New Blogroll

After reading about Blogger's new "Blogroll" feature I decided to move to using it instead of the custom HTML+JavaScript solution I was using before.

On the cons side:

• It lacks the categories of my former solution.

On the pro side:

• I filled in the initial list from my Google Reader (but why can't the blogroll stay synced with Reader changes? :( ).
• The list can be sorted by last update, making it easy to see which blogs have recent posts. This is the winner for me over my previous solution. I can also see the title and date of the last post, which is even better.
  

Some features I would love to see:

• In order to update it I need to add feeds one by one (no e.g. OPML import option). Also the update window is small and there are no real management features, such as sorting the window by blog name, seeing the url, sorting by last update, etc. Very poor management features currently, in other words.
• Categories/tags for grouping feeds.
• Better integration with Google Reader (auto-update list whenever Reader changes happen).
• Some nice formatting options, like changing the background between every other line.
  

Some features I don't use:

• The ability to see a snippet of the latest post. A Blogroll is not a poor-man's replacement for a proper Reader. Having the title of the last post is one thing, but a snippet just makes the entire list too bloated and un-wieldy IMHO.

How is this all WoW related? Oh well all the feeds are of WoW blogs, some are actually very good. Happy reading :)

3-man UBRS

Yesterday I continued my Old-World attunment process on Solidd with a UBRS run. Since UBRS requires 3 people at least to activate the fire-elemental room, I looked in the guild list after logging in to see who could join me. Luckily for me there were 2 level 58 alts (a s-priest and a rogue) online and both were happy to join my UBRS romp.

Right from the start though, things didn't go smoothly. The s-priest died after getting agro from a dragonkin right at the beginning room (before even opening UBRS proper) even though I was swiping like crazy, so I had to BR him. Further on we cleared easily enough but in the Fire-elemental's room, once we had activated it, the casters there banished me and killed the rogue. Luckily the s-priest was also banished and so stayed alive while I killed the mobs and fire elemental. He actually did quite a bit of damage to me but by this time the priest was released and could throw me a bit of healing.

Progressing further, we did okay up to and including the big Rend event, but after that again one of the alts died due to an Assasin stunning me and all the mobs going for the alts. Really the mobs after Rend's room were actually hard for me as they kept stunnning/bashing me, making the fights hard to both hold agro and DPS the mobs (can't dps when stunned).

Just before The Beast the rogue said he had to go, so we gave The Beast one try, however I did not remember that he does huge knockbacks on you that throw you high into the air. Everytime he did this I took a huge amount of falling damage (~4k) and was quickly dead, leading to a wipe. He also fears so trying to tank him against a wall didn't work either.

After the wipe the rogue left. Deciding I didn't want to try Drakki or the trash on the way alone, I asked a friend from the guild who had just logged online and was not busy (a level 70 lock) if he could come to help. He came and clearing the trash went well except for one unlucky wipe as I got knocked off the bridge and down into LBRS.

Finally we got to Drakki. My plan was to have the warlock kill 1 add while chain fearing another and have him "OT" Drakki while I was conflagarated. However I didn't count on how long the conflagarate lasts, or on how hard the adds would hit on the lock, so even with his (very good) pvp gear he died.

Luckily for me (no fun doing all of UBRS just to stop at the boss I need!) a hunter from my guild came online was was willing to come help. With a hunter's pet as OT and myself as tank, the fight was finally doable (although not easy due to the only healer being a level 58 s-priest). However we managed to do it (although I did need to BR the lock) and finally Drakki was defeated.

With the hunter's pet tanking and myself healing (and the warlock DPSing), The Beast was very easy, however alas no skining knife dropped.

Overall a tough run, especially the mobs after Rend's room and Drakki fight. If I ever try that again, I will not go with less than 2 tanks and a proper healer.

Still I'm pleased as I'm now both BWL attuned and (once I return the last quest in Witerspring) Onyxia attuned. It was not easy but not too hard overall and it was fun, which is the most important thing I guess :)

Next up, Naxx? We'll see... :)

Old World Content

I spent most of yesterday doing daily quests, getting back some (most?) of the gold I had spent on the Badge of Tenacity.
After all that gold grinding, I didn't feel like logging in today and doing dailies or PvP and in the middle of the day I can't count on being long enough in front of the computer in one session to go to an instance with a group.
So instead, I decided to do some old-world content with Solidd. I started the Onyxia chain quest, and once I entered BRD I also took the time to get the Prison Cell Key and the Shadowforge Key and get myself attuned to MC.

It was surprisingly easy, and fun, to solo BRD with my druid. Both bosses and large trash group were no real problem, although I did die once when I pulled a large group wearing my DPS gear. I switched to my tanking gear after and had no problems (although mobs did go down a bit more slowely).

Once I was done in BRD (got my keys, ATC done) and had the quest to go kill Drakki, I went to LBRS in order to get the key for UBRS. You need a minimum of 3 people to do UBRS (to activate the room with the captive fire elemental) and I didn't want to count on another having the key. Turns out, this was even simpler/faster to do than BRD - I just stealthed around most of the place, only killing mobs where absolutely required. I think I finished the instance in 30 minutes, even with getting up in the middle. Druids are an amazing class :)

Finally I soloed Emberstrife and again this was no problem, and after returning to Vaelan I am now the proud owner of a Seal of Ascension :)

A Good Night

Not only did Solidd get exalted with both SSO and Scryers in the same night, I even found the Badge of Tenacity on the AH for a reasonable price and bought it. So now I have a new trinket which is much better than what I had before, and a nice new neck for tanking plus another nice neck for DPS which is also good.

