The Ding of Dings

So the Lunar Festival comes around and provides some nice relaxing WoW that's easy to enjoy for hardcore and casual alike, perfect for a raider and his gf to kill an afternoon or two.

Until you reach the Gumdrop elder and discover that the coin guy is only there in Heroic mode.

Kinda sux if one of you is only level 78.

But that's pretty easy to fix by spending some time in Zul'Drak and Icecrown, aided by some epic cold weather flying, and a week later she dings 80 without really needing to push beyond a normal casual routine of playing the occasional evening here and there, or maybe filling the cold empty void that comes with a significant other who regularly raids in a cone of silence (ah, new cordless headphones, how I love thee).

Big fat gratz on dinging 80!

What's a Shadow Priest to do?

So, we've got our sights set on Heroic Gundrak.

Before going anywhere, lets make sure to reduce as many noob indicators as possible.

Enchants, gems, all the nice things a player can do to improve what she's wearing without leaving the comfort of Ironforge.

But, neither of us really has any clue what a SPriest needs at level 80.

Consult the Armory, check out one of the guild's shadows, and monkey-see monkey-do.

30 minutes and 600g later (its good to be rich), and all her greenies are nice and shiny.

Time for some action!

Welcome to Heroics

You can imagine the situation is pretty nerve wracking.

Here's a player who has a very casual view of the game, getting in on her first real Northrend dungeon run, at level 80, in heroic mode, in a party with 4 pretty hardcore players.

That's a lot of pressure! When ever you have two different cultures collide, there's potential for drama and conflict.

Luckily, the players that joined us are the types who are experts in their roles, geared out the wazoo, plus, they're very welcoming of social members.

The run was a beauty.

The uber gf remembered to buff people, kept her mana battery spell up (vt? ve? i can never remember which), and most importantly....she didn't die in any fire in the one or two fights that come with that hazard.

And, after surviving all the combat situations, and generally staying with the pack and assisting the tank for DPS targets and remembering to mana up after fights, she went ahead and, completely out of combat, fell into some water and got eaten alive by some fish, which was just amusing.

Outstanding work for a first timer, if I do say so myself.

If you want to replace it, polish it

I'm a long-standing advocate of appeasing the loot karma gods by enchanting the hell out of any piece of gear you want to replace.

Well, fresh at 80, you pretty much want to replace every single piece of quest greenie gear, so that's what she did....enchant & gem everything.

And lets just say that it worked.

Every. Single. Boss. dropped something cloth with wonderful spell power, crit, and intellect (all things which EJ says SP like to wear, if I'm not mistaken).

Four sweet Heroic Blue items. Luckily the team we're running with is (A) geared up in ilevel 213/226 epics, and (B) very cool and happy to help a new priest upgrade her stuff.

By the third and fourth drops, it was just getting silly on vent.

So another 400g was happily withdrawn from the Gear Polishing Fund and she's off to a sweet start to her set of gear.

But that's not all, folks!

She's still got a few coins left to get her Elder title, so we're off to Black Rock Spire.

And one of the achievement-hounds in the guild notices and wants to try to trio the Jenkins one.

Have you ever tried this with only 3 players?

All I can say is .... WOW!

That's a lot of whelps.

Warlock runs around grabbing all the whelps while Hunter stands on explosive trap and Priest bubbles everybody. Seed, Volley, that thing that Shadow Priests do for AoE.

3 or 4 seconds of terror as 50 or 60 whelps spank us.

Ding Jenkins!

Sweet way to end a sweet night.

Ask the readers: What's fastest?

Hypothetical situation....

Lets say you had three WoW accounts. Due to Recruit-a-Friend and some server transfers, you've got a slew of alts at various levels and with various professions.

Account #1 has a level 80 Hunter (herb/mining, naturally) with a fancy Gorilladin, level 59 Rogue (enchanting and nothing, kinda lockpicking) and a 57 Death Knight (no profs as yet).

Account #2 has a level 57 Paladin (Engineer and nothing).

Account #3 has a level 69 Shammy (herb/mining), 60 Druid (alchemy/inscription), and 57 Warrior (JC/BS)

Your goal for the alts is really only to level their professions, with aspirations of maybe playing one of them to level 80 based on which one you consider to (A) have the coolest name and (B) be most fun to play, and (C) professional daily quest requirements (can you do the JC daily if you're not 80?).

Grandmaster for crafting professions (above 375) requires level 70.

So, the stage is set. Now the question to the readers...

What'd be the fastest way to get as many of the toons up to 70 as possible?

Options can range from the simplest to the craziest...

1) Old School - Level each toon individually via questing, grinding, and PuGging instance runs when there's instance quests.

2) Boosting - Instances - Amava runs one or two other toons through Outlands instances. (Aside: This is actually pretty lucrative. A single, 32 minute run through Ramparts netted 120g in cloth, D/E'able greenies, vendor trash and blue BoP drops).

On the boosting option, I'd have to figure out what to do with the Rogue and DK that're on Amava's account, since there'd be no toon high level enough on the other accounts to boost them.

3) Multibox - Dual or Triple box low level toons and do quests. Would mostly be playing a single toon with one or two others in tow, looting quest items.

4) Boosting - Quests - Amava has two lil babies following her, but rather than the lucrative dungeon runs, it'd be boosting them through quests. This option suffers from the same drawback as the earlier Boosting option.

I think that's all I got. What did I miss?

Any ideas on what'd be fastest?

As it stands right now, my approach is mostly #2 Boosting Instances when there's rested XP on the toons and spare time on me. The thing I like best is how brainless it is. Questing requires me to read stuff. If I wanted to read, I'd go to school. Boosting requires me to solo an instance 10-20 levels below me, and make sure I press my /follow macro from time to time and the jump button to be non-AFK from time to time.

Brain Dead>>>Thoughtful&Challenging when I'm grinding levels


Anybody out there hit WotLK max level in a day or two have ideas on efficiency? Specifically on the 60-70 level range?

