How was your weekend?

Oh mine was fine, thanks. Why, you ask?

Because I finally killed Blackheart the Inciter!!!

That’s right. He’s dead.

Now, this might not sound like a big deal to you uber folk out there, but for anyone who’s been following my blog you know that this is a big accomplishment for me. Now I just hope I can do it again! Because he didn’t drop the Adamantine Figurine which I want.

Incidentally, I also killed Murmur. Here’s proof:

I know, I know. “He dies the same way as Ragnaros, that’s not cool anymore you nub.” Shut up. Nobody can deny the cool-factor of seeing a huge elemental behemoth fall to it’s death and leave behind a huge friggin weapon.

Here’s a tip for those of you who may still be having trouble tanking Blackheart: after he does his little MC nonsense, DO NOT DPS until the tank regains a bit of aggro. This helps the tank IMMENSELY because the tank doesn’t have to run all over the goddamn place chasing Blackheart around.

In other news, Natasya is now level 17. I didn’t get to play her too much this weekend because I was too busy running instances, finishing quests, and spending tons of gold. Thodin is now the proud owner of Legguards of the Resolute Defender (with Clefthide Leg Armor for good measure), Grom’tor’s Charge, Sha’tari Wrought Armguards, Sha’tari Wrought Greaves (still need to get some good gems and an enchant to make these good to wear), and Tenacious Earthstorm Diamond that I won’t socket until I’m very ready (it wasn’t cheap).

Well that’s it for now. Hope everyone had a great Monday!

Monday Morning (sorta) Update

I’m proud to announce that I’ve joined the WoW blogging ranks over on Velen.  My newest alt is Thodia, blood elf huntress.  I have no cool pics or anything because she’s only level 6 right now.  I already started a hunter alt, so choosing another hunter might not have been the best choice in terms of variety.  But 1. she’s a blood elf not a draenei, and 2. she’s Horde.  So it’ll be a different path to 70 (if I ever get there, someday perhaps). 

I don’t know how much I’m going to be playing on Velen, because I still have a lot of stuff I want/need to do with Thodin over on Lothar.  By the way, do I have any readers from Lothar?  Say hi!

In other news, I finally got my ass in gear and made progress on my Karazhan key.  I ran Old Hillsbrad and got attuned for Black Morass, so I can knock that out of the way when I get there.  I tried to get the first fragment from Shadow Labs, but we couldn’t get past Blackheart the Inciter.  Does anyone have any tips on how to fight this guy?  Well, to put it more precisely,

How the crap do you tank a guy who constantly wipes aggro, does ridiculous knockbacks, and charges all over the damn room?  Seriously, I’d like to know.

I know, tank him against a wall.  Sure that’s all well and good for the first 20 seconds or so before he does his first mind control fiesta, but after that it turns into a shitshow.  He runs after everyone, I chase him around (or intercept if I can get it to work) and try to regain aggro, but by that time I’m not anywhere near a wall so he knocks me back and the whole process starts over again.  I consider myself a good tank, I know what I’m doing; but on a boss that wipes aggro every friggin three seconds and never stays in one place, it gets a little tough after a while.  I have a sad feeling that I’m never going to get past this asshole, because I’m usually always the tank, and if its something that I’m doing wrong, who knows when I’ll get it right.

We got him down to 8% once, and would have taken him down if the healer wasn’t dead.  It was just me at the end, popping whatever cooldowns and potions I could, and executing the shit out of him.  I got him from 11% to 8%, but it wasn’t enough to kill the bastard.  I guess it’s probably just gonna take a bit more practice. 

Oh well, that’s all for now.  I’ll probably have pics and updates from Velen sometime soon. 

P.S.  If you live in New England, specifically Massachusetts, get your ass outside right now and enjoy this beautiful weather.  I’m about ready to quit my stupid office job just so I can go sit in the sun.

Time for a change

I know, yet another talent spec post.  Don’t worry, this’ll be brief.

I’ve come to the realization that having no points in protection does not make for a good time in the 70 instances.  And I really enjoy the 70 instances.  As I’ve mentioned before, I have no dreams of becoming a Karazhan or Gruul’s Lair MT anytime soon, but I would definitely enjoy being an awesome tank in 5-mans.

Therefore, when I get home from work tonight I will be respeccing to this hybrid arms/prot spec build I’ve come up with.  As you can see, it’s 21/5/31 which gives me pretty much everything I need to be a good tank and still be able to chew through mobs pretty well while farming/questing.  The only thing that I’m sad to miss out on is Mortal Strike, but I think having Shield Slam will make me a much better tank.

In the protection tree I skipped over stuff I really don’t need and grabbed only what I think will benefit me the most (while allowing me to get 30 points in there so I can have Shield Slam).

