Solidd at 64, massive PuG-ing ;)

Last night I was playing Solidd, doing quests in Zangramash. I still had 2 quests in Blood Furnace however so I was in the LFG channel hoping to get a tanking job :)

I got an invite from a paladin and accepted and found myself in a PuG for BF but as a DPS, turns out the paladin was the tank. That actually worked out well because we had no CC at all - DPS were me (a feral druid), a fury warrior and a warlock. So without any CC, a paladin's AOE-tanking style worked well. It also helped that we were all level 63 or higher so the mobs went down quick and the healer mostly had no problem keeping the tank or us up (the healer was a shaman).

We did wipe a couple of times but overall the run went very smoothly compared to the usual PuG, and when the warrior suggested we continue to Slave Pens everyone agreed. So we continued to Zangramash and did Slave Pens as well, of course it was a bit harder/slower compared to Blood Furnace but still we did well. I switched a few times from cat form to caster or bear form as required to help with healing or OT which also I think helped in a couple of tight spots.

At the end of Slave Pens I was near level 64 and I still had time and some quests in UB so I said "why not do Underbog"? Well the healer had to go but we quickly got a level 67 holy priest and I was sure the UB run would also go smooth. Alas, either because we were a bit low or because it was getting late and people were tired, we made more mistakes than usual. Also frankly the healer was not so hot, esp. for a level 67. She even ran out of drinking water mid-instance. How do you not come to an instance with enough water? Aaannnyway, after the 2nd boss the warrior had to go and we continued to 4 man the instance, up to the last boss. 3rd boss was actually pretty easy, I off-tanked the bear (bear vs. bear! :)) and this gave the others the time needed to take down the boss. However the last boss reset mid-fight once (so annoying when he does that), wiped us twice and I guess due to the hour and having to run the entire instance to get to the boss the paladin tank decided I guess he had enough and left :(

So now it was down to me, the warlock and the priest. Luckily the priest was a friend of the warlock and wanted to help him and had a level 70 warlock char and I had a holy paladin in the guild who was free to come for a couple of minutes, so with 2 level 70 chars and me tanking poor "Black Stalker" didn't have a chance :)

The nice thing about getting to 64 through instances is that I still have a whole bunch of quests to return now, which means I will get to level 65 that much faster :)

Grinding Sporeggar Rep

Last night I didn't feel like leveling Solidd, so I logged on Solidfaith and tried out the LFG channel, hoping to increase my Shatar rep (need exalted to be able to use Illidari Marks). I was invited by 2 DPS guys to a party and we waited for around 40 minutes for a tank for normal Mech (which was the daily). Alas, none showed up and in the end we gave up.

While we waited I did some daily quests for rep and gold and that reminded me I wanted to grind Sporeggar rep on Solidstate in order to be able to get the new 28-slot Herb bag recipe which will be introduced in patch 2.4.3. So after the PuG fell apart I logged on Solidstate and went to Zangramash. I figured I would do the Now That We're Still Friends quest a couple of times and get tired of it. But luckily for me, a shadow-priest friend of mine was in the area and had the same idea (to level his rep). So we teamed up and it was the fastest rep grind I ever did. Basically he just rode around getting agro from a bunch of mobs and brought them to me, then I did my AOE stuff while he healed me (even shadow priests can heal you know :)). We managed to grind the mobs so quickly we did around 10k rep in around 1 hour, which is amazing. I'm now half-way to exalted :)

The funny thing is I didn't remember correctly, I only need revered rep to get the recipe. Oh well, it can't hurt to be exalted :)

Midsummer Fire Festival

Initially I didn't intend to do the Fire Festival quests since I always think of the fluff rewards as silly plus I don't have the bag space for them, and my level 70 chars only get gold from the quests which is nice but not something I need at the moment.

However I forgot that for a leveling alt, the quests can give great XP. Thanks to great advice from Kaliope I took Solidd through several Alliance and Horde towns and ended up leveling to 62 (from about 3/4 in level 61) just thanks to XP from the Festival quests. This was not only a nice break from the usual leveling grind but also a fairly quick way to level without using any rested XP.

Tip for other Alliance chars doing the Torch Tossing quest: I tried doing that in both Darnassus and Stormwind and SW was a much better place. The ground in Darnassus makes it hard to see the shadow dot of the torch while in SW I could easily see and follow the torch's shadow. I easily completed both the torch quests and the daily torch quests and so will now have some nice daily quests to do on Solidd. Although I'm not sure, do daily quests give XP below level 70?