Some quickies

Played way too much wow this weekend. A combination of leveling the horde pair with the gf, doing a little dual boxing of the horde pair while the gf went shopping for some vacation clothes her vacation, not mine :-(, getting run through ZF on the horde pair, and raiding on Amava.

As such, here's what's floating around in my head right now:

1) Feralas looks cool. The zone feels much more like a forest than Terokkar Forest, and feels less cartoony than Ashenvale. I like saying the word Mojache. That said, the fact that they have you kill a bazillion hippogryphs, and then they send you to Hinterlands to kill a bazillion more owlkins, and then back to feralas to kill a bazillion more of the same hippogryphs. That little dance makes me not want to go back to Feralas again. And don't even get me started on Yetis.

2) The more I level, the more I dislike that fundamental concept of MMO. Time sink with a carrot hanging at the end of it. Maybe I'm being parochial, but end-game is more fun than game for me. Raiding, heroic dungeons, even level cap BG's. I want to get the horde pair up to 70 so we can play with our friends. Playing with those friends for months only via dungeon run-throughs and /gchat is not my idea of fun. The lure of WAR get stronger each time I log into WoW on a non-level capped toon, just to try out what all the bloggers are describing as meaningful grouping and interactions at all levels.

3) The recommended leveling spec for a Shammy is Enhancement. I think that's only because Blizzard didn't really include suitable leather gear, and after 40, mail gear with stats for Elemental. Leveling elemental shammy needs to wear cloth to be able to kill stuff, but that makes her squishy. Change that, Blizz. Elemental feels much more Shaman-like than doing melee stuff.

4) Mining. Getting through the later Tin stage, and then getting from Iron to Mithril can be a little challenging. Then you party like its 1999. Until about 230 or so. Mithril turns green and very sporadically gives you points. And you need to get to 245 for Thorium. But it is fun traveling in a pair with two miners. First toon hammers at the node, gets the skill point, doesn't loot the ore. Second toon hammers at the node, gets the skill point, continues looting.

5) Future Inscriptors must be rich folks indeed. Stack of Sungrass sold for 67g. That is insane. Amava doesn't even pay that much for Nightmare Vine, which is one of the more rare/expensive herbs, and is needed in mass quantities for the endless supply of Fel Mana Pots she drinks. She might need to join Potions Anonymous to help kick the habit.

6) If I ever do find myself leveling again, doing it in a pair is verah nice. Whether with an actual other person, or just dualboxing, it is pretty sweet with two toons. Even if one is just a healbot you go so much faster, and can pretty much rush into anything. Anything. ANYTHING that makes the grind a little less agonizing. If your healbot can drop totems, all the better.

Quickies

Some quickie thoughts.....

1) STV is pretty cool now that mounts come out at 30. Just finished the last quest there, except for Green Hills of Stranglethorn, which I refuse to take part of, other than making gold hand over fist selling the pages. Just dinged 45 as I turned in the last quest. How's that for well planned zones? How that happened with the new faster leveling, I do not know, but either way, I shant complain.

2) Mining is fun. I just like it. And dinging 175, which opens up Mithril, is heavenly.

3) Herbalism on a druid is even more fun than mining. You don't even have to shift out of travel form (or someday, flight form) to pick flowers.

4) Playing in a duo with a druid and a shaman is neat. Running around as a ghost wolf and a cheetah is 24% slower than mounted and wearing special boots. But I dont care, the coolness factor of cats and dogs playing together more than makes up for the speed.

5) Alliance begins Hinterlands in the west, where the mobs are around level 40. Horde starts Hinterlands in the east where the mobs are around level 50. This does not make sense to me, but I just don't really like Tanaris so I'll stay.

6) For the Horde. I just like hearing the Horde NPC's talk more than the alliance ones. Although the drunken dwarves (they drink all year round, not just to set themselves up to get Brewfest achievements once they're released) by the mailbox in Wildhammer Stronghold are pretty funny.

7) In lieu of a canceled raid, I did indeed take part in some Brewfest BRD boss action. Its the first time Amava ever got drunk. I got a chuckle out of that. Staggering around during the boss fight with a barrel on my head, also a chuckle. Getting a trinket equivalent of the Bloodlust Brooch? Whatever, I think I'm still an Hourglass of the Unraveller kind of guy.

8) Playing a druid requires you to press lots more buttons than a hunter. Sure, just like the hunter, you could just auto attack your way through mobs. But, unlike the hunter, you take damage while its happening. And so you press buttons. And continuously look at your energy or rage levels. Makes it hard to eat ribs while you're playing.

9) As it would turn out, my raid feels sorrow for my keyboard. My microphone is right near the keyboard, so when I activate it during combat and I'm hammering my 3 key to spam the Steady:Auto macro, the key slamming sound gets transmitted.
Some of the guildies held secret meetings (aka, random heroic runs) where they discussed (aka, gossiped about their officers) starting up a fund raiser for a new keyboard for their raid leader (aka, the coconut who pounds one key and has been know to win at WWS from time to time, and yells at everybody). This also gave me a chuckle.

10) You'd be amazed how much stress and aggravation you can vent by pounding a single key as hard as you can, over and over again, as long as its accompanied by fun animated effects, frequent bloop crit sound fx, and massive bar charts of damage output.

Scarlet Monastery, the slightly less nasty version

I really hope you didn't read the previous story. I simply wrote it in the hopes that getting the experience out will help purge it from my memory. But oh well. No more potty talk. On to the WoW.

As mentioned earlier, I went on a boosting run through the Scarlet Monastery.

What a walk down memory lane.

Back when Amava was a lil baby in her mid 30's, SM was a place she spent lots of time.

That was a year ago.

Back then, it was with five players all in the mid 30's. Taking hours to clear the place out.


