Sunday, June 29, 2008

all about alts

So, out in the Real World, Clara and I got a new puppy last Friday. Puppies need a lot of attention! Also, they need to be watched, and instant attention if they need to be taken outside to reinforce housetraining. Wow-wise, that translates into a raiding and probably any end-game instancing hiatus. I'm guessing no raiding this week at all for us, and next week only one of us will get to go.

However that leaves us open for all that stuff that gets ignored. So far...

Kuan is now Exalted with Shattered Sun. Viljo hit it a couple days before, and we've been collecting the mats for V's Sorcerer Alchemist Stone.

Ikoli is now 325 Tailoring, level 53, and has all the runups to ST I care about. I always wanted her to be a PVP-ish Disc/Shadow spec, but now I have played her more than a few minutes at a time I'm really displeased with what she has. I need to figure out a pair of respecs (leveling/can damage/viable healing/not necessarily shadow) + (healing).

Tylara is 36, and respec'd. Clara and I talked about it, and 5 points in Devotion Aura is totally wasted. At least, in the 30s where we are. I am thinking this spec at level 60, but am not sure where I want the other 10 points.

I have a new banker alt for Tylara, and also to hold all the damn Fish Oil and Scales everyone mails Kuan just to be helpful.

Well, we will see how things go for the next week! Maybe, just maybe, Eeyan can hit 375 Blacksmithing too.

Tuesday, June 24, 2008

the end of the world is here

Kuanchichi is in matching gear, having picked up his T5 shoulders tonight.



I did some poking around. The last time he was in matching gear - as far as I can remember the only time - was roughly September 2006. That lasted until roughly Thanksgiving of that year.



For what it's worth, all that gear in the second picture is still in an 18-slot bag in Kuan's bank.

Monday, June 23, 2008

The end of the world is coming

Well maybe just the next expansion.

Viljo got 348 swords last night.

He was farming for basilisk meat. Generally I hit the basilisks with two fireballs, and about half the time a fireblast too. If they are close to dead or an ignite is ticking I'll hit them with a sword while my molten armor takes them out. It's just about the only time that I hit things with a weapon.

Since I hit things with weapons so infrequently my weapons skills are generally quite abysmal. Even though my swords have somehow gotten to the astronomically high number of 348, my daggers, staves, and unarmed are all still below 300 or at best 310+.

This means that the next expansion is in fact pretty imminent. I estimate that they are shooting for next Thanksgiving-ish, and that it will probably slip to January like last time. :D Time to make sure all my reps are maxed out.

Thursday, June 19, 2008

Aggro Magnet

I just found this funny screenshot from a month ago, of Kuanchichi and Teltanara doing the "Discovering your Roots" daily quest for Shattered Sun.



Well, I think it's funny.

Heroic Magister's

We didn't get to log into Wow until after midnight last night. That usually means working on Tylara and Clara's lowbie of choice. However I wasn't in the mood for that.

Rahlenti was on so we suckered him into tanking Heroic Magister's Terrace, which I haven't been to in a while. It wasn't until we had cleared the first few sets of trash that Rahlenti admitted he'd never tanked it on Heroic before.

"ooo boy," I said.

It wasn't so bad actually, although it would have been better if the healer was a) slightly less stoned and b) had a better connection. We cleared it all the way. But I will not take Kuan in there again without some Arcane Resist gear and/or some Resilience on. Vexallus is a bitch and Kael's Arcane damage during Gravity Lapse is really annoying.

Viljo got the [Scarlet Sind'orei Robes] out of it, too. Those are better than the T4 chest, so woo. Except, does that mean Heroic Magister's is supposed to be harder than Magtheridon...?

Wednesday, June 18, 2008

Screwed

Well Darkfall went to Hyjal Summit again last night sans Kuanchichi. It turned out that 10 minutes before the raid we find out that we are expected to bring resist gear, both Frost and Shadow. Kuan had it all in his bank, but the Frost gear he'd never worn, so had never gotten it enchanted.