Later on I also used the rested XP I had with the 10% XP bonus from the ribbon-dance to get around 1.1k XP from each mob I killed in a couple of quests I did in HFP. Good XP/hour for sure :)

I'm now at around level 62.5 and still have all of the Cenarion quests in HFP as well as the Talmahat ones, and also I might do a BF run since I now have a quest for it, after doing Ramparts as a DPS. I forgot to blog about that but since I didn't tank it there was nothing very noteworthy to tell. Well maybe for me the highlight of the run was where before the first boss I rezzed the healer in the middle of the fight with some trash, first time I've ever used Battle Rez :)

In any case I will reach level 63 in HFP for sure, which is pretty funny. I expect I'll probably get to level 70 without doing a single quest in Netherstorm or SMV. Will have lots of gold waiting for me... :)

Tanking BF

I had some time in the last few days to play Solidd, managed to level to 61. Even better, I got my first real tanking job.

I was registered on the LFG channel to the Ramparts instance, hoping to join a PuG as a tank. But instead of ramparts I got a /w from a guy asking me if I wanted to tank BF. Well I was already level 61 which is the minimum level for BF, so I figured I could do it.

We got going, happily the group organizer promoted me to leader as soon as we entered. Not to brag but I've been in all of the instances (well nearly all) enough times to know them well and I know how to pull and how not to. I prefer not wiping due to another person's inexperience in marking/pulling. Anyway the run went great, we had one pull which was very bad, I tried to pull a caster myself and without silence on him he simply stopped mid-way and this caused other mobs close by to get pulled. Or maybe I got too close? Regardless we wiped but I was smarter later, using the MM hunter and S-priest we had to silence the caster and making him run to us, plus it is much easier for a hunter to do a ranged pull. Other than that wipe the run went very smooth, I didn't manage to hold agro on all the mobs but usually I either got it back quickly or the healer and the other DPS managed to handle the mob on their own.

Overall it was a very positive run for me personally and a great run compared to the usual PuG. I even got good feedback on my tanking from the other people in the group and that felt good :)

Officering and ZA

I haven't played on Solidd for the last few days, except to get him to Outlands and place him in the inn at Honor Hold.

For one thing, I was promoted to officer in my guild, so I had to spend some time recruiting and looking at the guild roster and talking to other officers and suchlike boring stuff, all of which cut down on my actual WoW time. I don't mind it though because I believe I can do a good job helping my guild recruit and advance in raiding, which is important for me.

Another reason I didn't play on Solidd was because on both Tuesday and Wednesday I went with a guild run to ZA and we downed 3 bosses each time. The same 3 bosses actually due to the reset on Wednesday. It was fun but challenging, the fights in ZA are incredibly hard and intensive with people taking up huge amounts of damage, leading to my going OOM on nearly every boss fight. Compare this to SSC or TK where I have yet to go OOM on a boss fight, even on the harder bosses we've reached/downed so far (Solarian and Morogrim).

Actually I didn't mean to go on Wednesday's run but one of the healers in the raid, a paladin who was on trial status in the guild, started to DC a lot, got angry and insluting after wipes and in the end left the raid saying he didn't want to raid again with the raid leader. Since the raid leader is a MT for the guild and an officer who frequently leads raids, this was obviously a problem for the healer and after some quick discussion between the officers (quick as all supported this) the paladin was kicked from the guild. Shame since we are lacking healers, but the guy was a real idiot with an attitude problem. Well life goes on, the paladin got into another (Kara-level) guild 5 minutes after leaving us and we will simply have to look for more healers who are more mature. Good luck to all of us :)

Goodbye Azeroth, Hello Outlands

Solidd has reached level 60 and is heading to Outlands. Except for returning a couple of quests marked "complete" I don't plan to do any more traveling in the Old World, unless necessary.

I did want to get to 60 in order to make it easier and faster for me when starting in Outlands, but now that I hit my (admittedly arbitrary) mark I would much rather continue in Outlands, where the quests I think are much better.

Hopefully I will be able to gear up from quests in Outland well enough to tank a normal Ramparts run, if I manage to get a group for that. If I do it will be my first real tanking experience.

All in all it has been pretty easy and fast to level to 60, the reduction in required XP/level and the increase in XP/quest has really made a difference. I guess I will miss it now that I will start the leveling process from 60 to 70. On the other hand the well organized structure of Outland quests and the smaller areas to cover should make it easier. Also I already have my epic land mount, with a reduced cost thanks to my Exalted reputation with Darnassus.

Interesting times ahead :)

Support for Kaliope!

How do you show your appreciation for a blogger you enjoy reading! Support her in her attempts to get a Beta Key for WotLK!