And today, its with a well-geared 70 mage wrangling piles of 10 or 20 mobs at a time and arcane exploding them into oblivion. Taking maybe an hour and a half, including a few breaks to clean up some nastiness, to do 4 instances.

Each corner we turned brought back vivid memories of when Amava originally went through there, and how carefully we had to do each and every pull.

Granted, at the time we were usually doing dungeons with two rogues, two hunters, and a random fifth player (rarely someone who could tank, and only sometimes with healing capabilities), so we invited our own pain, but that's neither here nor there.

It was a really fun blast from the past revisiting the different wings of the Scarlet Monastery, more so than any other low-level dungeon I've run thus far.

Lots of fun getting boosted through as a dancing bear and raking in some decent XP and loot.

Strange thing though.

My druid was level 40 and the gf's shammy was 36.

I was getting more XP for kills. Both of us were already burned through our rested XP and "felt normal".

WTF? Seems kinda backwards, yes?

Group XP

Ok, first off, this is the second post in a few minutes that I'm writing in response to reading a post from Tobold's. I cant believe this gem of a blog has been out there for this long without me reading it yet. Go check it out.

Back in January he did a post about how XP is handed out for killing mobs and how it really encourages risk averse (perhaps fun averse as well?) behavior. Sure you get a bit more XP for fighting higher level mobs, but not enough to make up for the difficulty or mana-recovery down time. Also, fighting two mobs at the same time is way harder than fighting one at a time (for most classes), but the XP gain is the same for both situations.

That got me to thinking....

When you're grouped up, you individually get less XP for the kill.

Have you ever been out in a area, either grinding or working on a "kill X mobs" quest, and you come across another player who is clearly doing the same thing? So you ask them if they want to group up and they answer "nah, xp is better solo".

F- that.

If you want to encourage grouping and social situations (it is a massively online game and not a solitaire clone, afterall), why not offer a slight XP bonus if you are in a group of appropriately levelled characters?

I think the issue is that Blizz currently thinks they are giving a bonus to the group. If you kill the mob solo, you get X amount of xp. If you group up and kill it with two people, you both get Y amount of xp, and in general 2*Y > X, so Blizzard views the situation as a bonus. You individually got less XP but the universe of players as a whole got more XP due to your team work.

What would happen if they made it so that Y > X, even if only by a drop?

I think you'd see more collaboration and grouping while levelling, and in doing so, you'd have people levelling faster, which appears to be what they want at the Azeroth levels anyway.

Add to that a change that grants the drops from "gather Z drops off of X mobs" quests to all players in the group, and you'll have grouping become a sweet option for powerlevelling.

And hell, they could even do some special fun stuff, like you only get the bonus (or perhaps just a bigger bonus) if you're in a group with at least one of each party role (tank, healer, DPS). To make it fair on hybrid classes, they could build a little flag interface where the party leader can flag each player as to what role they're playing. Of course, this would be a little complex as it would have to make sure it doesn't allow a Rogue to be specified as the healer and so on. But I'm sure they could figure out a way to reward the group for trying to level up some tanks and healers, rather than just giving them better solo'ability (like +healing also translates to some +damage, which they did in a recent patch). The only reward of group play I can think of is in loot from dungeons, which is only accessible, theoretically, if you have the right blend.

Running out of Quests

I don't know about you, but once I hit the 20's on a toon, I can't quite make it all the way to 30 by questing just in a single zone. Or maybe I can but there's a dead zone in the middle where you run out of quests you can handle at your level, but then a level or two away, there's another group of quests for ya.

My answer to that is grinding.

It started with Amava, but I didn't know it at the time. Galavanting around Ashenvale in her 20's, she found her favorite spot to spend time was just to the west of Astranaar. There's a series of camps of furbolgs or some such warrior and shaman humanoids in the level 23-24 range. Nice and easy to gain rested bonus in the inn at Astranaar, and then just pop over to those furry guys and grind them down, collecting coins (vital for a young lady who hadn't gotten any jobs yet, late bloomer that she was) and stacks of linen and wool.

Now, I'm levelling two alts in that same zone. My priest who was at 27, and my druid who's 26. Seems that there is just a gap in quests to bridge me up a level or two till I can handle the Forrest Song quests.

For my priest, at level 26 and 27, its perfect for me to grind those guys, as I can pretty much take them on 1 at a time, and my shield lasts long enough to keep me at full health through the fight, and the name totally escapes me right now, but 5 points in whatchamacallit talent from the shadow tree makes sure that I've got very little mana issues either. Makes me feel good about life, like I'm the big kid who can bully around these little guys a few levels below me, and take their lunch money, and still-unwoven clothes right off their back. Feels like a hunter, only delayed by 4 or 5 levels :-) Dinged all the way up to 28 this way, and now maybe I can start hammering out the quests in the east part of the zone to get to maybe 31 or so.

For my druid, she's a bit more capable of handling mobs at or above her level, but she's dancing to a different tune.

You can't skin those guys. Any grinding Moody's doing had better yeild some sort of a leather or hide, since trying to supply enough skins to her Leatherworking is consuming. Following along the Cleansing Rene Zelwigger quest line, she ended up north near the border with Felwood and found a bunch of wolves and bucks that're providing the Heavy Leather that she's just become interested in.

Sweet XP and sweed leathers to be had.

Progress Report: 3

Well, looky what we have here...


Mission Complete!

11:24PM on Tuesday November 20th!

Total time played: 25 days, 4 hours, 32 minutes, 56 seconds

I ran straight to Shadowmoon Valley. Got lost. Found the Flight Trainer and Gryphon guy.

Did a joy ride to Shattrath, portaled to Stormwind, trained in Misdirect and new rank of Growl (among some other frivolties), flew to Blasted Lands, silly fixed flying routes :-)

Flew through Hellfire Peninsula. Filled my bags with herbs and mineral nodes (this epic training aint gonna pay for itself afterall). Headed off to Shadowmoon to figure out how on earth am I going to get to fly a dragon.

