Pop That Lock!

So I was a bit tired of losing AB on hunter Kali. And with my shammy's leveling partner in Zul'Aman, I was left with messing around or working on my warlock. I did hit level 25 on the old orc, but the constant dying in Hillsbrad wasn't fun. It didn't help that I had sent all the bags to my shammy. Two bags and a soul bag does not for fun grinding make.

I really hate leveling clothies. I also dislike leveling my 'lock, but honestly, chain fearing bears around Tarren Mill was great. Apart from that I started moving her into another guild. By "started" I mean I left her old one. Le sigh. I'm hardly ever on her anymore and some friends have been bugging me to join them in their twinking efforts at level 39. Long ways to go but holy pally and shadow priest with my warlock will mean doom.

Arathi Basin. My most hated battleground. O, how I loathe thee, AB. I hope one day to be done with your instant queues and utter hatred for all things Zball. Can I win an AB? Please? Please? Of course not.

An AB story from yesterday. Two full groups. The Horde team was mostly a premade from my hunter's server, Moon Guard. I check the names and wring my hands in anticipation. I love fighting people from my own server and I knew there wasn't anyone on their team better than me. The Alliance leader didn't say anything. Thirteen people go to the Gold Mine, including myself. This is bad. Instant Horde 3-cap.

I will say this, at least this time we stayed together. Mostly. As soon as we see the 3-cap, "Just give up and let them win." Wait what? Stables are capped. Now we're looking at a 4-cap.

"Check LM and farm," I say. No one does. Fine. I'll do it myself. Two on D at LM? I relay the info, we ride up and promptly get beaten back. How? Healers. Horde has 'em, we don'.

So we're 5-capped now because no one defended the mine. And since the Alliance has this pathetic inferiority complex, no one will come with me. I hit Blacksmith. Only one of defense. Some pally. Have I mentioned how much I hate pallies? Because I do. I begin my kiting and draining. Pally is at 5%. I'm at half. Arcane Shot just off cooldown.

"Leave Battleground."

&($@#)*$^#*&%!!!

Yeah. That was it for me.

Back and Forth Again

Good news! My good friend Alyonchezcka is back from Iraq! He was over there for a year and now he's back home in the States. I'm really excited about this even though I'm not in Virginia anymore to see him. Welcome back, bro.

A few words. This is the guy who got me playing WoW in the first place. I had heard of it but never met anyone who played. At that particular point in my life I was incredibly bored with lots of time on my hands. It didn't help I was in the middle of separating from my then- wife, which caused even more stress.

Aly is, hands down, the best healer I've ever played with. He taught me everything about the game and I devoured every bit of knowledge he had. We would spend hours debating Spirit vs. mana per 5. He helped me get my Kara key and we destroyed instances together. It wasn't just PvE though. I dueled him so many times. It took me forever to finally beat him. As a holy/ discipline priest, this guy was essentially unkillable. Warlocks couldn't beat him. Warriors couldn't beat him. I don' know how he did it. If I could force myself to level another clothie, it'd be a priest just because of his influence.

I was able to log on for a couple of hours the other day. I managed to get one AV (which we lost, by the way) in and a few dailies before I get a tell. "Do you want to run Heroic Underbog?" Yes. Figuring I had more than enough time, I jumped in.

Get on Vent and I tell the group, "I'm PvP spec'd and geared. Is this an issue or do you want me to respec?" The group leader asked me a few questions and then said okay. All the while I'm praying he's a good pally tank instead of the last one. He was.

Prot pally tank, resto shaman, enhance shaman, arms warrior and me. We tore through that place with a vengeance. Granted I had my nub moments (way to waste my Silencing Shot on that healer instead of pulling him to my trap) but we did well. Sadly I was only able to make it to the second boss before I got a call to go pick someone up from the hospital an hour earlier than I had planned. Sorry guys but I have to dip. Le sigh. Two badges and a Large Prizzy for my efforts.

Getting closer to than enchant though. I will get my axe enchanted, dammit. And now that I have about 11k honor, I need to decide what to upgrade next. Decisions, decisions!

Love Life

As you may have noticed, I changed up the look a bit. I got kind of bored with the old way so I made something new. There's no real changes. Really. Maybe I'll like it. Maybe not. It might go back to the way it was or I just might make something myself. Time will tell.

