I mentioned a while ago that Heroic Violet Hold is a breeze so long as Xevozz doesn’t show up. Well, in a recent PUG run, he poked his ugly head out. This was actually the first time I’d ever faced him, but I’d read up on what I was supposed to do so I wasn’t a liability. We whooped his ass and I got a new achievement, Lockdown. We proceeded to ice the rest of the run with little difficulty.

I guess when you way out-gear him and know his tricks, Xevozz isn’t such a pain in the ass as I thought.

It’s time for another Life of a Hero. Today I’m showing some minor mile markers from Gav’s 20s.

We pick up Gav’s adventures from my first foray into Duskwood.  The Nightwatch’s warning, the skeleton in the middle of the road… it was nerve wracking. I didn’t find out what it was all about though at the time.

I’ve arrived in the Wetlands! I like the Wetlands for what ever reason, so I’ll be sad to see it changed in Cataclysm.

Other then the addition of the Titan Panel add on, this pic show me back in Duskwood having my first encounter with Stitches.

I totally panicked, but he’s quick for such a massive beast. Of course, even if I didn’t panic, it wouldn’t have helped; I was no match.

And here’s a screen that allot of humans in their 20’s  can relate to. This actual encounter eventually spawned my favorite Gavelier’s World of Warcraft comic ever. I don’t think I’ll ever get back into making the comic again, but it’s still there… waiting…

I was leveling my warlock, Crane yesterday in the Wetlands. He gained two levels (from 24 to 26) and I had a good time. One interesting event happened while Crane was still level 25 in the Excavation Site. He had his voidwalker, Kragnos tanking a raptor when he was set upon by Sarltooth. Now, as I wrote, he was level 25, and Sarltooth is level 29. I figured I was dead, but I managed to Fear him over and over again while helping Kragnos down his quarry. Once he did, we finally turned our full attention on Sarltooth.

We killed him and I lived! Yay! It was a productive evening.

Lug was busy last night. I took him across Thousand Needles, reaching level 30 there and then up to Ashenvale to reach 31, and finally back down the Thousand Needles to kick around for a while and work on 32. This is my favorite pic from last night, it shows Pig tanking a Searing Infernal for me while on the quest Never Again. The quest was a relatively easy (aside from an accidental overpull in the shrine, which pit Lug one-on-one with one an Infernal. For once I didn’t panic, and managed to trap him in ice. I quickly helped Pig kill our original target (a Roaming Felguard), at which point he picked up the Infernal before he was unfrozen. Hooray for strategy!

I encountered packs of Alliance players twice during my play. At one point while in Demon Fall (the area with the Felguards and Infernals) I was watched by a group of three alliance players (a mage, a druid and something else), who just stared at me killing demons before heading into the quest area. Maybe they were wishing it was a PvP server so they could kick my ass. If they weren’t, a group of higher-level Night Elves (levels 33-35) in Thousand Needles definitely were. They brought mobs to me (which was pointless because the mobs they fetched weren’t threats to Pig and I) and then tried to stand atop the mob to trick me into attacking them. However, none of them ever went into PvP themselves, so I couldn’t attack them if I wanted to. Oh, they got out their weapons and gestured wildly, the hunter acted like they were going to shoot me and Pig, a druid turned to cat form and followed me around… it was downright amusing. I calmly killed the mobs they brought and sauntered on my way. I never saw them again.

Sometimes I wonder if what they say about the Alliance being bad at PvP is true. And then I remember Gav’s my main, and he’s been Alliance for two and a half years.

Maybe that’s my answer.

I’m kind of depressed. It seems that all of the WoW blogs I read have writers in the Cataclysm beta. Alazar is approaching it’s 2nd anniversary and has over 250 posts to date, and yet I sit on the ouside looking in. Alazar’s not big, but it’s been around the block. This is the kind of thing I think about when I read about folks testing and reporting on the beta left and right.

Anyway, here’s a quick pic that I took with Lug riding his Kodo in the Thousand Needles the other day. I thought it was a great pic.

Nice, huh? It was a beautiful morning.

It was a PvP morning for Gav. I joined a random battleground and ended up in Alterac Valley.

It was kind of sad for me because I followed a contingent to attack the Horde leader, and we did – and I died – but the Horde was just a little faster, and we lost. The next battle was Arathi Basin, where I’ve never won.