And if you click the link to see the full sized image, you can see my oopsie as I fired off rapid fire while shuffling around my action bar to make room for the Ebon Gryphon.

Progress Report: 2

Short but sweet...you really want to read progress report 3, and I really want to write it more than this one, but I'll put this here for the sake of completeness. Go read #3 if its posted yet.

Monday night - Mana tombs and lots of questing. Armed with Lightheaded and TomTom, making quick work of XP. Went to bed with 54% of the XP to 70 complete.

Tuesday morning - Some quick grinding before the servers went down for maintenance. Got to about 65% XP complete.

Ok, progress report done. Go read #3.

I really should not be an event promoter, I suck at this "cliff hanger stuff".

Progress Report

I gotta tell you...I was worried when I put the first posting out there describing my Turkey Challenge to hit 70 on or before Thanksgiving. Mapping out the time it would take to hit that goal left me with a pretty overwhelmed feeling. I mean, I've done some marathon sessions before, but 16 hours in one day? That's a bit extreme, even for me. And you know, if I didn't actually have a goal to hit, I might just sit there and look at the clock and discover that I had played even more than that without even noticing. But with a goal and a deadline, it'll feel like work. Forget that.

So what to do? I really want 70, but don't want to be faced with extra pressure.

Well, the situation basically sorted itself out.

If you recall, the plan I laid out had me going to bed on sunday night at level 68, and needing roughly 10 hours of /played for each level.

Well, on saturday night, at level 67, grinding some ogres for a quest, my magical fairy showed up. And she showed up in the form of a Night Elf Druid who was lvl 64 and was grinding those same ogres. She was already in the area when I arrived, so I whisper to ask if she wants to cooperate to accomplish the quest rather than compete for kills. She's on board.

Nagrand seems to have lots of "kill N xyz mobs", and the number N seems to be 20 or higher most of the time. Very "grindy" and very conducive to grouping.

My initial reaction to working with my magic fairy was a bit skeptical. She moved extremely fast between mobs, and kept switching to cat form and running real fast to get places. My usual style is perhaps a bit more conservative. But I figured, "what the hey" and went with it.

Well, this ended up being about 2.5 or 3 hours of the most intense and efficient XP generation I've ever been part of.

To start off with, you've got the fast pace of moving between mobs. We never really got into too much trouble, other than when she'd get to a pack of mobs in cat form way faster than I could get there, so she'd be in a bit of danger till I showed up, but I was always there shortly to keep things safe.

Next, she clearly was not in Nagrand for her first time. She knew her way around the zone backwards and forwards.

And lastly, she totally knew how to combine simultaneous progress on quests like I've never seen. At one point, I actually had 10 completed quests in my log, just waiting to turn in. And these puppies give over 10k XP each for the turn-in, not to mention any XP from grinding while doing the quest. All in all, we did about 20-25 quests that night.

Ended up with just INSANE xp generation, without ever feeling the slightest pressure, because I was just following my magic fairy around.

So that left me saturday night, having dinged 68, and about one third of the way to 69.

Then sunday morning, I finished off some quests in Nagrand, getting about half way to 69, even with all the ninjas trying to post a flag in the ogres I killed (lots of quests where you need to put flags in corpses in Nagrand). Then I got bogged down with just group quests remaining in Nagrand. I did find a cool group that helped me take down the Son of Gruul. One of the guys in the group was a lvl 70 hunter, who was clearly involved in some hardcore stuff. He had sunfury phoenix bow, Legacy axe, Netherdrake flying mount, and just about all his equipment was purple. Cool attitude, too. Funny aside, to take down Son of Gruul, we got a group of 5, plus another group of 5 who let us take the first shot and then helped us with the kill. That guy was really tough. And mid-way through the fight, he flung me off this cliff so I had to run all the way around and missed half the fight. All hail the Beast Master, because even though I was out, my pet was still banging away, and keeping Ferocious Inspiration up to buff the group. But I digress.

Faced with the bogged down feeling, I did a quick check to my quest log and saw a delivery to Blade's Edge Mountains. Ok, I think I know where that is, so fly to Zangarmarsh and head up that way. Cool questing there. Right away, they give you 3 quests that are a piece of cake to do all at the same time.

Then there's a fun series of quests where you use Beer to pull mobs one at a time, and if you do it right, the elite guards that're with them don't aggro. Those guys are listed as "Sober Guardian" or some-such and don't respond to the "Brew Pull" technique. Funny stuff, and lots of XP to be had.

Ended up sunday night still in the very early mini-zones of Blades Edge Mountains, dinging 69.

To sum up, here I am monday morning about 3000 XP into level 69, and my Turkey Challenge seems to be pretty well under control.

And to add some icing to the cake, I dinged 3K gold, and then some, but I'm only reporting milestones in multiples of 500g, so shouldn't be too long before the next one ;-)

And I also got my first crit for over 2K damage, first aimed shot I took after dinging 68 and investing my third point in Mortal Shots. Haven't had one since, but then again, I don't use Aimed Shot very often.

So close I can taste it. Or is that just turkey?

Warning...this post comes dangerously close to revealing just how much of a nerd I am in RL. If you're an Alpha Beta, stop reading. Only Tri-Lambs and Moo's are allowed to continue...

Ding 67

And now the personal challenge is on. Pike over at Aspect of the Hare tells the story of a guild competition for members to level up to 70 before xmas. In similar fashion, I've had a very backburner thought of trying to hit 70 by Thanksgiving. Friday morning's ding 67 and Pike's post have solidified it. Its on!

To make this happen, here's the plan. I'm at 67, with about 2% of the XP needed to hit 68. No rested bonus other than what accrues while I'm not playing between now and Thanksgiving, I burned all the excess up friday morning.

I think that hitting 68 this weekend will be reasonable, as I've got the evenings/nights pretty clear once my little 'en goes to sleep.