So what's new? 2.4 patch notes, that's what. So much discussion has been going on one might be able believe this new patch is a brand new expansion! Not many changes to classes specifically, actually. It's more of a content patch, what with the Sunwell coming around. In fact, the Sunwell is the last new content before WotLK. Read for yourself and note all those are subject to change. As are the changes in drinking and resilience affecting your Viper's Sting, Drain Mana and Mana Burn.

Kali joined a new 5s team. Her other one died a painful death so here we go again. We had three matches today. On the surface it seemed okay. Enhance shammy, holy pally, resto druid, fury war and Kali. No rogue or lock but enough CC to last. I'm smart enough though. No one is geared like Kali is and no one really has the experience Kali has (and when we talk about 5s experience, having less than me is no experience at all).

So there we are. The discipline priest and ret pally are off playing on alts or doing something else so they couldn't be subbed in. Three matches. The first was... a long wait. Prior wait time was three minutes. Ours? Thirty. To pass the time I checked out a World Defense alert in Sentinel Hill. Some level 52 hunter. I hit /flee and he stood there. Rules of engagement clearly state he blatantly ignored my warning and thus was hostile. He died. Didn't even fight back. Oh well.

First match? Everyone dies except for me. Can't seem to kill them all on my own so we lose. Second match? They drain our pally, abuse everyone and drop me right before the pally bites it. Third match? Druid and I are the only ones left. He tosses a few HoTs on me and dies. Yeah. See where I'm going with this?

Maybe tomorrow.

I Wish I Could Get On the PTR

Seriously. But my game time is so severely limited these days that I just can't find it in me to copypasta onto the PTR and try all these changes out. Between Hunter Kaliili, Zball, my mid- twenties mooshammy, the baby troll rogue, orc warlock and Orgaria, when can I actually get around to the PTR? I've got chatting to do, buddy!

One unfortunate side effect is the bite my income has taken. Kali has been sitting at 530g for the longest. Not even close to epic flier and about half what the going rate is for the Gyro-Balanced Khorium Destroyer. This is bad as I desperately need a ranged weapon upgrade. Without the time to farm and do dailies, I'm having a hard time getting anything. And good luck on getting a Heroic group up and running. Le sigh. Seems like I'm boned for now.

I did, however, finally get my axe. Allow me to link it in it's great and glorious... umm... glory. That's right, I finally ditched my dual- wielding for something much more evil. Vengeful Gladiator's Waraxe now graces my lovely huntress' back. It's so evil and huge, nearly as big as the one who carries it. And it was done almost entirely with ten matches a week. 2v2 matches at that. Now if only my enchanter friends had not transferred or taken a break, then I could rock out the +35 Agi enchant. Or Savagery. Probably the Agi though. I could use the boost.

I rolled a troll rogue to stabbity-stab with my girlfriend's orc rogue. They're only level 6 but it's still a bit fun. I only want to stealth around all day. Can't do that though. There's no exp in stealthing. Same thing with Cora the mooshammy. She's 26 now and it's going much more quickly now that I specced enhance. I ended up healing my girl's moowarrior through some quests. Yeah. Shaman healing =/= priest healing. When that two- pull turned into a five- pull and then some, I was hard up for mana. We made it though, impressing the hells out of the group we had around us.

Maybe tomorrow I can get some farming in. I hope so. If I can't it looks like I might have to bug the people who keep putting my gun up to sell it to me for 500g and the random gems and enchanting mats I have around. Never hurts to ask, right?

I Kill Things. What Do You Do?

So Dag has put up a post about DPS being awesome. So what's the deal?

1) Tanks don' know what DPS does. Sometimes the tank takes too many. Sometimes they don' know what they're doing. What this means is that if you have to pull aggro off the tank, you do it and kite that mob until the tank and healer can catch up. This flies in the face of everything everyone says (including myself). But if you DPS, you have tools at your disposal to make things easy on the tank and hard on the mob.

2) DPS don' know what DPS does. You solo, you pewpew, things die. Who cares about aggro? Who cares about protecting the healer? Who cares about wipe prevention? You should. Pay attention. Know your class better than anyone else.

So I'm giving everyone (myself included) a little homework. Tonight, tomorrow, whenever, I want everyone to get themselves in over their heads. What is your record for the number of mobs you've killed at once? Kill one more. Go down to Nagrand and take out those elite demons in the Forge Camps. Kill a Wolf Rider running around Garadar. Do something crazy. Kite Anachronos to Thrall's chamber.