I chose Imp Revenge and Imp Shield Bash because I think they will help me control trash mobs.  I know most bosses (all bosses?) are immune to stun (and probably to silence) but I’ve run into plenty of annoying trash mobs, especially casters, who could stand to be stunned or silenced.

Obviously Concussion Blow for the same reason I just stated about Imp Revenge, and also because it’s the gateway to Shield Slam.  Shield Slam for tanks is a no brainer.  An ability that does decent damage and is also the single best instant threat generating ability available?  Yes please.

And on the DPS side of things, like I said I’m sad to be missing out on Mortal Strike, but it has to go.  I still get all the additions to critical strike (Axe spec, Cruelty) which is sweet.  I miss out on a boost to attack power from Commanding Presence but I think I can live without it.  Some people might laugh at my choice to go with Imp Rend, but I love Rend.  Maybe that’s just me.

Overall, I think this is a pretty decent choice of talents.  Of course, only time in the field will truly be able to prove me right or wrong.  I’ll be sure to let you know how things turn out.

This wasn’t very brief, was it?  Oh well.

It… can’t be…

I ran Steamvaults last night and it made me realize a horrible truth: I might not be able to main tank the level 70 five mans without being protection specced.

I don’t know if it was people in my group being jackasses or what, but I had a hell of a time holding aggro (on trash, I was fine on the bosses).  It didn’t help that most of the pulls in there have 4 mobs, warriors aren’t the greatest at holding onto multiple adds (especially when the fight is unorganized, but you’ve heard that rant).  Every once in a while, the mage would pull aggro, which I guess is kind of understandable if some kind of big crit goes off.  But there was also a shaman who was pulling aggro like crazy.  The shaman was fighting in melee range, so maybe it was a guy with the “hay doodz lookit my DPS SKILLZ!” mentality and wasn’t watching his aggro.  I tend to think it may have been.  But I also can’t get over the fact that I would have probably been able to hold aggro better had I been prot specced (duh, right?). 

This sucks, because what I want to do to enjoy the game and get the most out of my $15 a month is finish up the last three zones (I’m busting through Blade’s Edge right now).  And this is only enjoyable if I’m arms specced and dishing out nasty crits an damage.  I can’t even imagine how it would be while prot specced.

Yeah, yeah.  I know.  QQ more nub.  But when I have people in my guild telling me that I’ll need to spec to protection in order to tank and survive in some of the 70 instances, and then I start to actually see the truth to their warnings, it starts to worry me.  Have I ever mentioned that I hate this game?  =P

Not all was bad about the run though, because I managed to pick up Gauntlets of the Bold.  Pretty sweet.  Now to find some gems…

Oh, you know what else I hate.  I hate when people don’t loot a beast’s corpse.  Screw you, guy, that crocolisk had some fine hide I could skin.  But noooo, you didn’t feel like taking the broken crocolisk tooth off the corpse.  So there the crocolisk lies, taunting me.  Here’s a hint.  Pressing shift + right click loots everything off the corpse at once.  Try it out sometime.

The Importance of not Being a Jackass

And other general group etiquette.

Last night I was invited to go to Steamvaults as DPS.  The group was all 70s (hunter, paladin healer, mage, druid tank) and myself.  I thought “sweet, this group is gonna kick ass, this’ll be nice and smooth.”  I was wrong.

Our group wiped 5 minutes into the instance while we were fighting a Bog Overlord.  I don’t understand why.  Suddenly I noticed that the tank was dead, then the mage was dead, I grabbed aggro and my health went down very quickly (I wasn’t in my tanking gear, I popped a potion, and I’m not about to pop cooldowns on a trash mob when I know I’m gonna die, I’m sorry).  I realized it was because the pally just decided to stop healing, or atleast thats how it seems.  He was just standing there, not doing anything.

So we wiped, and got back into the instance for another go.  No apologies from the pally, not even an excuse for no heals, nothing.  He didn’t say a word except for “water pls.”  My friend (the mage) and I knew this wasn’t going to go well.

The second instance of jackassery was when the hunter pulled a pack of mobs with scatter shot.  Scatter shot.  I’ll say it again, he pulled the group with scatter shot.  Now, perhaps there is some kind of trick to that certain pull where scatter shot is the best thing to use.  I highly doubt it.  Needless to say, the wandering mob ran into a patrol that was coming back, aggroed the pat, and we wiped once again.  As we were ghost running back the hunter said “Oops!  I pressed the wrong button guys, sorry.”  You expect me to believe that at level 70 you can’t concentrate on the correct button to press for a pull?  In the middle of some crazy action and you’re freakin out trying not to wipe, sure I can believe you pressed the wrong button.  But when nothings going on and we’re just waiting for a pull?  That’s called being a moron.