Can we do it? YES!! Does Blizzard give a rat’s ass?? Probably not!! Will we let that stop us?? NOT ON YOUR LIFE!! KALIOPE FTW!!!

I hearby nominate Kaliope for a WotLK Beta Key. Go go Kaliope! :D

I love MH trash

Last night we went to MH. It took us a couple of tries before we took down Rage Winterchill and after a try on the second boss we decided to call it a night. Personally as a healer I find that between the damage from the boss, the damage from the infernals and the curse from the boss, that fight is insanely hard. But I know hard-core raiders consider it easy, so what do I know? :)

So anyway why do I say I love MH trash? Because we got lucky with all the trash we went through, in terms of epic drops :) My priest won a very nice pair of healing boots and so did another holy priest, and 2 shadow priests each won a very nice caster-dps mace. There were also at least 2 shadow-damage cloaks that dropped. So all-in-all, a good raid for the guild, even though the loot from the 1st boss was a bit weak :)

In addition, since many Hearts of Darkness dropped, I asked for and received 4 and another guild mate made me the Swiftheal Wraps bracers. After gemming and enchanting I now have over 2k healing unbuffed, which is simply awesome :)

Hopefully I can start concentrating now on +spell haste in order to improve my healing even more :)

The 40-50's Blues

My Moonkin druid is coming up on level 48 (just one bar away when I stopped to go to sleep last night). It hasn't been easy since level 40...

In terms of questing, levels 40-50 have always been the hardest/most-boring for me. Even on my hunter I found these levels a bit of a chore, and we all know how easy it is to level a hunter :)

I guess it doesn't make it easier that I chose to go Moonkin. Moonkin druids are a great support class and a caster group in a raid will always welcome a Moonkin thanks to the awesome +5% spell crit aura. However they are less than ideal for leveling and I've been having a hard time with some quests. I solved this by usually doing only easier (green or yellow) quests instead of doing orange or red quest as I did with my hunter, but that just adds to the boredom of these levels.

It doesn't help that this is the 4th character I am leveling to 70 and knowing all of these quests by having done them multiple times before, takes the interest and "magic" out of the process. The only point of light were the couple of levels I leveled using the new Dustwallow Marsh quests. These were well done, fun and most importantly, new :) However as I said those helped but didn't get me all the way to 50.

Still the light at the end of the tunnel is getting closer as I see level 50 approaching. I will be able to continue leveling in zones I like much more such as Un'goro Crater and WPL, maybe even do a BRD run or two. I am also strongly considering speccing back to feral, since I plan to do it anyway at 60. If it helps my leveling, why not? The only problem is I'll have to grind daily quests on my mage for a couple of days to raise the gold to buy new feral/tanking gear for my bear, but really I don't see a problem with that, it's for a good cause :) Plus my bear will be able to save up some much needed rest-XP.

I think I've just talked myself into something :)

Mantle of Tirisfal

After a fairly long time where I mostly raided with my priest, I was asked to come with my mage to a TK raid. After clearing the trash fairly easily we reached VR and stopped to updated new people with the tactics.
The first try was not so good, it's been awhile since we tried VR and I guess people needed to remember the tactics.
The second try was good, we got him down to less than 20%, however too many people died.
On the third try (or was it the fourth? I don't remember...) we finally managed to get VR down again, and lo and behold 2x Pauldrons of the Vanquished Hero tokens dropped :)
An intensive round of open bidding ensued but I used up all of my DKP :) and at the end Solidstate walked away with his first ever T5 token, which was quickly converted to Mantle of Tirisfal.

I quickly enchanted it with the scryer shoulder enchant but choosing gems was a bit harder. In the end I decided to bite the bullet and spent 30 of my hard-earned badges on 2 epic gems which a guild mate cut for me: a Reckless Pyrestone and a Glowing Shadowsong Amethyst. I'm not 100% certain these are the best gems I could have got but they are pretty good and heck, I can always get more badges :) In any case I'm glad I chose to get epic gems and not the regular blue gems from the AH, while the difference is not large, I'm guessing these shoulders will serve me for a long time to come (maybe even all the way to WotLK) and so this is a long-time investment.

So now I just need to get another T5 item and I will be able to use the 2-item T5 set bonus to start blasting away as an Arcane mage and really do impressive damage :D

Boomkin!

It's bin awhile but things have been as usual for my mage and priest, raids and heroics etc.

However one interesting thing I did this weekend was to level my druid to level 40 and respec to Balance tree to get the Moonkin form (a.k.a. 'Boomkin' :)).