This kind of thing is going to get you thinking. It's going to get you practicing. You either do it right or you die. It's better for you to pay a repair bill before you end up causing a 5, 10, 25 man repair bill.

On another note, I was able to get my weekly 2v2 arena matches. We finished 8-2 and almost broke 1400 (I think we ended up as 1384). Remember, this is without voice chat and super gear. I really should start writing these down. They've been a lot of fun.

In between matches Iro and I talk about strategy and our basic tactics. With two physical DPSers, we're really limited on what we can do. Clothies are no problem but plate wearers are. The fundamentals we go by boils down to

-Priest/ Anything = Anything dies first.
-Clothie/ Anything = Clothie dies first (unless they're a Glad warlock, in which case we lose).
-Plate/ Plate = Umm... trap the one that doesn't heal and pray it sticks.
-Hunter/ Anything = Hunter pet dies first. We ran into a druid/ hunter tonight. A few times, actually. Hunter shadowmelds, kitty Prowls, drood stealths. Pull the kitty (silly hunter had his pet on defensive and we abused it thoroughly) and kill it. The rest is easy.

Everything else we just talk about as it comes. We talk about timing on totems (who knew Poison Cleansing Totem doesn't work on Stings?) and where we kite and place our opponents. We talk about pillar humping. We give each other high- fives when we win. I tell her how much ass she kicks. We pick out our mistakes whether win or lose.

Most importantly we have a good time. At the end of the day, making friends and having fun is so much more important than purples and ratings.

Places to Go, People to Do

Hunters rejoice! Or ignore it. Either one. Evidence now exists for a two- roll system for hunters. The basics of it is this: One roll determines hit or miss while the second roll determines if it's a normal hit or a crit. This link will take you there so you can see what I mean. More reason than ever for you hunters to be hit- capped.

On a slightly related note, I was able to hop on my hunter for an hour or two yesterday. Sadly my 2s partner was nowhere to be found, and I instead jumped into a normal SLab run. I love that place, especially now that I seriously overpower it. It was me, a Fury warrior, holy pally, prot pally and elemental shammy. Buffs galore. Since we had a pally tank, I figured I could do without Salvation.

Trap breaking, pet dying, bad pulls (because the pally wanted to), insistence that I CC on three- pulls that the pally could have dealt with. And the tank couldn't hold threat. Pally tanks are front- loaded. Lots of aggro generation off the bat because they have blue rage bars instead of red ones. So I wait five seconds and begin my rotation. Arcane shot crits, Multi crits, I have aggro. I Feign and go back to my rotation. I pull the mob again before it dies.

New tactic. Wait longer. Mob is half dead before I start DPS. I pull aggro before the mob dies. I don' get it. Because the tank can't hold aggro, I'm kiting and chain- trapping and pet- tanking two and three mobs every pull. I'm sure the party thought I was a nub. Click "Inspect" on the pally tank. Great. Greens and some quest reward blues. Great. Auto-shot city.

Sadly (or perhaps not?) I wasn't able to finish the run, instead stopping after downing Vorpil. I learned my lesson, however. No more instance runs with tanks I severely out-gear. And have a lot more HP than. At least until they make Blessing of Salvation stack.

Too Much Lovin'

Last week I found out my guild leader and her wife were taking a break from WoW. This made me a bit sad because more awesome people I have yet to meet. They had just recently leveled their first 70s and I got to see them do it (and help now and again). Of course the fact that they made up part of my 3v3 and 5v5 Arena team didn't help.

Then I found out my 2v2 partner was taking a break as well. She's a sweet little enhance shammy named Iroha. I like talking with her and we just have an utter blast killing things (and being killed). She said she was leaving. I was a sad panda. And, on a completely selfish note, it would've totally erased any chance I had at getting some Arena points.

But Iro said she was going to stay a while. This makes me a happy camper, even if my play time has been severely cut into as of late. At any rate we've managed to bring this 2s team up to a hair over 1300. Yes, up. When Iro and I joined the team was ranked 1011. Seriously. And while we don' take it or ourselves seriously, it's nice to be able to do better.

And we did a few matches. What were they like? Something like this.