I'm a happy bear tonight :)

Wrath Cinematic

http://www.wow-europe.com/wrath/movies.xml

Very awesome :)

My only complaint is, I really want a cinematic showing off a deathknight doing battle with mobs, and other classes fighting in Northrend.
Arthas is cool but I can't really relate to him, you know? It's as if the TBC cinematic showed only Illidan. Where are the shamans, warriors, Deathknights showing off their skills in glorious ray-tracing... err.. glory?
The cinematic is too short, feels incomplete. It's not... inspiring enough.

But still, if you haven't, go see it. Seeing Arthas and what he does there is still, let me just say it again, very awesome :)

SL Normal PuG

Last night I was invited to join an SL normal PuG. The group consisted of a warrior tank, shadow-priest healer, and as dps a rogue, a feral druid (Solidd) and a fury warrior. So basically, apart from the rogue's sap, we didn't have any CC. Plus our healer was not healing-specced. Nontheless, we managed to finish all of SL (caviat Murmur - more on that below).

Luckily, like most normal instances, your exact group composition doesn't matter, as long as you can keep the mobs away from the squishies. In our case, the tank simply let me OT 1 or 2 mobs while herself and the 2 other DPS took down the adds. It worked in most cases, although we did have a few wipes due to poor pulls and/or outright mistakes. Bosses were fairly easy, all going down in 1-shot except for Murmur. After the 2nd wipe on him the tank and healer elected to bring their mains just to finish the run - turns out the healer's main was a tank and the tank's main was a resto-druid :) With 2 much-better equipped chars we managed to take down Murmur.

On the face of it, a successful run. Certainly I've had much worse. The tank mostly knew what she was doing, the dps mostly did what we were supposed to do and the healer kept us mostly alive :)
However, I think the run could have gone much better. Here are my thoughts. Not to say I am/was perfect, but these are points I am pretty sure would have improved the run:

• Let's face it, if you're taking 2-2.5 hours to finish SL you've failed. Sure that includes the time till everyone accepted the summon, buffed up and was ready to go. Still that was maybe 10 minutes. The rest of the time? Just slow going, wipes, waiting for AFK people. Some of factors couldn't be controlled beforehand, some could...
• Slow going - the tank took a long while to mark mobs and pull, something which really slowed us down. Keybind those lucky charms! The tank also wiped us once due to a bad pull (she didn't run behind a corner like she was supposed to and the caster+imps who stood in place pulled more mobs from behind) and had to be shown how to correctly pull one of the patrols in the room before the 2nd boss. If you don't know the pulls, don't be afraid to ask. Wipes = lost time. If you're not sure how to mark the mobs (which to cc etc.) don't be afraid to give the job to someone else in the party.
• Low DPS - with myself as a bear we were already taking a DPS hit on the big trash pulles. Add to that the fact that the fury warrior had very bad gear and our progress in killing the trash was abysmal.
• Bad players - this is what really kills most PuGs for me. By bad players I mean players who are one or more of: clueless, inconsiderate, under-geared, don't know how to play their class, don't know how to (or don't care to) follow instructions, frequently AFK, don't know how to play as part of a group. Thankfully this PuG included only one such player, the fury warrior. Unfortunately even one such player can significantly slow down the group and this guy fitted several of the above categories. He was horribly under-geared (his DPS was barely above the tank's and way below what the rogue and I were dishing out), was clueless about the instance and about how to play as part of a group, consistently failed to follow instructions, went AFK several times. He had no idea on how to run an instance, once pulling a trash pack who wiped us and several times getting in front of the tank and nearly pulling mobs. Don't get me wrong, I know that there are players new to WoW and to 5-man groups and I have no problem with them learning the game. But most of the "noob" players I have met (this warrior included) never once tried to learn or ask questions - the simply do their mistakes and let the rest of the group suffer with them... and they rarely listen even when told what to do... My point in all this rant - for the sake of the rest of the group, don't be shy about telling a player to shape-up or even removing him from the group. If a player needs to do some learning/gearing in order to learn how to play, let him do it in easier instances and with his friends who are willing to devote the time for it. It's not required of you to teach every new eBayer how to play his new level 70 char...
  

Overall the run was actually enjoyable. I got to use my char to the fullest, switching frequently between bear and cat forms and twice using my heals to aid the party. I also battle-rezzed and innervated the priest on several occasions.
The 3 other people in the party (apart from the fury warrior) were nice people, all in the same guild. After a while they told me we had a friend in common - don't know how they found out but once they did it became almost like running with my own guildmates. Their final gesture of bringing mains to finish off the last boss was very nice of them and allowed me to finish a couple of quests that I still had for SL. I look forward to joining them for more instances in the future :)

Oh and I'm maybe one normal SL run away from honored with Lower City, after which I can finally do heroic Seth Halls and get my swift flight form, woot! :)

Solidd - not many updates

I guess it is natural that once I dinged 75, I have a lot less to report. Sure, I still do heroics, dailies and misc small stuff but without raiding and taking down new bosses, I don't find anything noteworthy enough to write down here for future reference.
Still I can summarize a bit of what I've been doing:

* Tanked Kara with my guild, all the bosses except prince. I wiped us 3 times on prince and then let another druid do it so I could see how it should be done. I think I have it now and hopefully when we go back to Kara I will be better equipped to tank him (also better geared, haha ;)). It felt good to tank Kara but let's face it even with a group of alts that place has long ago stopped being a challenge. Good way to get a lot of badges in 1 night though :)

* Speaking of Kara, I tried going to a PuG Kara with my priest, just so I could get some practice healing and see if Kara PuGs really are that horrible... they are! First of all we started at Moroes but the people who invited didn't bother to mention it before we were inside. Then we wiped because the 2nd paladin didn't buff anyone (and the first paladin buffed me with BoW instead of BoS). 2nd try, after raid leader asked the 2nd paladin to buff me with BoS, we managed to get Moroes down. We headed back to the steps outside the big hall before Moroes in order to continue to Maiden. Then the other healer (we were only 2) said he had to go AFK for 5 min. Well before all were in place (still looting etc.) the tank pulled an AoE group, I healed him, got agro and died. Rezzed, asked for BoS, didn't get it. Raid leader asked to give me buff, was also ignored. Instead of kicking the paladin or at least waiting for the 2nd healer, the tank pulls again, I (stupidly) heal and get agro, die again. This was enough for me, and I left. Bitter tase of PuG :/

* I dinged 375 LW on my druid, yey! Actually doesn't feel all that good, not like dinging 375 tailoring did with my mage, there I had the spellfire set to look forward to, nothing really at 375 LW except for very expensive single items (where the recipes usually come from higher-level raids and are expensive or impossible to get). Still it's nice to have maxed out yet another profession. Working on my various factions now in order to get LW recipes from them. Oh and I have tons of Drums of Battle that I'm slowely using up in heroic boss fights and in Kara runs, fun stuff :)

* Spent an entire evening messing around with my UI mods instead of playing. Hmm, maybe I was meta-gaming? :) whatever, most of my mods now get updated via the curse client, so hopefully that should keep most of my UI updated and (relatively) bug free. I kept having annoying bugs with the older setup and I have replaced some addons (e.g. moved from Bagnon to Tbag), removed and added others. Pretty much the most major change is that I got rid of my button replacement mod and am now using the default Blizzard buttons together with Autobar, which should by itself cover enough buttons so that I can stick to using just the Blizzard ones. We'll see, I still have to config my mage and priest and hunter, that entire evening was spent on just the druid O_O

Well that's pretty much it for now. I've been thinking of making a post listing my favourite WoW youtube videos but most are very easy to find via search so maybe such a list would be redundant. Will see, depends on how bored I am :)

Tanking Heroic SH

Heroic SH is a tough instance to tank for a druid - large pulls with very hard-hitting mobs. That place is practically made for tankadins. So when I was /w and invited to tank heroic SH PuG (I was in the LFG channel but looking for an heroic BM run) I was frankly skeptical. However, nothing ventured, nothing gained...

The group consisted of a mage, hunter and fury warrior as DPS, and a priest as healer. This made me even more uncomfortable, as having the fury warrior meant one less DPS (in an instance with already large trash pulls). The priest was very well geared but priests tend to draw a lot of agro and are very squishy.

I assigned marks, made it clear to the DPS that they had to take the Legionnaire down first and quickly, and we pulled the first 2 mobs. This pull and the following single mobs all went okay, as did the pair at the end of the corridor, just before the first room.

Now came the first challange, a 5 mob pull. Again, you have to kill the Legionnaire quickly or he summons more mobs, and with only 2 CC this meant I had to tank 3 mobs. The mage, thinking to sheep quickly, stood out front to sheep her target. Unfortunetly she didn't blink back behind me after the sheep, and the passing mobs 1-shotted her. Luckily our DPS was enough to kill the Legionnaire before the sheep released and I was able to hang on to it when it broke, together with the remaining mobs I was tanking. No one else died and the first hard pull was a success! :)

The rest of the instance was rinse-repeat - corner pull, AOE pull, MD pull, all were methods we used. Not everything was perfect, e.g. the warrior would sometimes kill a mob other than the "X" after the skull went down, drawing agro and making life hard for the priest. Luckily our priest was up for the challange and all went well.

The only wipe we had was on one of the large groups of Gladiators, they hit so hard I had to keep backing away to give time for the priest to heal me. Since I swiped less, the mage got agro more quickly, and things quickly went bad for us. So instead of the usual "pull and AOE", I treated the pack as a usual pack of mobs - 1 sheep, 1 trap, 3 tanked. Worked wonders for us and we didn't wipe again on those. Sure, the sheep healed back to 100%, but as it was the last mob killed it also went down fast.

As usual in heroics, bosses 1-3 were less trouble than the trash. However in heroic, Kargath, the 4th boss, can be a real challenge, especially when your DPS is a bit low (as ours was). Still after 2 wipes we got our act together and managed to take him.