Inspection showed that two pieces of it were lower 60's greens. That's no good and I will see about putting them in the AH later. Meanwhile there was a lvl 68 chest and 70 boots. I grabbed those, and Teltanara put +Stats on the chest. The boots though, that was a problem. What's good for the boots? +Stam on resist gear is stupid.

Nonetheless Clara convinced me to get the Fortitude enchant, after all a guild priest with the enchant was standing right there. Teltanara hands me a stack of Arcane Dust and logs out. I poke the priest, send her whispers, ask if she can enchant my boots. She ignores me, then runs off.

5 minutes til raid now.

One of the officers insists I take 4 [Mark of the Illidari] - what, we're going to be in there that long?! - yes, we are a warlock insists - and my bags approach fullness. I make sure I am repaired and have Ankhs, and then follow the priest around more. The priest gets back to me and asks if Kuan is elixir spec'd. Uh, yah... oh can I make her Mageblood + Healing. Yah sure, but can I get my boots enchanted. She says make the elixirs once we get to the instance and runs off, leaving me standing there, with full bags, but not full of raiding supplies, but enchant mats, vials, herbs, a full bank...

...5 minutes AFTER the raid is supposed to start...

...and the lock, bitching me out in tells about lazy people imposing on the kindness of others by not being ready at raid time, la la la. 5 minutes pass, I am stuck, finally I say Fine, and drop group to be replaced with someone more ready.

I put 3 of the 4 Marks back in the guild bank. I'd already grabbed a flask with the 4th.

The priest laughs, says you are not here, and informs me she got the lock who was bitching me out to make her the elixirs. WTF! Is that why he hounded me out of the raid? Who knows. I lost my temper, called him a jackass, and logged out of Warcraft after replacing the mats I'd used up for the Healing elixirs, in order to make up the missed work.

Missed work?! Yes... that is what I get for leaving work early to try to make a raid; I was called on it by my coworkers, I should have clued in that was a warning shot from Fate that my Wow experience that evening was going to be bad. At least I made up some of the missed work. Not enough, unfortunately; I un-signed-up for SSC tonight. Meanwhile, the boots still have never been worn. Tonight, when I do get home, I will see about getting Vitality on them, that is better than Stamina anyhow.

Viljo, on the other hand, got [Cuffs of Devastation] off Rage so the evening wasn't a total loss. But I'm left wondering, still, why Viljo wasn't required to bring resist gear, and I was.

Tuesday, June 17, 2008

Singing

Last night after we had killed Solarian and VR and were all done with the raid most of us were still on Vent. People were reminiscing on how far we've come as a guild. The specific example brought up was wiping on Lurker for 6 weeks and now we've killed the first boss of Hyjal and are 2/4 TK and 4/6 SSC. The Guild Leader was telling us all how pleased he was with how we've come together as a guild to kill new bosses and learn strats quickly and progress.

Everyone was saying how they appreciated the guild and the officers and Guild Leader. I was feeling mildly silly, and was perhaps inspired by Tanthalas' descriptions and video's of his guild's singers. Either way I decided to sing my appreciation of our GL (Drognin is his warrior main):

We love you Drognin, oh yes we do.
We don't love anyone so much as you.
When you're not leading us we're blue.
Oh Drognin we love you.


I'm not sure what I was thinking but I did actually sing that on Vent. Amazingly my voice didn't actually give out from embarrassment until I was done with the song. And I got quite a few compliments in Vent and gchat. Regardless I don't think I'll be singing anything else any time soon. :D

Strats, schmats

Tonight Darkfall went into Tempest Keep for the first time in a month. We dropped Solarian... and seems likely will shard one of her items too, the badged gear is so good nobody really wanted [Star-Soul Breeches]. Then, for only the second time that I know of since the 2.4 patch dropped, we tried Void Reaver again. (I've wanted to try him again for a while now. T5 Shaman shoulders are way less goofy-looking on a troll than T4, and it's all about aesthetics, right?)

Here we are clearing the trash. I know the screenshot isn't spectacular but it gives a good feel for why playing a troll caster just rules.