Without doing any real math of how I'll accomplish this, I do know that the FuBar XP doo-hickey shows it at about 10 hours per level at my normal mildly focused pace. I try to stay moving on XP-generating quests, but I don't go too crazy trying to overlap 3 or 4 quests that make sense to do together. If it happens by concidence, cool, but it stresses me out too much when I read a thottbot writeup that says "and while you're there, make sure you grab this quest and this quest and this quest, and maximize your XP". So to combat that stress, I just avoid the issue and go through my quest list pretty much in order as it appears in my MonkeyQuest display, even if that means sub-optimal XP generation, or if it means running around a zone a bit more than I otherwise would.

Experience has shown that the FuBar (and previously TitanPanel) estimates are a drop high, and I end up levelling a drop sooner than they predict, but let's pretend they're accurate. If I end up ahead of schedule, more the merrier. Especially because, as you'll see by the end of this post, the situation is not that pretty.

10 hours to hit 68. Very do-able by bed time on sunday night. Might happen sooner. So my project plan (no I'm not really putting together a Gantt chart for this, but that would be pretty funny) will say I wake up monday morning in the very early stage of 68 on the way to 69.

RL plans will have me with a little casual time monday and tuesday evening, and pretty much none on wednesday other than perhaps checking auctions and such.

Which reminds me....ding 2500g

Back to the plans. Lets assume that FuBar will predict another 10 hours to hit 69. Although I might get more than 2 hrs in on monday and tuesday, I'll be going AFK a bunch and not really focusing real hard on banging out quests, so I'll assume 2 hrs of effective levelling each night, and none on wednesday.

That will leave me waking up on Thanksgiving about 40% of the way to 69.

Assuming the 10 hours per level remains accurate, that'll mean 6 hours to hit 69, and then 10 more hours to hit 70.

Ummm? This is where my plan gets a tad hairy. Although my RL plans have the day all to myself (loser), 16 hours of plowing my way to 70 is perhaps extreme. I will have a few bars of rested XP due to not logging in on wednesday, but still...ouch.

Motivation will be high, no doubt. I really want to be flying around the skies of Outland before midnight on Thanksgiving. But this schedule sounds a drop intense.

What do you guys think? Will I be flying the friendly skies, or will I wake up on Friday, still getting sore feet running around on the ground? Well, my swift mistsaber is the one who's feet get sore, but you get the idea :-)

Chock Full o' Nuttin

I'm usually chock full of ideas to write about. Today, not a whole lot. That leaves you with what may turn out to be a drier than usual post.

Firstly, I installed the RatingBuster addon. Fantastic stuff. Had to play with it for a little while, but I'm liking how it illustrates to me the impact that +agi will have on what seems to be armor, crit percentage, attack power, and dodge? Is that true (or maybe I'm confused). Then wouldn't everybody just love +agi? Maybe they do, but I've really only read (a bit) about what hunters like. Same is true for other stats too, RatingBuster is a nice visual tool to help you learn how different item bonuses impact your overall character. Thanks to Someone for pointing that guy out to me.

The only other thing on my mind (besides wanting to get home and keep grinding and questing my way to 67), is a nagging feeling that I consistently dump items that might actually be useful to me in someway.

The first time I really started to get this feeling was in Zangarmarsh, when I was coming across lots of unidentified plant parts and glowcap mushrooms. Not knowing any better, I would gather these items, and noticing that the Auctioneer estimate of its value was pretty nice, I would just sell them on AH, usually garnering a nice profit.

Shortly after that, I came across the repeatable quest for Cenarion Expedition rep for turning in those plant parts. Ohhhh, so that's what they're for. Made some adjustment, and started turning those puppies in for rep, until I think it maxed out at friendly or honored or some such. Then it looks like those items are now useless to me.

Then I noticed that on a blog, the author was mentioning some venom sacs whose exact name escapes me, but I get them in Terokkar Forest pretty regularly when trying to farm for spider silks that look to be pretty valuable, I'm assuming they're part of a recipe or something. But that's the silks, back to the venom sacs. When spiders drop them, I forget if they're grey or white quality, but either way, they don't seem to have any exceptional value according to Auctioneer, so I dump them at a vendor. And recently on a blog, I saw someone mention them, seeming to indicate that they're useful for rep with some faction or other.

So I guess I need to thottbot everything? That's going to make running around a bit harder to keep my bags empty, since those are easy to dump now. Then again, with the new multi-attachments to emails, I suppose that keeping the bags empty wont be that hard, but still a little bit of a nervous feeling that I might be throwing away useful stuff at any given point in time.

Chopper, Sick Balls!

Ding 66

And with that, and a trip from Terokkar Forest to the Hunter trainer in Stormwind and a few gold, comes Kill Command.

I think I'm going to make a macro that just wraps around Kill Command, just so I can call it "Sick Balls".

Pretty cool stuff. And now I know what people are talking about when they say that more crits mean more kill commands. Up until now, i was like "kill command! yeah! I like those too. That sounds good, I'll have that......(turning to the guy next to me and whispering) what's kill commands?"

Playing with it for a few minutes, I first thought it would just automatically proc like growl. Doesn't seem to. So I dragged it to my action bar. Went to fight some warp stalkers. When I crit, I would click it in the action bar, and Ruby would turn red for a split second and so some extra damage. Ok, I see how this works now.

Not wanting to click the mouse, I mapped it to letter c since I never use c to pop up the default mapping of the Character screen. And my hand is typically hovering right near the letter c because I use the keyboard wasd for movement, and my most often used special moves are mapped to 1-6 and f1-f4. So letter c is right in my left hand's neighborhood.

I've got Critical Alerts addon installed. When I crit with anything besides Aimed Shot, it emits a little "bloop" sound. And when Aimed Shot crits, its a wild wild west bullet richochet noise. Both easy to identify so I know when crit happens and therefore Sick Balls is available, so I start spamming c.

