight

Push to 70

2007-11-07T08:13:00.000-06:00

After getting re-hunter-energized, I'm logging on Lÿnn today. I currently have crud gear that consists of about 90% greens and a couple of blues. My damage output is typically one of the top in groups, but my pet and I probably average 300-350 DPS. Tons of room for improvement. I'm fully Beast Mastery spec'd with filler points in Marks.
I log in to find myself in the Scryer's inn in Shattrath
I think I'll head to Blade's Edge Mountains and finish out what I can. There's an Ally area there that I don't think I ever visited with Xyln so I'll look there for some more quests. 70... here I come. Currently I'm 17.4% into 68 so not long now.

Quests

Test Flight: The Zephyrium Capacitorium 2650XP
Crystal Clear 11650XP
What came First, the Drake or the Egg? 11650XP
Test Flight: the Singing Ridge 5400XP
Picking Up Some Power Converters 11650XP
Cutting Your Teeth 11650XP
Ride the Lightning 11650XP
Ridespire Manace 11650XP
Gauging the Resonant Frequency 11650XP
Test Flight: Razaan's Landing 5400XP
Trapping the Light Fantastic 11650XP
More than a Pound of Flesh 11650XP
Show Them Gnome Mercy 14950XP
Test Flight: Ruann Weald 5400XP

Notes

Found Toshley's Station. This is my first time here.
I took part in an unintentional AV turtle. Over 120 people later and I finally broke through to get on offense. We had some massive D which was their fault. They were letting no one through so the only alternative was turtle them. Ammassed 650-ish honor between one AV and killling a Shadow Priest two times. He ganked me so he had it coming

The Blog Formerly Known As Prince

2007-11-06T18:14:00.001-06:00

I made the executive decision that I will blog all of my NElf chars here instead of just Vendress. This comes on the heels of reading a lot of BigRedKitty today. It has me really jazzed to take hunter to 70 and beyond. Beyond of course not meaning higher levels but...
You get the picture.

A Bit on Names

2007-11-06T10:26:00.000-06:00

I'm at work and thought to make a short post about the naming conventions that I use since they have a long history.
In the beginning there was Palomar. To be honest there was more than just him, but he's the only one I remember. He was a clothy of the mage sort accompanied by 5 other fearless adventurer's in the Bard's Tale II. I don't know where the name came from, but I always thought it was attached to a dragon from the He-man: Master of the Universe cartoon. From what I can find, there is no such name in He-man. The name has resurfaced but never has it topped my list of popular names. The most common use was for a Red Mage in NES Final Fantasy... Due to only have 4 letters to name characters, though, it looked more like: Plmr.
Muze. He was my first 8-bit character back in the days of the NES and Dragon Warrior. His name, along with all my character names, has no particular reference where I drew it from. I just liked it as a kid and it sticks with me to this day. Most of my male char's throughout the years have held this name and it probably is the most used of all my names due to it's longevity.
Final Fantasy brought out the first diversification in names. Parties were composed of 4 characters of which each member could be a Warrior, Thief, Black Belt, Red Mage, Black Mage or White Mage. I had a standard name for each:

Warrior - Muze
Thief - Shdw (Shadow)
Black Belt - Xyln
Red Mage - Plmr
Black Mage - Deth
White Mage - Lynn

And there are the top three: Muze, Lynn and Xyln. Muze and Lynn persisted as the main male and female chars for the RPG dujour. Xyln typically saw use as a direct damage caster type or naturey characters (e.g. the mutants in Final Fantasy Legend on Gameboy).

From there it's a blur of video game characters, most with the same names the only notable names to come out of this jumble are Vladrek and Vendress. Vladrek was a knight-type name typically, for instance the bumbling knight of Final Fantasy 9. Vendress wasn't reserved for any certain character archetype, but conjurs up in my mind a healer or priest.