Anyhow let's face it. Darkfall is lazy and had been relying on the VoidReaverAlarm addon, which relies on the combat log noting the target of the Arcane Orbs. Well clearly that doesn't work anymore. So we went and looked at all these strategies. First a warlock was the bait running around, and we clumped up behind the tank and got pwned by Orbs. Then two hunters were bait, and we stood on his feet and stabbed his toes while one of the priests spammed Circle of Heal on us. This caused him to punt the tank, throw an orb on him for good measure, and smash the priest.

After that, the guild leader decided forget all these strats. Stand on the circle, and just look up damn it. Just like the forums say to. Once we made that decision we just dropped him in one try. It was sort of weird, though; I played in first-person mode the entire fight.


Of course the Shaman T5 shoulder token didn't drop.

Wednesday, June 11, 2008

Replacing Primal Mooncloth

Teltanara is currently wearing all 3 pieces of the Primal Mooncloth tailored healing set. It's a pretty spiffy look and has served her well for quite some time now. However it will shortly be time to move on to bigger and better things.

In the not too distant future Telt will have enough badges to get the Gown of Spiritual Wonder. However this will break up her PMC set, so I'd like to get some other upgrades lined up so I can swap everything at close to the same time. That way I hopefully don't lose too much in the way of healing or regen, and gain some stam. (Ooohh! not dying all the fricking time :( )

Anyway as far as belt goes I'm thinking Belt of the Long Road. I'd lose a bunch of regen on it compared to the Primal Mooncloth Belt, but with the increase to int and spirit, probably not as much as I think.

Mats for the Belt of the Long road are as follows:
- 2 Nether Vortex
- 4 Imbued Netherweave bolts
- 10 Primal Lifes
- 10 Primal Waters
- 2 Rune Threads

The shoulders are a little more difficult to figure out. Or rather I appear to have a few more choices. I picked up Pauldrons of the Solace Giver in Karazhan the other day. I could, with a bunch of luck, get ahold of Light-Mantle of the Incarnate. I'm not really sure what else is out there and good and easy-ish for Telt to get. I suppose that the Swiftheal Mantle would be a pretty clear up grade, but the pattern plus two hearts of darkness would be a bit spendy for Telt.

Tuesday, June 10, 2008

Belt Buckle Suggestion

I am writing up the following to post on the Suggestion section of the WoW forums. If anyone has suggestions post them in comments and I'll edit this before posting.

I think that Blacksmiths should be able to make belt buckles.

- Tailors can make spell thread for legs.
- Leather workers can make armor kits for chest, legs, hand, and feet.
- Enchanters can enchant a variety of items, including feet, hands, wrists, chest, weapon, and cloak.
- Jewelcrafters can cut gems for everyone's sockets.
- Engineers can make scopes for guns and bows.
- Different factions can give you different head or shoulder enchants.

The only pieces of armor not covered by some sort of bonus is the belt, wand, offhand, thrown, and relic. I think that blacksmiths should be able to craft a belt buckle. The player should be able to apply this to their own belt. The belt buckle would have various different bonuses to it. (+damage, +haste, +defense, +healing, +attackpower, +dodge, etc) Depending on how it was coded the higher-end buckles could even have sockets on them.

Blacksmiths should have the ability to create beltbuckles because they currently have no useful commodity item to sell to other players. Yes, blacksmiths can make spurs and shield spikes and weapon chains. However with the riding crop and various enchants for shield and weapon I don't see very many people with any of those items.

I could also understand an argument for allowing Jewelcrafter to make this instead of blacksmiths. However Jewelcrafters are already able to cut all the gems.

(What to do with wands, offhands, thrown, and relics is left as an exercise to the reader. I suggest either an enchant or an inscription for them.)

EDIT: Apparently my new and brilliant idea is not actually new. :-( There were several threads on the front page of the Suggestions forum detailing the idea. Ah well, I still think it is a good idea.

What we did tonight

Tonight, Darkfall brought down the first boss in Hyjal Summit.