Playing as a Moonkin was a lot of fun. On the one hand I had some good spell-damage gear courtesy of a SM boost from a level 70 friend. On the other hand the +400% to armor from the form meant that I could stand to take a beating from mobs, unlike my mage when he was leveling. So playing the Moonkin was a bit like enjoying the best of both worlds, the survivability of a tank with the damage output of a mage :)
Of course there is always a down-side and this is that I had to stop frequently to drink. I don't mind buying water (since TBC any daily expenditure below 10g per day is small change) but the downtime for pausing to drink after practically every fight left me feeling like I was leveling a mage again.
Of course I spent some fights trying to melee the mobs but while this works, (a) it takes a long time per mob due to my low melee damage; (b) I had to spend a lot of mana at the end of each fight in order to transform back to human, heal myself and transform back to Moonkin, leaving me low on mana again.

I guess I need a better melee weapon for the times I want to melee and also when I get to level 44 (I'm 43 now) I will get barkskin which should help.

Regardless, being a moonkin is a lot of fun and I look forward to leveling him some more, at least untill level 60. At 60 I'll probably respec to Feral (tank) and try to start getting the gear and experience in order to be a tank, but that's a long way off...

Krother the Vein Ninja

Well after 3 years of playing WoW, it has finally happened to me. I met a Vein Ninja. Well, it has happened to me before that as I was fighting a mob near a resource, another player would come and take it.

As annoying as that was, what happened today was far worse. To have this hunter, Krother, come up and start looting a vein I was in the middle of taking was... so annoying I cannot describe. I mean, there was no way he couldn't see me standing right at the vein, swinging my pick. What was even more annoying was that I had no way to stop him, thanks to Blizzard's wonderfully broken system for looting mining nodes.

I wish horrible things on Krother the Vein Ninja. May you rot in MMORPG hell for ruining an otherwise perfectly fun playing session for me :(

Progress made, badges spent :)

In the 11 days since my last post, there have been some nice updates:

• My guild downed a new boss for us, Rage Winterchill (MH 1st boss). I was there, it was great, nuff said :)
• My server finally reached 100% on the Anvil, allowing us all to mob the smith and buy brand new badge gear. I only had time so far to buy the new healing mace for Solidfaith and I feel those badges are well spent.
• Solidstate became exalted with the Shattered Sun Offensive. He is now taking a break from doing daily quests, except for the cooking and fishing ones. Still want the cake recipe and cool fishing loot Blizzard promised :(
• Solidfaith is revered with Shattered Sun and will quickly reach exalted. No idea when exactly, depends on how many daily quests I do. On reaching exalted with him I hope to buy the new alchemist stone as it is a very nice healer trinket. Collecting the mats now... :)

As a random thought, I do the daily quests mainly with a warlock friend of mine. A holy priest + warlock team make a powerful grinding team as he can easily get agro and CC multiple mobs (DoTs + fear) and DPS them down quickly while I can heal him without a problem, including him life-tapping. In effect, when he is with me he has no downtime and no health/mana worries and I get a partner that helps me breeze through quests that would be annoying to do as a low-damage holy priest. So basically on quests where we have to kill X mobs, he goes in, DoTs everything, and even with 5 mobs hitting him together he has no problems and finishes the fight with full life and mana (unless he forgets to life-tap :)). Needless to say I rarely if ever get low mana due to my rapid mana regeneration.
I think this combo of healer+warlock works better than any other I can think of when grinding mobs/quests. A fury warrior or rogue would never go OOM but they are mostly single-target DPS classes and would not be able to tag and hold agro on multiple mobs the way a warlock can. A mage would go oom. A hunter would go oom and is also not a multiple-mob dps class (2-3 at most vs. 5-6 for my lock friend). Other combinations of classes would kill mobs more slowly or have downtime issues due to health or mana.
As for other healers vs. a holy priest, Prayer of Mending is a huge helper in a 2-person group if I get agro as it jumps back and forth healing us both for minimal mana cost. But in reality I don't think I have any special advantage, any healer would have a great time partnered with a warlock.
Healer+lock = PvE ftw :)

Misc Updates

Due to new workplace been too busy to blog, but here are some misc updates:

• Magtheridon down, yey! :) The only sad part is that since Solidfaith was asked to join, Solidstate still doesn't have the "Champion of the Naruu" title. Oh well, next time.
• More badges accumulating. But more slowely, since like everyone else I'm busy doing the new daily quests.
  
• I'm almost revered with the offensive with Solidstate and I am honored with Solidfaith. So hopefully I will be exalted in a few more weeks.
  
