Archive for March, 2010

After a guildie and I ran Azjol’Nerub with a pickup group, we rounded up two more guildies and a guildy’s alt to tackle another dungeon, and wound up in the Heroic Trial of the Crusader.

As you can see, we kicked it’s butt. I not only led in DPS with 2.82k to 2.02 (the next highest), but I managed to upgrade my sword. Yes, the Claymore of the Prophet that I’ve been toting for months is now going into retirement for the Edge of Ruin. I couldn’t be much giddier. It was allot of fun (it’s always more fun to run with your friends) and I got a gear upgrade. What a way to spend an evening!

I queued for a random battleground and as luck would have it, I wound up in Eye of the Storm again. I was again – as in my Arathi Basin battle  – a little killing machine. I’d bought up some Furious Gladiator’s Scaled Shoulders and entered battle in my prot PvP spec. I ended up with six killing blows, 57 honorable kills and only five deaths. At one point, we were defending the mage’s tower and I ended basically tanking the horde. The horde all wanted me dead for whatever reason, so the healers kept me alive while our DPS (myself included) dropped them. It was impressive. If only we’d won.

Oh wait, that’s right  – we did. In fact, of the top 15 honorable kills leaders, 14 were of the Alliance (and I was one of them – #3, actually). Once out of the battleground, I bought a Greater Inscription of the Gladiator and a Kharmaa’s Grace gemstone for my new PvP shoulders. Nice.

I learned something tonight, something wholly unexpected – I can tank for short periods with my current gear. lol I went into Drak’Tharon Keep tonight – more on why in a minute – but after the second boss, our tank bailed. The healer asked me to tank for a while, so I switched to my prot spec, fired off Righteous Fury, pulled out my Teldrassil Protector and my Titansteel Shield Wall and we were off. I had no real problems and we got to King Dred in short order. I’d have done better without my PvP-based setup, like Glyph of Avenger’s Shield, but we had no trouble at all. By the time we got to King Dred, a new tank showed up but he didn’t give me time to go back to ret prior to pulling Dred, so we two-tanked him. After that I went back to ret but then another player dropped, this time our hunter. Something about not running with some certain guild name… we weren’t sure who he was talking about.

Oh, and as for why I was running another dungeon tonight, it’s because I was just a few Emblems of Triumph from getting Turalyon’s Shoulderguards of Conquest.

Yes! I’ve finally upgraded from my stupid Spaulders of the Giant Lords. Nice, huh?

Well I got into WoW tonight, and ended up teaching Ley-Guardian Eregos what-for. Unlike the last two times I’ve gone, I did not die in the climatic battle. I don’t know what the difference was, but no one was terribly injured in the last battle, either. Oh and we seemed to be quick about it, too.

For the last eight and a half hours, I’ve been fighting WoW tooth and nail. I, like many players, am struggling to log in. I attempt to load Gavelier, but when I get to the loading screen, the loading bar fills up and then sits there. Forever. You can find more rants and raves in this topic on the WoW forums. I’ll check back in if I ever get back into the game.

On another note, I forgot to mention that after my run through the Old Kingdom the other day, I used my frost emblems to grab the Libram of Three Truths. It seems to have upped my DPS against Cult of the Damned mobs near the Argent Tournament by over a hundred or so DPS. Sweet!

In what can be seen by some as ‘emblematic’ of the casual route WoW is said to be on, there’s a new Feat of Strength achievement to be had in patch 3.3.3: Emblematic. This is an easy achievement, and if you’ve done any dungeon delving in Northrend, you’ve probably got this one. Some would say that it’s too easy of an achievement to be a Feat of Strength, but may I remind them that there are Feats of Strength for just logging in. Argument over.

Aw, man.. I forgot to post the most important thing I’ve done since patch 3.3.3 hit – I built Jeeves. It was no big deal once the Titansteel cooldown was lifted. Now I need to try him out sometime.

I logged in this afternoon, post 3.3.3, and turned my handful of honor marks from the battlegrounds into emblems that I could then use to earn honor. Unfortunately, they could only be collected in stacks of 10. Therefore, everyone was collecting 10 emblems and converting them one by one, over and over again. Of course, some dumb ass thought this collection of players was the perfect place to pull out a train set. Jerk.

I then queued for my first random battleground, landing in Arathi Basin.

Bad memories of the Eye of the Storm battleground match I was in came flooding back. Like that match, the Alliance team was way overmatched. We lost, big time, but I had the best round this time of anyone on my side. With 9 killing blows and 31 honorable kills, I was the leading killer for the Alliance. Of course, two paladins on the horde combined for 34 killing blows and 114 honorable kills, dwarfing anything I did. I helped kill them each twice, though – not important, but fun nonetheless. I only died three times this battle, versus the 11 I had in that earlier EotS match. One anecdote from this match was myself, heading up two other paladins, convincing the two killer Horde pallys I mentioned earlier to hesitate instead of charging in, and when at last they did we killed them both. It was satisfying and I got both killing blows. Bonus!

I wound up in Ahn’Kahet: The Old Kingdom last night with another interesting group. We had a tank in partial PvP gear (like I can talk about people wearing PvP gear), a decent hunter, a well-geared restoration shaman and a fresh-to-80 feral druid in cat form. The cat let us know it was his first time here, so it became a learning run.

The first boss or two were pushovers, but when it came time to fight Jedoga Shadowseeker, we hit a problem. The first problem was that I was putting out way more threat then our tank, so I was constantly having to stop attacking and back peddle while he refocused the boss. Worse was that the tank and our hunter died, leaving the healer, the newbie cat and me to fight her. While the cat and I kept the boss busy, the healer did a battle resurrection on the tank to get him back in the fight. We didn’t wipe, which was impressive to me – I needed my lay-on-hands spell once during the fight, but we lived. I actually needed my divine shield spell three times this run, plus lay-on-hands. It was a touch-and-go run to be sure.

The final boss, Herald Volazj, was no big deal, not even with him driving us ‘insane,’ making us fight each other’s spirits. I like this pic I got from that fight.

Gav! I mean, the other Gav, the bad one – stop dropping judgment hammers on people! This pic just happened to catch my doppelganger judging one of my party members, in particular our shaman. Hey, Other Gav – We need her for the boss! Dumbass.

Time for the next chapter in Life of a Hero. We pick up as Gavelier leaves Northshire Abbey.

 

Stormwind! I was awe-struck when I first found Stormwind, and it’s theme music swelled up. I liked Stormwind as my primary business center for my first 60 or so levels, but that eventually changed. You’ll notice I’m going ‘sword and board’ here. I wasn’t sure what I should be fighting with, so I randomly changed between a one-hander with a shield and a two-hander for the longest time.

 

OMG, I’m underground! lol I was excited to leave the open air and head underground for the first time, even if it was just the Fargodeep Mine. Kobolds were relatively easy prey, except when they ganged up on me, which they did. Allot. And I died. Allot.

 

Wow, a treasure chest! This was the first treasure chest I ever found. I was in Fargodeep mine (obviously), and when I saw it I ran to it as fast as Gav’s legs would carry him. I don’t remember what was in it now, though.

  Jumping a ways ahead, I found these Pioneer Trousers of the Monkey in Westfall, and they were the first piece of armor I found with an enchantment on them. Thus, I wore them – not concerned with the fact that they were leather armor, vice mail armor. Nor did I know that  ‘… of the monkey’ isn’t the best pally enchant. I wasn’t too bright, early on.