2 hour run for 4 badges and some SH quests and rep. Maybe not worth it in terms of badges/hour but at least now I know it is possible for my druid to tank heroic SH and damn that feels good. Good feeling >> badges :D

Solidd's Rock-n-Roll Kara run

Last night I logged in fully intending to do only a few daily quests and go to sleep early. No instances, no other grinding. But as soon as I got in I got a /w from my guild master and friend if I wanted to go to Kara on my bear as OT. Did I? of course I did! So much for plans for an early sleep... :)

It was a great run. I didn't get any tanking gear but I did get some very nice DPS gear: Terestian's Stranglestaff, Chestguard of the Conniver and Ring of a Thousand Marks. More importantly, the run was really fun and fast. We cleared the entire place in ~4 hours with (I think) 2 wipes and we finished Prince just 1 minute before a server shutdown. We couldn't have cut it any closer :)

Part of the reason that it was fun was that this was my first time to tank in a raid. Another was that one of the people started playing music over TeamSpeak and at least for a while no one objected so we were taking down trash to the sound of Rock-n-Roll :) It was also a very easy run, our GM brought his very well-equipped Paladin tank and left me with very little to do. This is also easier for the healers :)

On Nightbane I started as a cat but just to be safe I stayed in bear gear - and it's a good thing I did. At around 80% the tank DC'd, but luckily he told us he was DC-ing before his character disappeared from the game. This left me enough time to go bear and get agro on Nightbane so that when the tank did disappear I was next on the agro list and Nightbane didn't go rampaging through the raid. I tanked him down to ~50% before the tank managed to log back in and tank him the rest of the way down to zero.

Another fun fight was Aran, at least for me as melee DPS. Aran is an annoying fight for a mage or healer, but as a melee DPS it's a dead simple fight. We did wipe once due to people interrupting Aran's arcane spells (in addition to the assigned frost+fire ones) which made him run around - this made us lose DPS and we also got un-lucky with the adds + Blizzard. The 2nd time though all went well and as I said it was a very simple fight for me.

In Prince we wiped once due to an Infernal dropping too close to the door but the 2nd time was okay. Only problem the 2nd time was that myself and 2 other melee-DPS died due to the debuff+explosion, so DPS was a bit low and as I said we were very close to a planned server shutdown - we were getting messages in chat from the Blizzard system, it was sort of like an enrage timer :)

All in all a fanatasticly fun night and I think well worth the time, even if I didn't improve my tanking gear. After all, I did get 22 Badges :)

Sigs

What's a blog worth if you can't post funny/amusing signatures seen on the WoW forums?

So here's the first one I'm posting. Won't be the last :)

In WotLK sap will work on pretty much everything with a brain. It's a huge nerf to Horde Rogues, since they won't be able to use it against Alliance in PvP any more.

Would be even funnier if it weren't so true (at least w/regards to my battlegroup) :(

Solidd Progress

Solidd made some nice progress since last Wednesday.

• On the rep front, got to revered with Keepers of Time and Shattered Sun Offensive (for the SSO rep I did 2 MgT normal runs in the same day). More importantly I hit exalted with Cenarion Expedition - this was due to mainly normal SV runs.
• Of course getting exalted with CE meant I finally got Earthwarden, and although I had to give up ~500 health, I gained enough armor and AP (in cat/bear form) and therefore threat that I think it is worth it. further tanking related updates - got 2 new rings, one from badges and one from MgT normal 2nd boss. I also changed my chest and back enchants from defense to +6 to stats and +120 armor, respectively. Even with these changes I'm way over the crit cap but there's nothing I can do - just the gear I have. anyway I now have ~22k armor in bear form (self buffed) which is sweet, and ~14k health. Health could be higher but I'm confident I will get it up with more newer gear.
• Actually did some PvP, e.g. yesterday played 5 AV, won the first, lost the next 4 in a row. Typical clueless-Alliance behavior coupled with some matches against premades and 2 matches with high lag. Sigh :( Even so advancing nicely towards a S2 item, I hope...
• Spent ~500g (probably more but I was careful in not notificing exactly how much gold I spent ;)) in the AH on mats to bring my LW up from 364 to 371. "Only" 4 more points till 375... sigh. Ah well, at least I did enough dailies during the weekend that I'm not broke even after this expenditure, but it's not something I'll be doing again soon in the immidiate future.

That's it for now. Good progress I think but there's still a long way to go before I can comfortably tank every heroic out there. The MgT normal runs were especially hard and I kinda dread trying out the heroic version on my tank...

Alchemical Blood

There are reports of a new passive ability in the WotLK beta called Alchemical Blood. If it stacks with my Redeemer's Alchemist Stone it will be a very nice effect.

I do wonder about the description though. Except for more mana/health from mana/health pots, what could the description mean? More int and spi from drinking an Elixir of Draenic Wisdom? How much more? The mind boggles at the possibilities... :)

I really like where professions are going so far in WotLK, e.g. the ability to sell enchants in the AH. I am really looking forward for that, not so much as a money maker but as a way to enchant my alts. Plus now this Alchemy buff will be great for my priest.

Good times. Now just buff fishing and make me happy! :)

Solidd Updates

I tanked SP Heroic 2 nights in a row.

First night was horrible, we had 2 rogues and a hunter as DPS and a Shaman as healer. The 2 sapped mobs kept breaking together, immediately make a beeline for the shaman and kill him, and wipe the party. I was using a crappy "spam taunt" tanking method and my taunt was always on CD just when I needed it. We managed to finish the run after 2 hours and so many wipes I stopped counting.

After the run the hunter, who is a friend and who's main in a paladin tank, spoke to me and educated me about when to use taunt and when not to.