• Phase 2 on my server is progressing nicely and it looks like the new gear will be in my hands in about a week - I can't wait :)

That's it for now, more to come... :)

patch 2.4 first impressions

Yesterday was a bit hectic for me, I have too many impressions to write about - suffering from a bit of information overload :)
At first I logged in with my mage after removing my WTF and addons folder and started setting up my interface. Slowly I started adding back addons that I consider essential and after about 30min I had those addons and their settings configured back to what I am used to.
After a few minutes online I joined a guild group headed for the new 5-man instance. I took the flight from IF and after a brief loading screen got to the new island. It was hectic and laggy there with hundreds of players running around, exploring, doing the quests and setting up groups. At first I found it really confusing but the place is pretty small so after a few minutes I mananged to find my way around.
The 5-man didn't go too well, our first healer kept going DC and we wiped a few times, finally after a few wipes on the 2nd boss he excused himself saying he can no longer play due to the lag and we got another healer. She did slightly better (although she too was laggy). We got to the 3rd boss but by then the guys had to go get ready for a raid that was scheduled for that night so we called it before we managed to down the 3rd boss. A nice run in all, I would say the new 5-man in normal mode is not too hard :)
I continued doing daily quests and enjoyed myself a lot. I was a bit unlucky with the fishing daily, had to make a lot of casts till I got the baby crocolisk but otherwise it was okay.

More updates to come... :)

150 Badges yey :)

Solidfaith, thanks for a couple of guild heroic runs yesterday, got to 150 badges.

The quest for even more badges continues... :)

Badges Update

The good news is, I've passed the 125 BoJ mark with Solidfaith.
The bad news is, I was wrong about needing 100 BoJ for the new main-hand healing mace - it's 150 BoJ. Which means I'm 25 BoJ short of the mace itself and 50 BoJ short of the mace and the wand.

Back to grinding heroics...

Priest "Badge Gear" Upgrades

What gear can I get for my Priest with Badges of Justice (post 2.4) that is better than my current items (armorylite link in-case armory is down)? Going CCW starting at the head slot:

• Head - None (I have better).
• Neck - Necklace of Eternal Hope - small upgrade. 25 BoJ.
• Shoulder - NA.
• Back - Kharmaa's Shroud of Hope - small upgrade. 60 BoJ
• Chest - Gown of Spiritual Wonder - great upgrade, even considering the loss of the proc from my current chest. 1x Red gem slot. 100 BoJ
• Wrist - Wristguards of Tranquil Thought - upgrade. Give up a few stats for more spell crit, +9 healing and more importantly a yellow gem slot. 35 BoJ
• Main-hand - Gavel of Naaru Blessings - major upgrade! Lose 11 MP5, but get +42 sta, +28 int and +237 healing! 100 BoJ
• Off-hand - Tears of Heaven - side-grade. Lose some mana and MP5 and get some more +heal. 25 BoJ
• Wand - Carved Witch Doctor's Stick - upgrade (with proper gem). I'm ashamed of myself that I didn't get this sooner, definitely not going to wait till patch 2.4 to get it ;) 25 BoJ
• Trinket - Essence of the Martyr - small upgrade or sidegrade, depending on the slot I chose to replace. Hard choice... 41 BoJ
• Finger - Anveena's Touch - a nice upgrade to either of my current rings, probably will replace the Karazhan one. 60 BoJ
• Feet - Slippers of Dutiful Mending - great upgrade, especially with the 1x red gem slot. 75 BoJ
• Legs - Adorned Supernal Legwraps are a clear upgrade (100 BoJ) ; Achromic Trousers of the Naaru are a side-grade (75 BoJ), I will only take them if I get other spell haste gear, since it seems to me that spell haste will be much more beneficial for the longer heals and only if it significantly reduces their cast time.
• Waist - None (I have better).
• Hands - Light-Blessed Bonds - upgrade. Assuming the same gems I will lose the gem bonus but that still leaves me with +28 healing, which is nothing to sneeze at. So although I lose a little int and sta I think this is overall a nice upgrade. 60 BoJ.

That's it. A few points:

1. If I take all the above, including small upgrades and side-grades, we are talking 706 badges. At 5 badges per day, that's 142 days (~5 months) of doing the daily heroic each and every day. Even taking only the good upgrades into account that's around 400 badges.
2. While certainly good, many of those upgrades are a far cry from the quality of raiding drops (all the small/side-grades) so that BT/MH raiders, at least the holy priests, are under no threat from badge rewards, at least not quickly.
3. My big problem with several of the "upgrades" I listed above is the lose of mana and MP5 or the lack of any additional such stats. So I guess if I want more mana and MP5/spirit I'll have to get them from someplace else (as opposed to badge gear).
4. The main hand will be the first item I get post 2.4 (hopefully), as even with the lose of 11 MP5 it is still the best upgrade of the bunch in terms of sheer healing bonus. The wand I'll get as soon as I have 125 BoJ, since it will be both an upgrade for healing and a plus for soloing.
5. I'll look at the mage in another post. For the hunter I have no time for heroics so he's out of luck with respect to gear.