Works just fine out solo where I really don't need to concentrate too hard on my shot rotation, or chain trapping, or keeping mobs off my healer, or any of the other dozen things I do when we're not just tanking and spanking.

What techniques do you use to make Sick Balls easier to manage?

And the real question is...is there an addon that will play an audio clip of "Chopper! Sick Balls!" for my party mates whenever I proc Kill Command? Or do I have to write it myself and insist that my guildies install it :-)

The 70's...and all you other people

Guild relations time. I'll start off with re-stating that my current guild is pretty cool. The leader is a stand-up kind of guy, knowledgeable in his own right, but also willing to listen and adapt. Most of the players are reasonable, specifically with regards to attitude and team stuff. And we just started rolling out a Guild Calendar to organize some events. All nice things, and I'm happy to be on board, excited to see where things go.

We're build around a team structure. The idea is that the guild is made up of teams of 20 with one coordinator and one assistant coordinator per team of 20. The growth rate is pretty high, and there's now 3 teams (but only team 1 has the full 20 members). There's not too much definition of what the teams really mean, other than when forming instance groups, the idea is to try to form parties within your team first, and then look outwards from there if necessary. Like I said, we're just starting to get organized around the concept.

Sunday night, things changed a drop. I'm not sure if my initial reaction is just that, an initial reaction to change. Or if its a legit uneasiness.

The guild is largely made up of levelling characters. The minimum requirement is level 50, so you see a bunch of players in the mid to upper 50's with a scattering spread out up to 69. Until sunday there was 3 or so 70's.

Then two guys dinged 70. Lots of congrats and such over guild chat. Cool, good job by them. Made my ding 65 feel silly, although I did put my talent point into Aimed Shot and then crit'ed on my first Aimed Shot since my MM build in my mid-20's. And my Crit Alert addon made a cool wild wild west pistol richochet sound effect which made me chuckle.

The first announcement that goes out is that the guild leader is forming a new team for the 70's. He was the leader of my team, so he put another player as the team 1 coordinator, and then shuffled the new 70's to the new "elite" team. He had talked to me about this earlier in the week, so it wasn't a surprise, but the name of it was.

I wish he had come up with a different name, rather than "elite", which immediately makes the rest of the guild feel like inferiors. But I some-what agree with the concept, to allow the level 70's to work together. I'll be there in a few short weeks, so I'm ok with the concept.

The next thing you see is that the guild chat begins to be dominated by those 70's. I'm not sure what "the chain quest" is, but that's what they were going on and on about and how important/how cool it is. From what I could tell from the context, it would appear to be a prereq for Kara, getting the key fragments perhaps, or some other instances?

Not sure, but it pretty quickly created a clear divide between the 70's and everyone else. I got a whisper from one of the other non-70 members, and he was feeling the same thing. I can totally understand the excitement and feeling of accomplishment those guys were having. I know I'll be flying high when my XP bar dissappears too.

What do you guys think? Standard sort of thing guilds go through, and we'll come through just fine? Or should I ask the guild leader to keep up the enthusiasm, but perhaps tone down the guild chat that is creating the divide? I'm thinking that if I'm going to say anything, I should say it now before it festers.

What's the opposite of Burnout?

Whatever the opposite of burnout is, I have it. All gung-ho for Amava. Probably because I spent a bunch of time away from WoW this weekend. Went on a road trip, saw Dane cook in concert, laughed my butt off. Totally forgot about WoW for 2 awesome days.

Just when I thought I had cleaned out Zangarmarsh of quests, I ran into the Orebore Harborage, and got a whole bunch of new quests. And a new flight path. Very cool.

Ding 65

Aimed Shot gets the talent point, so I took a quick portal to Stormwind to talk to the hunter trainer there so I could buy all the ranks of my new skill, plus an upgrade to immolation trap. That's the first hunter skill upgrade that came to me on an odd numbered level that I can remember.

So perhaps now I can consider Zangarmarsh done until I decide to do Sporegarr or Cenarion rep? Time will tell.

I then went on to some Shattrath City quests for the Aldors. I totally mis-read the clues in the quest, and also in the thottbot write up about the quest, and I navigated all over northern Nagrand. Just love the sky there. Outland in general has really cool looking skies. After a bit of grumbling because things just didn't look right, I realized that the quest took place in Terokkar Forest, and so my galavanting around Nagrand was not getting me anywhere.

BUT, my trip through Nagrand was so lucrative its not even funny. Dual Gatherer, FTW!!!! Lots of minerals, and herbs. And then the continuous drops of various Motes of whatever. And a couple of bonus Fel Lotus and Eternium Ores in the herb and mineral nodes I was getting. Love it.

Ding 2000g

Ended up getting 40% of the way through 65 also, and then my rested XP bonus dried up, and I feel normal.

Oh yeah, and I'm thinking the answer to the title question is motivation.

Ding 64 - Aspect of the Viper

Post #1 for the day. The normal routine...accomplishments.

Really only 1, but perhaps 1.5. You be the judge.

1) Ding 64
1.5) Downed Magtheridon

At 64, I got Aspect of the Viper. Sounds cool, better mana management. But now the quanry between Hawk and Viper. Any ideas about when to use one versus the other?

The note aboug magtheridon is really only a partial win. When I logged on, a guildie asked if I wanted to run Blood Furnace. Yeah, SURE!!! I join the group to discover 2 hunters (including me), 2 mages, and a warlock. I'm no expert on tanking, but I'm not sure I see any tank here, besides some pets and a minion. I could be wrong. I'm also no expert on healing, but other than mend pet and 2 stacks of heavy netherweave bandages, I don't see a whole lot of healing power.

I gently raise the issue ("so who's tanking?") and get answers like "dont worry about it". Gahhh. But OK, I figure we'll either wipe really fast and I wont have wasted too much time. And I might just learn about some hidden tanking powers in that group that I didnt know of.