Then last night I went with another group to Heroic SP, we had a paladin as a healer, and a warlock, mage and shaman as DPS. This time the healer obviously drew a lot less agro, plus I saved my taunts for when they were needed. Result- a very clean heroic run with only 1 wipe. It helped that the mage and lock could continue their CC for as long as needed.

The one wipe was due to the first pair of Defenders, we knew they hit like trucks but they killed me so quickly the healer was just surprised. After that wipe we used a strategy of having the shaman pull the other defender while using Earthbind Totem to slow it down, letting me tank only 1 defender at a time. Work beautifully :)

My point in all this:
- if at first you don't succeed, try try again :)
- if you have 2 rogues, make sure 1 remains in stealth to keep 1 mob sapped otherwise you will quickly have a dead healer.
- Earthbind Totem works well on Defenders in Heroic SP but be careful they still hit like trucks.

Oh and I managed to level to to 364 in Leatherworking. "Only" 11 points to go! :)

Best... AoC... Review.... Evah!

I don't usually post about other games but this one had me in tears it was that damn funny :) Enjoy :)

Tanking Heroic Botanica

Last evening the Daily Heroic was Botanica. A couple of guild mates (mage and fury warrior) were looking for a tank and I thought I would give it a chance.
We were joined by a healer and a hunter from other guilds but good ones, so I knew this would be a good PuG.

Even so, Heroic Botanica is a hard instance for a druid tank, with many pulls consisting of large groups (4, 5 or even more mobs). The 2 CC did the best they could of course but it was hard going all the way and the run took about twice the time a well geared group with a Paladin tank would have. The BoK and Commanding Shout buffs helped me of course, together with a Flask of Fortification and a food buff I had just over 17k life which was sufficient most of the time.

First time we wiped was while fighting a group of 3 mobs too close to the end of the path of a patroling robot. After that you can bet I made sure to stay far away from patrols :)
I don't think we wiped again on trash but we were pulling/killing a bit slowely. The low DPS worked in my favor as a tank, since I could hold agro more easily, but it didn't make the run any faster. Also sometime people died here and there and we had to wait till they were ressed and ready for the next pull.

The first boss was actually easy, our DPS was high enough so that only one group of adds had time to spawn and I managed to get agro on them so that there was no problem taking them down after the boss.

Botanist Freywinn also didn't present us with any problems, everyone knew the tactic of running to the corner so that the lashers would have to follow us, DPS was again high enough that after ~3 repetitions the boss was down.

Thorngrin wiped us once. I pulled, the fight started okay, then the paladin healer got Sacrificed. No problemo, he simply bubbled... only then the boss proceeded to Sacrifice him twice more in a row, with predictable results. After we all ressed and were ready again, I positioned the paladin out of LoS and tanked the boss in the center of the room. The frequent loss of agro right after he casts Sacrifice was annoying and I kept having to run out of the AoE fire but otherwise the fight was straight-forward and we got him down.

Another wipe was on Laj. The first time I tried him, I got up on the podium when you first see him and tanked him there. I started taking really insane amounts of damage whenever the adds would come up and so did the fury warrior (hunter and mage were assigned to the adds). After we wiped, the warrior suggested he take the add while the mage nukes the boss, making the healer's job easier. In addition, I stayed off the podium, meaning almost no damage while the adds were up (Laj goes back on top of the podium whenever adds are summoned), so the healer's job was much easier. It also helped that the hunter put up his Nature Resistance aura. Turned the fight into a very easy fight actually :) Only other thing I noticed - near end of the fight Laj did an expanding cloud/ring of poison that was centered on my location, and I started taking large amounts of damage from it, so I moved from it after a while. Maybe that was what killed me first time...

The trash just before the last boss were really impossible for me to tank, as there were just too many for swipe to be any good and therefore the others easily got agro. The poor squishy mage died twice (once per pack) but thankfully we didn't wipe on them.

Warp Splinter himself was hard, we wiped/reset 2 times before taking him down. First time, mage pulled agro, pulling the boss to the group. I taunted but the mage had already blinked to me, which put him far from healer. Since Warp does AoE damage, the mage was soon dead and our DPS became too low and we had to reset. Second time we took him down to 1% before healer went OOM and died and soon after I died too. Last time was the charm, we gave it all we had and the boss went down :)
Warp is pretty annoying to tank as he stunned me every few seconds during the fight which made it really hard to build/keep agro. This also affected our DPS since both me and the fury warrior were stunned a lot during the fight. My main mistake during the fight was not turning Warp around, his Arcane Volley did quite a bit of damage to the group meaning the paladin had to work really hard. Ah well, live and learn :)

At least in terms of badges the instance was worth it - 4 badges + 2 from daily, but sadly I didn't get any new tanking gear. Maybe next time...

Swift Flight Form

The Swift Flight Form quest line is well documented and there are even complete guides out there. From personal experience I can give the following advice regarding preparations:

1. You'll need the Artisan Riding skill in order to start the quest line. Say "bye bye" to 5k gold :)
   
2. Prepare around 1-1.5 hours for doing the chain up to the Chasing the Moonstone quest (#15), which is the last quest before having to do Heroic Seth. Halls. At least this is what it took me. A lot of it is flying around and I also spent some time going to IF in the middle of the quest line to buy some of the below elixirs. Buying everything before starting will save you time.
3. 10 Ancient Lichen and 10 Dreaming Glory for quest #2.
   