A Mixed Evening

I had a mixed evening yesterday.
On the bad side, it started when I asked to join a guild Zul'Aman raid that I thought was just starting. But it turned out this raid was actually a continuation of a previous raid that had already cleared the first 3 (and easier) bosses. So while I did join the raid, it was a complete wipe-fest, we completely failed to take down the boss we tried. After 2 hours of wipes, a couple of people had to go and the RL called it (to my relief).

On the good side, I asked who wanted to do the daily heroic and quickly got a group together. For DPS we had a mage (me), a warlock and a rogue and for tanking and healing we had a warrior and druid. The daily heroic was SV and we did a great (no wipes) run which was very quick (I think less than an hour). It actually could have been faster but due to having only a druid as a resser we had to corpse-run several times when people died. After the run ended and due to the fact that it was so quick the tank suggested we do heroic SP and everyone agreed to stay do we did that too. So I got 8 (5+3) badges last night for my mage, which is great.

Losing BGs

I'm glad to see I'm not the only one consistently losing BGs to Horde. Seriously, PvP sucks on my server as alliance :(

Small Updates

Not much has been happening since my last post.

The new guild is taking time to get started, basically no raids started or scheduled yet except for some Kara runs we did last week and a single ZA run scheduled for tonight. I don't like it, I was hoping to start 25-man raiding ASAP but it looks like the GL and officers are waiting for something, maybe for a guild website, maybe for for people to join the guild. I just hope they don't wait too long or this guild will crash and burn before it ever gets off the ground, so to speak.

Did a fun normal-SL run with Solidfaith last night with 4 guild mates. Since I have heroic+ gear on Soldfaith healing in a normal run was a piece of cake, especially as the others also had good gear so mobs went down quickly.
We didn't even worry about CC, just pulled whole groups. Our group was composed of a prot paladin, a feral druid, a fury warrior, myself and an elemental shaman. So between the paladin with his AOE tanking and the druid going in bear form for most fights and the warrior grabbing the odd loose mob, I was almost never attacked by mobs, and I didn't even have BoS on me. I used Prayer of Mending a lot and with 3 melee taking agro it was a fantastic way to heal them and save mana and not get agro at the same time.
Craziest pulls - once in the last 2 groups (each of 4 mobs) before Grandmaster Vorpil where you have a static group and a patrolling group. In every SL run I've ever done we would let the patrolling group go back up next to Vorpil and then pull the static group back, kill them, rest till the patrol got back down and pull them as well. This time the guys decided to have some fun and pulled the patrol at the bottom, naturally pulling the static group as well. So an 8-mob pull :) I had to do some hasty healing but no one died. Then, just when most of the mobs were down, a runner managed to run away without anyone noticing back to Vorpil and pulled him. So without getting ready we were suddenly in a boss fight. Trouble? No way :) We continued to kill the remaining adds and pulled the usual way (South, North, South) and the warrior cleared a few adds who were too close to the boss (and would have healed him) and we got him down, again with no deaths.
Second crazy pull was before Murmur, where you need to pull the mobs carefully so the middle mob doesn't get pulled and pulls the next group as well. Of course the guys were not careful but it didn't matter we still pawned the mobs :)
So flawless run? Alas no, we wiped once on Murmur. No idea why tbh, I think someone had the debuff next to the tank and didn't run out in time. But never mind, the Shaman self-rezzed, rezzed me and after we were ready we took him down, this time without a problem.
So overall a really fun run :)

I did a full Kara run with Solidfaith I think on Wednesday and got a bunch of badges but as usual no real luck with gear, I did get a small upgrade but nothing major. Solidstate spent several hours farming BEM Bloodmaul Geomancers for the Enchant Bracer - Spellpower recipe, but no luck. I did however get about a ton of Netherweave cloth which is always nice for a tailor/enchanter :)

So like the subject says just small updates, nothing really exciting. I really hope raiding starts again in the new guild...

Changes

In RL, after 2.5 years at my current workplace I finally got my nerve up to go job hunting elsewhere, passed the interviews and got a job offer. So I'm leaving my current workplace, not without some regrets and worries but mostly happy I'm leaving a place where I don't feel I like going to any more and hopefully going to a better place.