I want to point out that I went to AV as ret to try out my new axe, which failed miserably. I decided to go prot in AB, which made a huge difference.

I died once early on when I went into battle thinking I had backup (but I didn’t) and another time during a scrum near the lumber mill. Those were my only deaths though. Thanks to good durability, judicious use of my powers and superb healers, I pretty much locked down the farm. People came and left, but I held it down. A couple times I thought I was screwed only to be saved by the sudden appearance of a healer on our side. Thanks, guys! I ended the match with 2 deaths (least of anyone with at more then 1 kill), 5 killing blows (4th on our side) and 71 honorable kills (best on our side). Go Gav!

Oh, and thanks to running those dungeons last night, I got a mammoth reward.

My Black War Mammoth! Finally!

This was the image the greeted me upon joining a PUG a short while ago. The Pit of Saron! I’d never been there before, obviously. Fortunately, we had a great group. One other player had never done it before, but we had a very experienced tank which was very good for our confidence. He calmly described every fight to us for optimal success and kept giving us praise for getting things right. Anyway, upon entering a cave (I joined half-way through) leading to the final boss, the tank said to not cast, heal or hit anything until he gathered all the mobs onto a platform in the middle of the cave. Suicide. Absolute suicide. Or rather, it would be…

… if I wasn’t there.

By the time he got to the platform he 90%+ dead, so right before he died I hit him with my Lay on Hands and we all survived. We entered Scourgelod Tyrannus’ room and gathered ourselves for the battle.
The tank commanded the rest of the DPS to his flanks, and the battle commenced. It was a LONG battle, too. I put forth 3.6k DPS (!) and we killed him with no casualties. Yes! Oh, and as icing on the cake, he dropped the Tyrannical Beheader, and I got it to replace my Edge of Ruin. HELL YEAH!

I hit it with the Massacre enchant and now I’m ready for anything!

Great. The Oculus. I don’t like that place much, but that’s where the Random Dungeon Finder sent me tonight. I ended up in a slick group though, and we blitzed the place. We decided to go for some achievements and rode only Amber drakes into battle. I didn’t do great (my DPS was down for whatever reason) and right before we fought Mage-Lord Urom, our tank dropped. A full minute later, we got a new pally tank. Yay! He too was fast and efficient. This was an easy run! Except…

Lay Guardian Eregos shot me off my drake again near the end of the battle. Fortunately, my party was able to peal him off  of me before he could kill me, so there I was, on the  middle platform, taking pot-shots at him with Exorcism and Hammer of Wrath for the last 10% of his health or so.

Say what you want, but it worked. lol I got the Emerald Void and Ruby Void achievements out of the deal so I’m happy. I got two Forest Emeralds plus two extra Emblems of Triumph out of the Cache of the Ley Guardian, so it was a good run.

Oh, and btw: I completed Explore Northrend and got a snazzy new tabard for my troubles.

A good night’s work.

I returned to Wintergrasp twice yesterday. The first match was epically boring, because we had 25+ players and we saw a total of three members of the Horde: a death knight, a warlock and a paladin. That led them to have over 130k health a piece! It was like taking on some crazy elite mob. That made it hard to get siege engines to drop their towers (we were on defense) because there was just about no one to kill. We did though, and kind of just chilled until the timer ran out. It was the most lame WG match I’d ever been in

The seconds match I attended was more even. I got my 5,000th honorable kill this match, which is kinda lame for how often I do WG. We again chased the Horde around the map, slaying them left and right. Afterwards, I found myself exactly 2 stone keeper shards from my Black War Mammoth. Again, for how often I play WG I probably should have already had one, but I used to cash in my stone keeper shards for honor, and a couple hundred went toward heirlooms for my alts. Still, I’m almost there now.

In a recent Cataclysm beta update, Blizzard has tweaked the armor proficiencies dramatically. Now instead of the previous bland ‘plate,’ ‘mail,’ ‘leather’ and ‘cloth,’  we now have Astral Leather, Blessed Plate, Tribal Mail and more. This seems focused on keeping players in their class’s designed armor. I’m all for it, because keeping the different classes in unique armor – and rewarding players for doing so – will result in more differentiation between them and, I feel, result in a more entertaining game. No one wants to play a game where all the classes feel the same,  do they?