4. An Earthen Elixir shouldn't cost too much and is a big help for quest #11. Buying a nice battle elixir to boost your DPS should also help.
   

I can't talk about the last 2 quests because I haven't done them yet, but here are my impressions from the first 14 quests:

• One of the most fun chains I've done, these quests will use your druid skills to the max. One note is that it seems that as a resto you'll have some problems soloing this chain from what I've read, better bring a friend. As a feral all stages were fairly easy.
• In quest #2 I wasn't ready for the explosion and before I had time to shift to flightform I hit the ground and died. I would say about 50-75% of the plants exploded so be ready with that quick shift to flightform.
• I wasted 10 min in quest #4 because I somehow missed the spirit. When you return quest #3 don't follow the man to the alcove, follow the spirit outside! Bloody annoying :( Otherwise just make sure to cast an occasional HoT on the ghost as he really does have very low HP.
• Prowl worked well for me in quest #9 just make sure to prowl right up to the bird before casting the net since as soon as you start casting to and become visible the birds will try to fly away (and they are fast). I didn't think of pouncing and stunning the bird before casting the net but as it turns out I didn't need to, the first cast was good enough :)
• I did exactly what wowhead suggested for quest #10 and except for a few mobs I didn't have to do any fighting to this part.
• I used bear form for quest #11, plus the Earthen Elixir and Demo Roar for reducing the damage from the adds. Worked great.
  
• Cat form for quest #12 worked very well, I used Maim as suggested in wowhead to interrupt his knockback spells but otherwise I let him cast since I didn't want to waste my rage or combo points and not have enough to stop the knockback. One time I had enough combo points (stun was long enough) to shift out and heal myself, so really was a pretty easy fight even though I was a bit slow (had 11 debuffs on me at the end :)).
  
• Used caster (Night-elf) form for quest #13. Naturally #13 was the hardest for me as a feral but if I managed to do it with my crappy caster gear, I guess anyone can :) However it really is important to keep him rooted at all times, he hits hard in melee! Also make sure your gear gives you enough mana, mine (with various cloth pieces) gives me ~9k mana which was enough. He resisted my root spell several times so I had to heal myself quite a few times but again went smoothly.
  

Quest 15 should be doable/easy, I plan on using a Free Action Potion just before the start, as I don't have the PvP trinket. As for heroic Seth Halls, I've seen it done enough times to know what to expect. Will be interesting to see if I can tank it though...

Solidd Gear Plans

I've started looking at gear from instances to replace what I have. I'm a bit surprised to see that even my initial gear is pretty good for tanking, compared to what drops.
For example my 3-item crafted set seems pretty hard to replace from drops, even items from heroic instances I've seen look more like side-grades (e.g. more stamina but less armor).

I think I'll do some research while working on my CE rep. Earthwarden is a sure upgrade atleast :)

Here's what I've found so far, in no particular order:
* Forestheart Bracers - Warchief Kargath Bladefist, Heroic SH
* Band of Determination - Vexallus, Normal MgT
* Argussian Compass - The Black Stalker, Heroic UB
* Commendation of Kael'thas - Priestess Delrissa, Heroic MgT

From all that I've seen, my best bet is to get to a level where I can tank heroic instances and then farm badges since the best gear by far is all badge gear... big surprise ;)

Speaking of rep rewards, Earthwarden is about as good as it gets. Sure I want to get Honored with Keepers of Time for the PvP gloves but apart from the SSO Pendant there really isn't any rep reward worth getting. Kinda sad when you think about it - all that grinding for almost nothing...

Of course there's always the option of grinding BGs for those S2 items... but as I already said, I hate PvP.

Solidd dings 70, let the gold flow!

It finally happened, Solidd dinged 70. After reaching 95% on the XP-bar from various instance runs, I went to Terokkar when 2 green quests and a few mob kills were enough to bring me the rest of the way.

Dinging 70 meant a huge cash outflow for me. First and foremost was buying the epic flying riding skill and a mount, a cool 5.2k gold right there. Then there were gems to socket new gear, mats for enchants and armor enhancements, new gear to buy from vendors... the gold just flowed and flowed. I have basically sucked all of my characters dry :)

I can really appreciate now why tanks are the first and foremost to cry about lack of gold. It's not the repair bills so much as the massive amounts of gold you spend on gear. As a dps char, it doesn't really matter if you don't immediately get the best gem. As a tank, it's practically a matter of life-and-death ;p

Even worse, every new piece of gear means not just costs for it, but costs for previously enchanted and gemmed gear. Got a new ring with +defense on it? Guess what, you just need to spend another cool 100g to replace some defense gems that are no longer needed! It's enough to make a grown bear cry... :)

For druids who wish to have a decent DPS set apart from the tanking set, it becomes even worse. I have un-gemmed DPS gear that I just don't have the gold to socket now, at least not with blue-quality gems. As for my caster gear, that's a complete joke...

Still I don't want to make this post a whine-fest. I'm happy with my druids and happy to spend the gold on a good cause. In bear form I now have around 13.5k life and 17k armor (self-buffed with MotW), 22% dodge and am crit-immune. These are great starting stats for normal instances and in fact last night I tanked SV, twice, once after the other.