Enter the instance, and its empty. They had cleared up until the room right before Magtheridon and one of their guys dropped. One mage logs off and logs back on with a priest. We clear the room right before mags. The priest logs back off and the mage comes back. I'm getting happier by the second. Not!

We down Magtheridon without much fuss.

So I'm really not considering that an accomplishment.

Oh man....I just had a total light bulb moment in my head. I was thinking that at least I did accomplish the collection of some orc blood vials for a quest. And bam-o, it hit me. I've got two quests in Blood Furnace completed, just waiting to be cashed in. Sweet, 20k XP just waiting for me to get home :-)

Back on topic...shortly after that group disbanded, the guild leader invited me to run Blood Furnace. Got a decent group together, all guild members which is nice, had a great run going, until we got locked out. Lemme explain.

We made it to the second boss, and cleared him, then somebody hit a lever that closed some gate that looks like teeth or claws or something, coming horizontally out of the doorway to the room. This closed behind us, and we didn't think anything of it at the time.

We continued on for a bit. Then the mage. We got a replacement, but he couldnt get to us because the teeth had closed behind us, so we could see eachother, and dance with eachother (I'm a dork and I /dance all the time, even though the Night Elf female Britney/Toxic Alizee (edit - thanks Pike for the correct dancer) dance is pretty stupid), but he can't get past.

The mage who DC'd was a major contributor to our DPS, but we decided to try to 4-man it anyways.

We made it to the room right before Mags (sound familiar?). There's two packs of 3 mobs. You can pull them separately. Both packs have two big melee guys and one caster. The plan was for me to freeze one of the big guys, and then focus all firepower on the caster. Lacking a big part of our DPS, it was going to take a while to burn these guys down, so I knew I was going to have to freeze this guy at least 3 times, if not 4 or even 5. And with me being distracted by this trapping stuff, I would not be as big a contributor to the takedowns as I would otherwise be. But with the mage gone, the damage meter was showing that I was basically it for the DPS, with the other DPS guy barely out DPS'ing the healer who would throw in some offense as the situation allowed. So that guy needs to be talked to, but at least he's a team player. I can live with the low DPS output for now.

But not last night. We just couldnt pull it off fast enough and wiped.

Everybody's got high spirits because we think we know what we did wrong, and actually might be able to do it.

We get back into the instance and find those teeth blocking our way. I tried searching all the dungeon guides I could to no avail. Nobody had any info about the silly Blood Furnace tooth gate. We ended up having to leave and reset the instance. But by then I had to go to bed. It was an awesome run for a group that was built entirely from guild members, which always makes me happy to see.

Zangarmush

I'm lovin' me some Zangarmarsh.

I just really like the zone so far. The strange debuff that those bumblebees put on Ruby (my pet Boar) is just a sweet visual effect.

I'm a big fan of Cenarion Expedition, and its my first real taste of reputation (sure there was that Magram quest line in Desolace, and a little taste for rep with Argent Dawn, but nothing too notable there). Fun to see the vendor's items change from red to actually purchasable as my rep lvl's up. Of course, none of the items are of particular use to me, but just fun to see things happen. Also the master cook book is here. My cooking is semi-stuck at 279 and has been for a little while. I should probably just suck it up and go to Azshara where the Nagas drop zesty clam meat which is one of the ingredients to the remaining recipe I have that will give me skill. I also have a recipe for cooking Winter Squid, but I'm not sure when winter starts in the WoW universe, and I'm not sure what waters I can fish to get winter squid. Need to do something though, because I've got some recipes and a stack or two of ingredients waiting for when I turn 300.

Ding 63

One of the things I've been liking in Zangarmarsh is how I've found it really easy to work 2 or 3 quests simultaneously. I find that each time I head back to the Cenarion Expedition in the east part of the zone, I've got 3 quests ready to turn in. Very nice jump in XP and quest rewards.

Something else that the zone is showing me is the benefits of only choosing one of herbalism or mining. I haven't seen any mineral veins in Zangarmarsh, so I only keep track herbs active. Much less stress as I run about. But the money is so sweet with dual herb/mining that I'll keep them both, but its something to think about for my next toon.

Ding 375 herbalism

I just love the herbalism.

Ding 1500g

I actually enjoy mining more than herbalism because I find the ores and bars sell better on my server. I almost never have a stack of any metal expire on AH, where as herbs are much more sensitive to day of week and stack size. But then again, I kind of like the mother nature feel of herbalism (I must be Tauren at heart) rather than the industrial, strip mining, ecosystem crushing aspect of my other gathering profession.

The Big Leagues

I don't know what it is, but I suddenly feel like I'm in the Big Leagues. When I hit 58, I went through the Dark Portal to Outland, but only to get some profession training to up my limits from 300->375. I then went back to Azeroth to finish some quests.

Then my new guild's leader coordinated a run through Scholomance. I thought to myself "Scholomance? Is that Scholo? Don't the big boys who talk about raiding and Kara and other hugely intimidating stuff like that, also mention Scholo sometimes?"

So that sort of put me in a fun mood, realizing that I'm getting into some of the fancier stuff the game has to offer.

Then in Outlands, I log in, and I'm at the inn in Honor Hold. 2 seconds later, I get an invite from a guildie to "run ramparts". What is ramparts? I had no idea. But I said OK. We go in there with 3 guildies and 2 pick ups, and have us a pretty sweet run. First time I ever ran with a mage doing sheep cc. Well, that is, other than the time in BG that I got turned into a sheep, again and again.

We run pretty smooth and sweet and get to the first mini-boss of Hellfire Ramparts. Burn him and his little healing friends to the ground. Then looting time. A pair of total hunter sweetness leggings drop. First time I've ever seen an item with gem slots. Mouth watering!!! Of course, we're there with 2 hunters, and I lose the roll. Wouldnt you figure. And to add to the sting, he was lvl 59 and couldnt equip it yet. Devastating!!! The guild has no official looting guidelines, but stuff I've read usually mention that "need" is only for a direct upgrade you plan on equipping immediately. After winning the roll he did say soemthing like "i've got 2 bubbles left till 60". And in his defense, he did ding 60 within a half hour of completing the dungeon. But I was not a happy camper.