The next time a notable name popped up was Lynn of Final Fantasy XI fame, on the server Lakshmi. I was the recipient of a HDD and a full copy of Final Fantasy XI for free after participating in the three month long closed beta. Lynn of the beta and release copies was a mithra. Lynn stepped into Vana'diel as a thief. Mithra were cat chick chars with high agility and I thought a thief sounded fun. Somewhere around level 3 of thief, I found a white magic scroll from a mob and quickly ran to switch my job. I became a white mage which remained my most prevalent job for quite a long while. My best screenies of Lynn were her in her White Mage AF which recalled the garments of the original Final Fantasy White Mages. It is that very same AF that compels me to help others in need of class specific items and quests. I had to collect in the vicinity of 40 players, mostly strangers and some Japanese (the main tank in fact spoke no English) to make a run for my Healer's Briault. What an undertaking. I can be heard saying, "I still owe karma for my Healer's Briault." Muze and Vladrek saw use in FFXI, as well, acting as banks for Lynn.

World of Warcraft came next. I can make characters with reckless abandon here since I don't pay anything extra for each additional, unlike FFXI. The usuals popped up right away. My first char that wasn't a trial week char was Lÿnn on Anub'Arak. A NElf Hunter. The ÿ replacing the y not for cosmetic reasons or pronunciation (God only knows what they letter would sound like) but because Lynn was already taken. It's probably a level 1 Gnome Warrior Bank too :( Lÿnn made it to around level 40 before any other notable characters came about. Xyln was next on the scene and this time around as a NElf (the naturey aspect) Druid. Xyln went almost straight to 70 without interruption. I loved prowl and my huge burst damage output. Lÿnn has seen action recently taking her from mid-40's to 68 as of this posting. Vendress the priest is a break from my hunter for now. I imagine in a week or less, I will be back to Lÿnn to get her to 70 and maybe some raiding or at least a lot of BG's. hunter is way more fun in BG's. Muze is a Tauren on Coilfang, either a hunter or shaman... or maybe he's the undead rogue. They don't see much daylight since I like NElf chick chars the best and I'm not much for any of the horde races.

Well that's it. My lunch break is consumed.

Day 2

2007-11-05T21:24:00.000-06:00

On the slate for the evening will most likely be the end to Darkshore and the start of Ashenvale. I will have a few go between quests but most of my turn-ins will be in Astranaar. Tonight... I may well get ganked. I'm super not looking forward to that, but it comes with the territory.
Currently I'm updating Napster. Tonight's soundtrack, I'm thinking, will be panic at the disco. It's been a little while since I listened to it.
Well I'll get my preliminaries out of the way:
Logged in to find myself still wearing the goofy Halloween mask. I can't figure out why I don't just sell it but it has a certain appeal for the moment. I'm at the Darnassus Enchanter Trainer, 11.8% into level 15.
I took Tailoring to 73 and Enchanting to 36 last night before I logged. Enchanting was exciting. "Would you like to replace '+5 Health' with '+5 Health'?" I enchanted my bracers a lot. haha

Quests completed:

Buzzbox 525 1150XP
For Love Eternal 875XP
Cave Mushrooms 1250XP
Beached Sea Creatre 460XP
Beached Sea Turtle 550XP
Beached Sea Turtle 550XP
Deep Ocea, Vast Sea 1250XP
Onu 625XP
The Master's Glaive 625XP
The Twilight Camp 1250XP
Return to Onu 950XP
Beached Sea Creature 575XP
Beached Sea Turtle 725XP
Beached Sea Turtle 725XP
Beached Sea Creature 725XP
Beached Sea Creature 490XP
The Blackwood Corrupted 1700XP

Notes:

I became a Journeyman Tailor tonight
I wanted to make Barbaric cloth chest with my mad tailoring skillz... I needed 1 light leather and the only light leather on AH is a stack for 10 Gold. This server is farked. /logout and get one of my skinners. 10 G... just wow!
Cured my first disease today
New Wand thanks to alt Mordra
Killed Flagglemurk the Cruel, Silver Mob
I received the first of what will be many instance requests today. It sounded like this, "DM?" The deadmines. I look forward to healbotting instances (oddly enough) but it was far too late to make a run.
Green items broken: 9
Deaths: 2