There were no over-powered chars on these runs. I, a new bear, was the tank. Healer was a Shaman with good healing gear but not exceptional (~ 1.3k bonus healing). DPS for the first run consisted of 2 hunters and a mage, and both the mage and one of the hunters were level 69. Yet we only wiped once in the entire run, nor did we have any particular trouble. The only wipe was at the last boss since the DPS forgot(?) to kill the water-tank and the boss got his double-damage buff and promptly killed me.
On the second run the mage was replaced with a good 70 rogue who did great damage, that run was even faster and we finished it cleanly and without a wipe. I hit revered with CE and so have only 21k rep till my Earthwarden, yey :)

All-in-all I'm very happy. Having my own tank char is a great feeling. I will have to take some time now to grind gold, which means due to my lower play-hours that I will not be doing instances on those days. But that is not a problem and I've already proven to myself that making even 1kg per week is very doable. That should give me a nice buffer to have the gold to enchant/gem my tanking gear as required. I might even splurge and waste a bit on my DPS gear :)

Solidd dings 69

I actually dinged 69 a couple of days ago but I was too lazy to blog about it ;)

I am now well on my way to 70 (~35% left to go), due to running several instances during the weekend. A particularly fun run was doing normal Arcatraz with a T5/6 Hunter and priest, with a good level 70 druid tank, and myself and a 70 warlock as secondary (and pretty low) dps.

The hunter was tanking/killing smaller mobs by himself while the druids tanked the bigger mobs and bosses. It was a fun run because I had little to worry about, it was fast, and I actually got to be useful... In the room with the 2 bosses, Dalliah and Soccothrates, there are several mobs that need to be cleared and this has to be done carefully as there are stealthed ones too (the Temptress). Anyway the druid was a little hasty and managed to pull at the same time 3 mobs, 2 of them Temptresses. Mind Control confusion abounded, and in the meyham, the priest got killed. Que your quick-thinking druid, I managed to both battle-rez the priest and to OT (in bear form) one Temptress untill the other mobs could be downed by the team. Good fun :)

WotLK Beta Patch-Notes - Mage section Impressions

I was going to do a detailed review of the mage notes, but Christian Belt has done such a good job summarizing the changes, I can only link to his post and say I totally agree.

Well actually I do have a comment about Incanter's Absorption, I think it will proc off magic-resistance based absorption, not from any shield. But a comment on wowhead says differently, so I guess we'll just have to wait and see.

This concludes my short review of the short mage section of the current beta patch notes :)

WotLK Beta Patch-Notes - General section Impressions

Here are my thoughts about the newly released info shown on wowindsider about the WotLK Beta patch notes, General section:

• "Hit Rating, Critical Strike Rating, and Haste Rating now modify both melee attacks and spells." - this will definitly improve the mess that is the current ratings system, not to mention be a huge benifit for classes that rely on both melee and spell damage, such as paladins. Still you got to wonder, will we see e.g. rogues in PuGs now rolling on caster gear because of haste/crit/hit ratings on it? I smell yet another excuse for ninjas and loot-whores to run rampant! But in all seriousness, this is a change for the better. Thumbs up.
• "Spellpower" - I like this change as it will make tooltips shorter :) Also, it will be a bit weird to have only e.g. +1k spellpower on my priest instead of +2k healing. Will have to wait and see but especially during leveling for example of my priest this will be a definite help. Thumbs up.
• Transportation to Northrend - I'm sorry, but why do Horde get transportation from 2 major cities, while Alliance get one from Stormwind and one from... Menethil Harbor?! Since mages can now teleport/portal to Theramore, it would have been a better choice IMHO. Having transportation from SW and another major city such as Darnassus would have made even more sense. Thumbs down :(
• Dungeons - there are already 2 starting-level (70-72) instances, compared to only Ramparts in TBC. Win all-around and a solid Thumbs up.
• Classes - I'll make a seperate post for each class I play.
• "Macros and key bindings are now saved server-side" - I only play from one computer so this has never been an issue for me, but a nice buff for people playing from multiple comps. Thumbs up.
• "Shift-clicking to loot mail" - about time :) Thumbs up.

That's it for now, I'll cover classes and loot in a seperate post. Looking good for now but too little info at this stage, I guess we'll all have to wait for more info.

Small updates, WotLK beta

Due to RL I haven't had much time to play lately, just a few hours here and there. So I'm letting Solidd sit for a while and gain rest XP so that when I do the final push from level 68 to 70 I'll have double XP the whole way.

Meanwhile the other Solids have been busy grinding daily quests in order to get the 5k gold needed for the epic flying mount skill for Solidd. As soon as he hits 70 I want to get him up to speed, haha ;p Also been grinding some primals for my tailoring and transmutations and the odd instance run for rep and badges (Solidfaith is not yet exalted with all of the important factions).

WotLK beta has started and information is starting to come out in the major WoW related websites. I'm not in the beta but I intend to read the available material and post my thoughts here for posterity :)

Project Lore

5 dudes.
4 cameras.
Beer.
World of Warcraft videos (*).

Fun stuff. Go watch it :)

(*) Actually they have guides, a blog etc. but I haven't read any of them. Just saw the Ramparts episode 1, good quality video, although I think they should have explained things a bit more.

Here's the video I watched, for your viewing pleasure:

patch 2.4.3

"Zoning into an instance on a PvE realm will now drop your PvP flag"

Awesome! No longer having pvp infection in your raid or 5-man party :)

Blizzard wins "Glider" lawsuit

As the original site where the story broke seems to be slashdotted, you can read about it on slashdot (ironic isn't it ;)). Some of the comments are interesting too.