It took 4 tries, one of which was derailed by trash loot and people hurriedly trying to figure out DKP. To be fair, there were a lot of disconnections, as people realized their graphics cards weren't up to it.

Hyjal has been where Clara and I wanted to be playing, probably since the very first day of the Burning Crusade expansion of WoW.

Friday, June 6, 2008

Fishing FTW

So Teltanara finally got her mace off Prince last Monday. Of course she did, we'd depleted Aurochh of all his primals.

I've been too busy this week to play seriously, so Kuan took his 375-fishing-skill self and parked on top of the elements in Nagrand. Fish Fish Fish until I couldn't stand it anymore! Log out, log back in and Fish. Fly around and no nodes, so play an alt.

Finally I checked on Aurochh. 7 primals, 4 motes. And Telt had 6 motes! Now she has a very glowy mace.

Er, that I don't have a screenshot of. oops! I will fix that sometime this weekend.

Tuesday, June 3, 2008

Zul'Gurub

Last Wednesday night was not a raid night, so random people were kicking around doing random stuff in WoW. Kuanchichi and Viljo were taking Evallen through Sunken Temple, for random quests and hopefully an upgrade or two. Other people were interested in trying Zul'Gurub. So after we got done with ST we joined them in ZG. Oddly enough that is a rather logical story line to follow, even if Evallen was only 57 at the time. :D

Anyway we killed all the animal bosses, Mandokir, Ghaz'ranka (no turtle spell, that bastard!) and Hakkar. Evallen got lots of phat loots, including the Heart of Hakkar. Amusingly enough Evallen, at level 57, was too little to take the quest from Hakkar's heart, and so had to wait until she leveled to get the Zandalarian Hero Charm.

The only boss we had any trouble with was Jin'do the hexxer. And that was because we didn't realize that there is some complicated stuff with the ghosts as well as the mind control totems... :( There were only 10 of us, and when the geared out fury warrior starts taking pieces out of the healers, it's just no good.

There were also a number of bijous and coins that dropped. I held on to a bunch for Viljo and to send some to Telt. I want her to be able to make the brilliant oils. Here she is turning in a bijou at the Zandalarian Altar:



I submitted it to the screenshot of the day contest, but it is entirely unlikely that it will get picked. They seem to only go for really lame pictures of groups of druids or people on mounts.

A new boss and an old hangout

Since Darkfall downed Karathress last night, enabling Viljo to get his new pants, we were all set to try Morogrim tonight. We had a few ideas how to make it happen, but given the guild strengths and raid makeup weren't sure how to make it happen.

I think we ended up with a good strategy, but the plan to have a healy pally hold aggro on the Murlocs kept backfiring when he was sent to a watery grave, or whatever. We called it when the trash respawned.

At loose ends, we decided to finish up an aborted Kara run from over the weekend. That was Kuanchichi and Teltanara, and we picked up the run at Nightbane. However we had some troubles getting everyone gathered, and hung out on the terrace for a while until everyone got there. The other ele shaman in Darkfall, has an holy undead priest alt, and I thought this capture of them chatting with our tank Isd was great.



Also - Rahlenti offtanked for the half-run, he'd signed off but we called him and got him to log back in. Then Prince kindly dropped the druid T4 helm. Woot grats!

Kuanchichi now has 145 badges, and after spending some time poking at the badge vendors, I think he has all the onspec PvE badged gear I want for him. Time to consider offspec and PvP gear, or play with theorycrafting the tradeoff between haste, spell crit, and spell hit.

Sunday, June 1, 2008

Pants For Viljo

We killed Karathress again this evening. Viljo is now the proud owner of a pair of Leggings of Tirisfal.

After we downed the boss, there was a bio break where those of us who won tokens went to get the actual pants. We ported out, and I grabbed the pants from the nice lady on the Scryer tier. Then because Viljo is impatient I took him to Orgrimmar where he bought a lovely crit gem and the runic spellthread. So now Viljo has lovely pants to wear. :D

Discovery!

Kuan has been getting asked by the guild's rogues for Agility Elixirs. That has paid off tonight! He has discovered Flask of Pure Death!