To top it all off, a few minutes later (after having told us the “wrong button” story) he said “LoL someone told me to use scatter shot on those mobs!”  Get your story straight, buddy.

I don’t really think the hunter was quite all there in the head.  During trash fights he was running around like a goddamn monkey on crack.  If he grabbed aggro, he would run all around, making it that much harder for the tank to get the mob back.  He would trap something, and then run to the total other side of the fight (in order to get range, I assume).  But why did he need to run through the fight?  Why couldn’t he just back up a little bit, and stay near the mob just incase he needed to drop another trap?  Speaking of dropping another trap, he apparently likes to freeze sheep, and other random mobs that do not need CC.  He dropped frost traps randomly, freezing mobs that we were fighting and such.  He was pretty much a disaster.

Luckily we actually managed to finish the instance.  We wiped on the gnome, but I went in to tank the second try and we did it.  We even managed to kill the final boss, woo for us!  I was happy about that.  Nothing good dropped for me, but I managed to turn in a quest and get Myrmidon’s Headdress which is a pretty sweet tanking helm.

It might be good for me to get to the point of this story, because I do have a point.  My point is, try not to be a total jackass when you’re grouping in a PUG.  I try to be as nice as I can, as polite as I can, as helpful as I can, and as level headed as I can.  I play my role and I’m not an idiot about it.  If for some reason you have to stop casting heals (I dunno, maybe your microwave blew up or something) don’t be completely silent about it and hope everyone forgets.  Say you’ll try better next time, or say what went wrong.  Say anything (call us douchebags for dying even without heals) I don’t care.  Just don’t be totally quiet.

And try not to be a moron when you pull.  Bad pulls happen, yes, but a little concentration and knowing what button to press will stop that.  If you’re a hunter and you grab aggro, don’t run around like a madman.  If you do this, you will probably die, because the mob follows you and the tank has a hard time regaining aggro.

Watch your aggro, know your role (I’m not saying “PALLYS HAVE TO HEAL!” but I’m saying, if you went into the group saying you were gonna heal, then heal goddammit), have some sense of group etiquette, and don’t be a moron.  That’s really all it takes for a PUG to go smoothly.

What a Weekend

So after a marathon WoW weekend, I’m now half a level away from 70.  I’m not even finished with half of the quests in Nagrand.  Sheesh.  I guess I’ll be making a helluva lot of gold from Netherstorm and Shadowmoon Valley (I haven’t seen Blade’s Edge Mountains yet either, lol).

I finished Hemet Nesingwary’s slaughter quest, and am a proud owner of Hemet’s Elekk Gun, along with some nifty new bullets from Halaa.

I finally managed to get a group who could follow directions and work together, and we downed Talon King Ikiss.  Which is awesome, because I’m now stabbing bitches with Terokk’s Quill.  I’m kind of disappointed though, because I just recently got the Honed Voidaxe which I was very excited about (it looks wicked cool).  But Terokk’s Quill does a lot more damage, and boosts my crit chance up a good bit (lots of agi ftw, I guess).  So, the axe goes into the bank (I’m such a packrat). 

I also managed to grab Platinum Shield of the Valorous off the first boss in Shadow Labyrinth.  Shadow Labs is a pretty cool instance, even though my group couldn’t make it past the Blackheart the Inciter (the 2nd boss).  I think it might be because we had three level 69s in the group, and I really couldn’t hold any aggro whatsoever on the boss (he wiped aggro all the time, knocked back, ran around the room like a madman, etc).  Oh well, I’ll be 70 soon enough.

I also managed to pick up a bunch of Marks of Sargeras and a couple Fel Armaments.  Being the only Aldor in a group is pretty sweet.

So, plans for this week are:

• Ding 70
• Finish Nagrand
• Grind a lot to get a Halaani Bag or two
• Level Natasya some more (she finally has a kitty pet!)

EDIT:  Bah, I just realized that Halaani Bags are unique.  Guess that’ll cut down on my grinding, but now I’ll have to actually go out and buy some more 18 slot bags.

Into Nagrand, Ding 68!

Thodin finally made it into Nagrand. It’s awesome. Definitely my favorite zone so far. I was pleased to see my old hunting buddy, Hemet, camped along the road. He has some quests for me to slaughter a bunch of native creatures. I’ll do so with pleasure. I went to Telaar and grabbed A TON of quests. Seriously, I have atleast a million quests for Nagrand in my quest log now.