I don't usually blog on stuff outside of my personal WoW experiences but I wanted to mention this because I hate the hackers, gold spammers/farmers, bots and other such low-life ruining the game experience for the rest of us and I'm glad Blizzard won this case.

Solidd dings 68, Flight Form very cool :)

Yep I dinged the big 6-8, went to trainer and have been flying around ever since.

What can I say, it is very cool to be able to fly around for quests instead of having to wait for level 70 like the rest of my chars :)

355 LW, Scryer+Sha'tar, WotLK Beta

After a bit of grinding leather in Nagrand and thanks to some additional leather I was sent by a friend, I got to 355 LW and was able to make myself the Heavy Clefthoof Leggings. So now I have all 3 set items. When I get to 69 I'll enchant and gem the 3 items to be ready for level 70.

I spent I guess over 2 hours today grinding Firewing Signets, by returning them I got rep with both the Scryer and Sha'tar factions, so good use of my time there I think :) I still need more signets though and as there are none on the AH, I'll have to grind some more... sigh...

Blizzard's billing site was king enough to be working today so I managed to signup for the WotLK beta. I'm really excited about all that I've read, from mage and priest new talents to the entire DK class and I'm looking forward to testing it out. I hope I get lucky and get chosen, keeping fingers crossed :)

350 LW, CoT and some other stuff

Last night I started with using all the leathers I skinned in Nagrand previously to skill up to 350 LW. Got my last recipes from the LW trainer in Shattrath and waved /bye to her. Goodbye trainer, hello faction recipes, AH and world drops :)

I took a look at the AH to see if I could find anything interesting, and saw a Heavy Clefthoof Vest being sold for about 240g bid. The time was short so I placed my bid and soon after won the vest. As I already have the boots (a friend gave them to me), all I have left to get from the set are the leggings. Based on the price for Thick Clefthoof Leather on my server (about double the price listed on wowhead) I think I made a good deal. I may have paid more than the item was worth in terms of mats but not that much, and I saved myself a fairly long grind.

Happy with the evening so far, I got on the LFG channel, for either CoT or Seth Halls. As it happens a CoT: Durnholde Keep run was what I got (as dps, the group already had a tank). The PuG was okay, tank and healer knew what they were doing and the run went smoothly. The only bummer for me was that the tanking ring dropped from the first boss but I didn't win it and the dps cloak dropped from the last boss, and again I lost the roll. Sigh...
Well at least I got to friendly status with Keepers of Time.

Druid tanks beginner's set - plan for Crit Immunity

Okay, so now that I know I need 156 d.r. to become crit immune, how am I going to get it, relatively easily, when I ding 70?
Well, here's one plan. It can (and probably will) change according to which gear I get between now and 70, but it's as good a starting point as any:

1. The Strength of the Clefthoof set will give me a total of 74 d.r., 4 blue sockets and 4 yellow sockets.
   
2. In these 8 sockets I can put Enduring Talasite, giving me 32 d.r (and 48 stamina too! :)).
3. I can enchant the chest with a +15 d.r. defense enchant.
4. My mage can make Cloak of Eternity, which has 23 d.r.
5. I can enchant the cloak with Steelweave, giving another 12 d.r.

The above will give me: 74+32+15+23+12 = 156. Ding! :D

As I get other defense gear, I'll be able to switch gems and enchants to stamina/agility gems and enchants.

I'm not sure what I'll do regarding gear with resilience. As I hate doing BGs, the above saves me from having to grind resilience gear. However the s2 gear does have some really sweet stats, so I may end up trying to get it anyway.

If I do get resilience gear, obviously I'll take it into account when re-gemming/enchanting my gear in order to get the most stamina/agility possible while staying crit-immune. However I have decided that for the moment I will not actively work to replace defense with resilience, for the simple reason that defense gives a boost to miss chance and dodge chance while resilience doesn't.

Solidd dings 67, pawns Nagrand animals

Last night I decided to dedicate to grinding leather in order to skillup my LW up to 350 (currently at 345). In order to combine it with a little XP, I took the 3 first Nesingwary quests and started grinding them.
Luckily for me, a friend of mine who is leveling a hunter was doing the same quests (although he was a bit in front of me in the chain). So we teamed up and this made the going much faster.

We did take a break to go on a Heroic UB run with some guild mates, I went on my mage and went all-out with AB spamming, damn it's fun seeing those 1.5s cast times :)

Once the run was over my friend and I went back and continued the chain. The 3 "animal bosses" were no problem for us - my friend's pet played the part of "tank", I healed him, and my friend provided the DPS. Sure the mob took a bit more time to take down and a feral druid doesn't make the best healer, but those mobs aren't very hard in any case :)

For the last boss, Tusker, we got a couple of friends who were in the area to join us, all 4 of us were DPS but this time I switched to bear form in order to taunt the beast and this gave the other 3 enough time to quickly nuke her down. Massive DPS ftw :)

My friend got a nice new gun which made him happy. All I got was a healing idol, not much use for a feral druid, but I can't complain - by the end of the day I skinned around 80 Knothide Leather, which will probably be enough to go up by 2-3 LW skill points. I also dinged 67 and am looking forward to new gear and new instances I can tank.

All in all, not bad for a single evening :)