I did give him the totally fake "congrats" text message. Its like when the runner up for Miss America gives the winner a hug. Yeah, that's sincere. Instead of patting her on the back, you know she's thinking of burying a shank between those ribs, but good taste prevails and you say "congrats". At least over text he couldnt hear the grit in my voice.

Luckily I have my semi-mature moments, and I got over it quickly and we finished a great run of the dungeon.

The whole experience just gave me the feeling that I'm in a whole new world now. I'm looking at loot that makes a serious difference and isnt just random BoE greenies I buy in AH. I'm running dungeons that have Heroic modes, so anything I learn about the instance now, will probably be useful in the future.

In general, it just feels like I've gotten the call and its time to step up to the plate for my first Big League pitch.

Busy Beaver

I actually have no clue where to start with this post. It actually hasn't been that long since my last post, but [A] my last post was written a day or two before I actually posted it (silly employeer-imposed firewalls) and [B] even when it was written, it was about content that was a day or two old. Add to that, the fact that I was sick last week and spent most of the time wrapped up in a blanket and 3 sweatshirts at my computer, and quite a bit has transpired since my last posting.

I'll give the rundown of accomplishments here, so you can look and say "ohh" and "ahh" and be generally unimpressed. But this is my sort of log for lvling and other stuff like that, for my purposes as well as your reading (dis)pleasure.

Get your bell out and start banging.

• Ding - joined new guild
• Ding - 1500g - actually 1600, but at this rate I'll only be dinging the 1000's and 500's
• Ding - 59
• Ding - 60
• DING - Epic Mount
• Ding - 61
• Ding - 375 first aid skill
• Ding - 62
• Ding - Steady Shot - what a wonderful addition to my arsenal
• Ding - 1400g - I wanted to get to say Ding 1500, but came up just a hair short on mondays morning :-(
• Ding - first entry on my "ignore" list - lvl 11 gold beggar in SW who was spamming "greedy" when I said "no"

I also wanted to get to say "Ding 375 Herbalism", but I guess I'll have to go find two Felweeds tonight.

Of all these accomplishments, my favorite has to be that epic mount. So nice to be crusing around at a fast pace. Makes the good old days of running around on my feet seem like my parents describing walking barefoot, through the snow, up hill both ways, to get to school.

So with the new guild being a semi-nurturing environment, and the novelty of the Outlands, I'm a big fan of WoW right now.

The silly littany of dings is over, and coming soon...three gems for your reading pleaseure:
The first is about my first encounter with Outlands instances and loot. One about a BM Hunter getting some respect. And the last is about some PUG experiences I had this weekend.

Outland, What a Sight!!!

On monday, four fun things happened. Well, a bunch of fun things happened, but four of them were in WoW. Three of them will be described here, and the last one gets its own post in a few minutes.

Firstly, I was finishing up a quest in the Hinterlands (collecting bottles of wine that washed up on the shore) solo, and also trying to lvl up Ruby, my new Ashmane Boar. As I was at the mailbox sending the piles and piles of herbs that I had collected (I love me some Hinterlands), I saw someone advertising his guild over the general chat. I had been sans guild for 2 days now, and was actually wondering how I'm going to get some instance action, as I had had zero success with LFG over those 2 days. Perhaps I just don't know how to work LFG, because I've tried it about 5 times and not gotten even a single hit. Either way, the guy had put together a very concise statement suitable for the chat channel that seemed to indicate his guild has some of the characteristics I'm looking for in a guild. So, since I was sitting at a mailbox anyways, and I was feeling antisocial so I didn't want to just pst him, I sent him ingame email.

Then I jumped on a hippogryph for the flight to Booty Bay to turn in these bottles of wine for the quest. When I landed, the guy had already emailed me back with some more info, all of which sounded consistent with what I'm looking for. So I got on his chat channel where him and 2 other guildies were sitting. We talked for about 20 minutes, I liked what I heard, and now I'm a member of the guild. Very nice. I haven't done anything with them yet, but we're going to run BRD tonight, and I'll have a good feel after that (maybe).

Next up, ding 58. w00t!!!! Outland portal is now my beyatch. I flew to IF as fast as I could to talk to the hunter and pet trainers. Then took the hop to Blasted Lands. Killed a few vultures for a quest, and looked for Grunter real quick (nope), then headed to the portal.

WOW!!!

The battle going on just past the portal is awesome. I just stood there watching it rage on and on, not knowing if I was going to have to go in there, or if those elite guys were going to just look up and one-shot me. Really cool stuff. Hopped over to Honor Hold and did trained up to master herbalism and mining. Then ran over to the tower in the northwest of hellfire peninsula where there's the guy for master first aid.

Not to digress, but back to the gold thing, and how gold and enjoyment of WoW go hand-in-hand.

Within about 5 minutes, I needed to pay for (prices are just off of memory, so maybe wrong):
- Hunter training...4 skills available at 58, each about 4g
- Master Herbalism...10g
- Master Mining...10g
- New Smelting skills...3 skills, i think about 20g for all 3
- Master First Aid...4.5g
- Nether and Heavy Netherweave Bandage recipes...about 6g

Total = 66.5g

So, back to my whole soapbox about gold and whatnot, it really was pretty cool to be able to get all this stuff without blinking an eye. In fact, it was paid for only out of petty cash (the money that comes from selling grey items to vendor, and quest turn-ins), and didn't even touch my nest egg that sits with in my savings account (alt toon). So that was a nice moment where I really enjoyed the hardwork that I put in with my gathering.

Ok, done with digression.

Actually, you know what? I'm gonna put the last two fun things that happened into their own postings. They're both sorta stand-alone and I feel like padding this out.