In a case of "online mirroring offline life", my guild, with whom I have spent the last 2.5 years, has broken up. So in the online world too I am making a big change. To be precise most (all?) of the officers and many key members split to form a new guild which I joined, and the former guild is left barren and probably will be disbanded by the GM, although I don't know for sure as the GM has not decided himself.

In the case of the guild move, as in the workplace move, I was filled with a mix of worry and anticipation. The new guild will I think be harder for me to be a full part of since it will be (more) focused on raiding, unlike the previous which was casual-friendly. As I have a hard time raiding (due to my duties as a parent), I am not sure how much I will fit in. Right now I joined as a raider and am taking a wait-and-see approach.

Be Imba! analysis of my chars

The Armory must be behaving well now since the Be Imba! site I wrote about yesterday is working. So without further ado, here are the results for my characters:

Solidstate
As my main I didn't expect many surprises, and I am happy to report I was right.
There was one warning about my Terokkar Tablet of Vim being a low level item, but if I give that up it will have to be for a really good upgrade, something with a significant DPS increase on equip (not just on use). Otherwise I give us quite a bit of spell hit rating for nothing.
My talent build was estimated to be better for PvE, lucky for me :)
Finally according to the Gear-O-Meter, Solidstate can get gear upgrades from SSC/TK/ZA and is well enough equipped for BT/MH, which is interesting in light of the attunement requirement drop in 2.4 for BT/MH.

Solidfaith
In terms of gear, I have one un-enchanted item (my gloves) and two green gems (instead of the better blue ones) in my shoulders. Now that I've finally got my Hunter's epic mount I can concentrate some effort on improving gear and this is one area where I don't mind expending some gold, since as an alt I don't replace gear as often on this char (very little chance of raiding with him).
Again my talent build was approved for PvE, of course my build is fairly standard cookie-cutter so no surprises there.
I was surprised that the site thinks Solidfaith is good enough geared to heal in SSC/TK. Frankly I have mana issues even in Karazhan, and have never healed in Gruul or ZA, so I doubt very much I can heal SSC/TK. I wonder how the site reaches its decisions about gear-vs-instance level...

Supersolid
Gear-wise the site gives the warning "probably caught in PvP gear". So true, especially as this is the only gear Super has :)
I have almost no gear enchants (no plans to do anything about that, too much money for gear that is too low level), 1 low-quality gem (I actually forgot about that :)) and many "low level items". Well here actually I don't fully agree, sometimes those items are hard to replace outside of Kara or Heroic Badges and frankly I put the effort there on Solidstate and Solidfaith. Poor old Super will have to remain in PvP gear... :)
My hit rating is too low, I need 95 more till the hit rating. I think I'll get more hit rating from gear and maybe I'll respec to get Surefooted, haven't decided yet. But more hit rating is definitely something I do want to look into. Actually it depends on how much I continue to PvP, frankly I'm fed up with losing BGs all the time (maybe win 1/10 games), so am thinking of just letting it go and using Super for fun grinding/questing/instance-runs. We'll see...

Be Imba

Found an interesting new online tool via a post by Full time WoW addict. The tool is called "Be Imba!" and it is described as:
"the first online character auditor for the World of Warcraft MMORPG featuring: WoW character audit, WoW guild audit, PvE hints and tips, talent tree checks, talent build checks, talenting hints and tips, item quality checks, gear quality checks, socket and gem checks, enchant checks, melee ranged and spell hit checks, tank defense checks, instance suggestions."

The only problem is of course due to the Armory being down 90% of the time, I'm currently getting an "Error fetching data". Bah :(

Hopefully I'll be able to check it out at a future time and post what I find about my chars.

5 Mages in Arena

http://www.gametube.org/htmlVideo.jsp?id=O/3nxP6Adv9C_zQbT3a6idf2lYmA=

Epic fun :)

A Nice Weekend

It was a nice weekend for all my chars :)

Supersolid finally bought his epic flying mount, making him my second character to get this mount. I think most of the gold came from questing, although a hefty chunk came from sale of ore and leather (Super is a miner/skinner). As soon as I had the epic flying mount I started the Netherwing Ledge quest-chain. I didn't believe I would finish the chain in one evening but once again a BM hunter proves to be a lean, mean questing machine :) For the last 5-man quest, I got 3 guild-mates and a random to do the quest and it was actually pretty easy, boss died soooo damn fast - the gear in our guild must be much better than the days when I did this quest with my mage... or Zuluhed was nerfed... probably a bit of both :) So now Supersolid is all set up to do daily Nethering quests too for yet more gold, which is nice.