1 - Shammy/ warrior in BEM. An aside: I hate BEM. A lot. At any rate, trap the war and we go to work on the shammy. I nub it up, break my trap and the warrior proceeds to pound Iro into a pulp. We almost had it except I dropped out of LoS on the shammy and Iro missed a shock. Shammy heals to full and we get polished off easily. 0-1

2 - Mage/ no- show. Yeah. It was a race to see how quickly the squishie would die against us. 1-1

3 - Warrior/ pally. Ruins. Another aside. Ruins is my favorite. My ]scorpid (Mishaizi) on the pally, Viper Sting on the pally while Iro and I start working the warrior. I see my scorpid crit a few times and my multi- shot crits the pally too. Drop an Aimed Shot on the warrior and switch targets to the pally. He hadn't blown his bubble yet and there's no way we can hurt two plate- wearers. Pally almost dies, bubbles so we go back to the warrior. Bubble wears off, I down the pally while Iro does the right thing and pulls the warrior out of LoS. Pally dies hard and I rush over to help her. I get a couple hits before she goes down. Drop trap, Intercept, I laugh and start moving. Wingclip, Concussive, Serpent Sting, traps, go OOM. Switch to AotV and keep going (because I was a nub without mana pots). Iro's yelling over chat "Kite him! Kite that elf!" So I do. 2-1

4 - Warrior/ Shammy. BEM. Same team. This time we do worse. 2-2

5 - Mage / Rogue. BEM. Remember the solo mage? Yeah. She brought her partner this time. Have I mentioned how much I hate this arena? Regardless, we wait, mage dies on the bridge before her partner can steath up to us. Not smart. We wait for the rogue, so I mount up. He interrupts my summon. Perfect. Pet + Enhance shammy + Bloodlust + TSA + MM hunter = a smear who was once a rogue. Perfect way to end a day. Since we already had more than our ten for the week, we call it. 3-2 and a slightly higher rating than when we started. Go us.

Ruu

Great day in the morning. It has taken me forever to get back to this blog. Life has been coming at me hard and fast for the past few months and I'm still reeling from the blows. At least I have a roof over my head again.

But no one really wants to hear about that, now do they? Instead I'll talk about other things.

With the coming of 2.4 and Arena Season 4, I'm thinking about un- retiring Zball. That means suffering through the land of no resilience again, but I can take it. Save up all that honor and start buying S2 when it becomes available. But why? Because I want to transfer Zball over to my hunter's server and get started there. Apparently Moon Guard has no good mages and I'm too lazy to level up another Zball... on anywhere not Drenden.

Yes, I'm tempted to roll on Drenden just because. I think they might need my dashing good looks and the sexiest gnomes this side of your front lawn.

Now that I have two Alliance 70s, it's time to play the other half of the game. I have a 24 orc warlock and a 23 tauren shaman. The warlock I could take or leave. It's boring. The shammy? Oh my. I love it. Well, now that I'm not leveling as resto, at any rate. I had thought about starting a troll hunter but who knows?

Also, BRK has issued a challenge. He posted some screenshots of him topping damage and kills in AB. Then he asked "Why MM?"

1) A potential 41- yard ranged Silence.

2) 5 spell interrupts in one minute.

3) Increased burst damage (RWS, Barrage, Imp Barrage, etc).

4) Non- dispellable AP aura.

5) Improved traps (from the SV tree).

6) More efficient mana drain.

7) Talented snare/ root resist (From SV tree).

8) Deterrence (from SV tree).

9) Reduced reliance on a pet for maximum DPS output.

10) Nothing on a two- minute cooldown.

Anyways, my hunter has been going around kicking ass whenever possible. Like this one time in AV.

I was headed down to Frostwolf Graveyard to assist the mighty Alliance forces in capturing it. Just north of it I see a nelf boomkin fighting a holy/discipline priest and a ret pally. I dismount, send the kitty after the priest and proceed to Viper Sting her while I get the pally off my soon- to- be best friend boomkin.

Get a wingclip on the pally, drop a freezing trap and ice her right before she hit the boomkin. The priest starts to run. Concussive Shot, Entangling Roots, Viper Sting, pew pew. I see a bubble and take it away. She drops like a rock. But another pally comes up, this time ret.

Holy/prot pally (let's call him Devil) runs in and goes after the druid while the ret pally (let's call her Cakewalk) comes after me. That lasted for about a second. Send the kitty after Devil...

who then proceeds to attack my kitty instead of me. Surely he couldn't be serious. He was. I stopped and chuckled, dropped a Mend Pet and proceeded to burn through Cakewalk with my boomkin. We head for Devil, who is getting his ass kicked by my kitty, and he dies a lot more quickly than others of his kind tend to do.

Damn pallies. I swear they're cockroaches.