I was a little worried when I first started out tonight. It took me too much mana and time to kill the bears for buzzbox and the cat sires. I took a time out and had Mordra craft a new wand for Ven. I went from 11.0 DPS to 17.5 DPS. Big difference. I still employ the same tactic: PW: Shield, Smite, Mind Blast, SW: Pain, then wand til dead. Rarely, after the wand change did I have to heal and start dps'ing again. Usually I could make it right through. By the time I got to Cleansing the furbolg, I had leveled to 17 and the even levels mobs were a synch. I found I could go straight from one to the next, but links really messed me up. I cannot take more than one thing at a time. Not unusual, I guess.
Shadow Spec continues: added points 2 and 3 to Shadow Focus. Brings me to 6% less chance for mob to resist shadow spells. Looking ahead, level 20 will bring Mind Flay which I think is a pretty useful shadow spell. We'll see.
New abil tonight of heal and new rank of Mind Blast, overall a pretty disappointing level (16).
Next login will still find me xp'ing in Darkshore, but I already have transition quests, including the tower quests, which go back and forth for a little, and the turn-in for saving the centaur from Master's Glaive. Woohoo!

Darkshore

2007-11-04T20:24:00.001-06:00

On the menu for tonight: Darkshore quests.
28% into level 13
Tailoring 61
Enchanting 17
Quests completed:

The Fall of Ameth'Aran 900XP
Tools of the Highborne 900XP
Bashal'Aran 675XP
The Tower of Althalaxx 675XP
The Tower of Althalaxx 1350XP
Washed Ashore 675XP
Washed Ashore 975XP
Grove of the Ancients 875XP
Cleansing of the Infected 1150XP
How Big a Threat? 975XP
Beached Sea Turtle 460XP
The Red Crystal 490XP
As Water Cascades 490XP
The Fragments Within 975XP

Notes:

Inventory takes a dramatic leap from 40 to 80 thanks to some new Netherweave Bags provided by Thrillho.
Killed Lady Moongazer (silver mob) in Ameth'Aran, thank goodness she was a ranger cuz she was level 17.
Deaths: 0
Green Items Broken: 6
Gained Psychic Scream at 14

This time around priest is going a little better. I'm not sure if it's the familiar ground of NElf quests instead of the other factions I'm not used to, or if it's the fact that I bought some decent gear. Probably a combination of the two. I hit level 15 tonight, woot! Current 'tactic' is Power Word: Shield, Smite from afar, Mind Blast (is that the name?), Shadow Word: Pain (that one seems wrong also), then wand until done. Some variation if the mob is a bit tougher. Usually includes bubble, heal, re-apply Pain and then wand again. Seems to work well enough. I finished out the Spirit Tap talent so I now get the buff 100% of the time and my first talent after that was reduction of shadow resists for mobs by 2%. Not great but better than it's competition it seems.
G'night

In the Beginning

2007-11-04T20:11:00.001-06:00

This is starting a bit late, but I wanted to track the leveling and development of Vendress. She's my fifteenth or so priest (third or fourth is a bit more accurate) and I thought it would be fun to look back once she hits 70... or I shitcan her, whichever comes first.
As of this post, she's 28% into level 13, and 14 was my highest priest so far. I'm officially shadow spec'd, haha. 4 points in spirit tap. The increased mana regen once a fight is done will be nice for leveling but once I get to grouping, it will go in favor of the 10% (when full) stun chance talent. It seems I have to be the one to kill the mob to get the spirit increase from Spirit Tap.
My racial (NElf's only) priest abil kinda blows: Star Shards or some shite. A channeled DOT with fair mana efficiency.
I logged on to find myself in Auberdine wearing a Halloween mask (accompanying pic) and I have some mail waiting. 4 Netherweave bags courtesy of Lÿnn's Netherweave and Thrillho's tailoring skills.
BTW... current opinion of priest is low. They blow at killing stuff so far and slow killing means slow leveling... hooray! Well off to XP.