Solidfaith did the daily heroic which was Heroic Underbog (on Friday I think). This got him to exalted with Cenarion Expedition and unexpectedly to Honored with the Consortium (due to the rep you get when you turn-in the daily). He also got exalted with Aldor thanks to some Fel Armaments sent to him by Supersolid, so some really nice advancement on the
rep front for Solidfaith.

Solidstate did a daily heroic (SH) for another 6x Badges. I also managed to finally (after a long time) get to do the required 10 Arena matches for the week with my 3v3 team. Our rating sucks but the important thing is to keep doing these so as to get the points, and it was a shame we've missed so many weeks.

Jail Break and Daily Heroic

What do Jail Break and the daily heroic have in common? I did both today (on different chars) and both took longer than expected.

Jail Break was soloed by Supersoid, it was not hard but a bit slow going. After I finally cleared out both corridors the rest was easy except for the part where he (Windsor) goes into the equipment room. He got a lot of agro and his health went down a lot. Fortunately he didn't die and the escort finished smoothly. However clearing the corridors took much longer than I thought it would.

The daily heroic was Ramparts which I did with Solidstate. We wiped a bit on trash at the beginning and at first boss due to bad pull. But otherwise it went okay. However due to wipes and no warlock for SS, we had to run each time, making the run a bit longer than I thought it would be.

Overall though a good evening :)

Zul'Aman - Was Kinda Hard :(

I joined a guild ZA raid last night with Solidstate, they had previously cleared 3 bosses so we went straight to Jan'alai.

On the way to him we managed to wipe twice on trash. The first time, I didn't sheep the Amani'shi Flame Caster continuosly, as I didn't know I had to. About 2 seconds after I sheeped it the mob broke the sheep and firebombed the raid. It seems you need to continously sheep the mob to keep it sheeped. Anyway between the damage from that and from another caster that was being DPS'd, I died and the raid wiped soon after. The second time a paladin forgot himself and consecrated the ground under the sheep...
After the 2 wipes I noticed the caster had some kind of buff on himself so I tried to spellsteal it. Whoa! 300 haste rating for 20 seconds! That was insane :) Needless to say, I had no more trouble keeping the mob sheeped :)

Throughout the trash on the way to Jan'alai I noticed we lacked healing (was getting healed late, long times below 50% health). The lack of healing was much more felt when we started trying out the boss, with the MT dying try after try and the raid having to reset the boss. To be more precise, we wiped one time due to bad luck - boss teleported us to middle before we could kill the add breaking the eggs, causing us to be swamped with Dragonhawk hatchlings. The other times we mostly wiped due to healing problems. Not that I was perfect, I died 2 times due to the bombs (which shouldn't happen) but a single DPS dying will not wipe the raid, while a MT dying will. In any case we finally got the boss down but the only piece of loot was Arrow-fall Chestguard which no one wanted (we had no hunter and 2 DPS Shamans who both passed on it). So we ended up sharding it :(
Of course we all got 2 Heroic Badges each from the boss.

Next up was Malacrass. On this try we had the following adds: Thurg, Darkheart, Slither and Fenstalker. This was a good mix for us as we could: OT and kill Thurg, shackle Darkheart, sheep Slither and banish Fenstalker. Kill order was Thurg->Fenstalker->Darkheart->Boss->Slither... at least in theory.
In practice, we managed to down the 3 adds but the damage from the boss was so insane the healers never had a chance, especially due to his spell pushback during his shadow bolts. The fact that two of the healers were paladins didn't help as what is really needed in this fight is party/group healing, the paladins had a hard time doing single-target healing when the entire raid was taking damage.
For me this was one fight that my T4 bonus (100% spell interruption resistance) was a blessing as I could case firebolts on him continuously even during the shadow bolts.

We gave up after 3 or 4 wipes, for a total of around 3.5 hours in ZA, 1 boss down, no new gear for anyone and only 2 Heroic Badges to show for our troubles. Oh, and a large repair bill.

Sometime raiding can be a real downer ;p

Heroic Sethekk Halls in Just Under One Hour

How to do Heroic Seth Halls in just under 1 hour?

Take a well equipped prot-Paladin and aoe-tank entire groups at once.
Take 3 very good DPS, no CC needed :)
Take a friendly healer.

Result - 4 heroic badges (2 from bosses, 2 from daily reward) in under 1 hour. Nice :)

Update on Solidstate's Cooking

I now have Dig Rat Stew, thanks to a good Horde-side friend. Yey! :)