I’m glad I finally got here, because one of the first things I did was the Ring of Blood quest from which I got the Honed Voidaxe!! Such a sweet axe. Whoo. This thing will probably last me until 70, or atleast until I get the Crow Wing Reaper (which will probably never happen, more on this later). If you have a good group, you can do this quest in one go (gotta kill a bunch of bosses in a row) and it’s well worth the effort. Also, I dinged 68 whilst running Mana Tombs, which was sweet.

As an aside, has anyone else ever noticed that there are no books anywhere in Outland? I enjoyed reading the many different books in inns and scattered all over the place in Azeroth. Now, I have no reading material. Maybe Blizzard just wants people to concentrate on questing. I guess that’s ok.

I don’t really mind questing when I have scenery like this to look at.

Moving on from something awesome to something ridiculous, I’ve done a couple of instances lately and I would like to talk about them. I ran Mana Tombs a few times, which was ok. The shield I wanted didn’t drop, but that’s ok because I’ll run it a few more times (still have to complete that bloody escort quest). Mana Tombs is ok, Sethekk Halls is not. Why, you ask?

Because Talon King Ikiss is an ASSHOLE!!

Seriously, this guy is utterly ridiculous. I actually like Sethekk Halls as an instance, until you get to the end and have to face this jerk. Before yesterday, I had never been in Sethekk Halls. Now I have atleast 10 attempts on Ikiss under my belt because he’s friggin impossible. He polymorphs a random person (usually me (the tank) or the healer). He has an arcane blast volley that hits everyone in the party for 1500. And most ridiculous of all, he blinks away from the tank and does a 6000 dmg arcane explosion that pretty much kills anyone in his LOS. Now, you can avoid being hit by this AOE if you run behind pillars in the room, but you NEED TO RUN BEHIND THE PILLARS! If you don’t you die.

So, polymorph (wipe aggro), blink away, ridiculous AOE, party dies.

I hate this guy. When he blinks away and AOEs, I don’t know what to do. I’m usually polymorphed at the time, so its very hard to get aggro back when I’m a sheep. If I do manage to get aggro back, he polys me again (which causes him to run away from me and wipe aggro AGAIN). If I manage to hold aggro and not be polymorphed, he polys the priest and I die. It’s ridiculous.

Now, we got him down to 5% one time when I was in a group with a druid because we eventually decided to have him try to tank (druids immune to poly). It worked for a while, but people couldn’t get behind pillars in time apparently, and we all died.

In conclusion, I hate Talon King Ikiss, he is an asshole and he needs to die (so he can drop his Crow Wing Reaper and my quest item).

Not yet in Nagrand…

I was all ready to step into Nagrand last night, buuut I didn’t.  I don’t know what it is about Nagrand, I just can’t wait to get there.  It looks like an awesome zone.  I’m very excited to go there when I get home from work tonight.

I was sidetracked last night by a Mana Tombs run.  A couple of my guildies wanted to go, so I said, “sure I’ll go” because I have never been there, and I’m always up for learning new instances (and also, I wanted to get The Shield of the Void from Pandemonius).  We finally got a full group together, but then we had to wait around for 10+ minutes for everyone to arrive (this was probably the first sign that this PUG wasn’t going to work out too well).  Eventually everyone got there.  It was me, a guildie (Vilhemriker, 69 warrior), a 68 mage (my IRL friend), and two PUGgers, a 69 priest and 68 oomkin drood.

Everything went smooth, we downed the first boss with no casualties (except I didn’t get my shield), but then we got to a hallway after Pandemonius and things started to break down.  There was one pull that had 4 or 5 mobs, and our priest had the bright idea to try and MC one of the mobs (we were doing just fine with mage sheeping and me offtanking).  This failed miserably and we wiped.  The priest blamed it on the mage (“he iced too close to me”).  I blame it on foolish ideas, but what do I know I’m not a priest.

After the first wipe, Vil took control of the group and got everyone in line, and it started to go a bit smoother.  We had another wipe because of the stupid Nexus Stalkers fearing people into other groups, but the rest of the instance went pretty well.  The Nexus-Prince Shaffar fight is a biotch, though.

I did manage to get Nexus-Bracers of Vigor which I wasn’t really that excited about, but they are a sidegrade for my Bracers of Might, so I can’t complain.

All in all I think it was a good experience.  Note to warriors: I never use zerk stance so I didn’t know about this, but I was pleased to discover that Berzerker Rage can actually cancel fear.  Stance-dancing ftw.  I’m glad I got to learn the instance, because I will be back (still need the shield and I need to finish the escort quest).

Well that’s all for now.  This weekend I plan to get into Nagrand and start questing there, as well as do my level 10 hunter quest on Natasya.  There will be more updates soon (with more picture and screenshot goodness, don’t worry).