Archive for the ‘Gavelier’ Category

Woo hoo! Guild first to 81! I’m not going to hit 85 first, so this was a nice moment in the sun. I also reached the Friendly rep level with my guild. Yay!

They’re not in this picture, but there was this cow (Tauren) dude who was trying to talk to the brain on the right of the screen. No, I’m not kidding. It was hard to see him with the crowd he gathered but I swear it looked like he was throwing rocks at the thing’s brain while saying, “talk! Talk damn you!” Uhm, I’m no scientist but I’m pretty sure that’s not how it works. You don’t just chuck stuff and something’s brain and it gets chatty. I came through a few times and he was usually hurling stuff and telling it to talk to him. Dumb cow. Eventually he made a crab the intermediary between the two, and guess what? It worked, probably because the crab DIDNT’ TOSS JUNK AT HIS BRAIN LIKE A DUMBASS! Proof that your average crab his smarter then a Tauren.

I joined forces with a  priest at one point and helped her take this big mean thing down. Really. I don’t care if this pic caught me with my axe on my back and my hands at my sides. Seriously, I helped! I naturally led us two in DPS (she was a shadow priest), so yes, I did pitch in. This picture lies.

That’s all for now with Gav. Now I’m going to  go hop on my Wor Machine.

It’s Cataclysm time! Here’s where I waited out the last few minutes until 3:00 AM EST. I ultimately had to log out, spend five minutes logging back in, find out that I had to restart to enable Cataclysm, spend 25 minutes logging back in, and finally now, after 3:30  I could get started. Phew! I trained archeology, engineering, mining, first aid, old-world flying and then followed a quest line that threw me on a boat.

An absolute ton of us headed off to Vashj’ir. Seriously, I don’t know how this boat sailed under this load.

Oh, that’s right. It didn’t. We got sunk.

Uh, that’s not good. I don’t have to fight that, do I? Turns out I didn’t. What I did have to fight, though, was over a hundred other players.

It was over an hour I spent in the entrance area for Vashj’ir, just trying to get the simple goods needed to move on because everyone else wanted them too. On top of that the mobs were spawning at a furious rate. You wouldn’t kill a mob before it’s replacement would show up. You had to pick a fight and lead the baddie away from it’s spawning ground to avoid getting mobbed. In just over an hour here I accumulated almost 3g in repairs, and I never got killed. Holy crap.

Aaaaaahhhh! Help!  Help Help Help Help Help Help Help Help Help Help!! I’ve been hijacked! The Earthen Ring saved me, thank goodness. Oh, and y’know how I mentioned having almost 3g in repairs? I couldn’t find anyone to repair my gear! I finally found one in a cavern (following a quest line) and I learned that I had also accumulated over 11g in vendor trash. Wow!

So that’s how I spent my first few hours in Cataclysm. I had to bid farewell to a few of my epics, including my beloved Tyrannical Beheader. I’ll never forget you! My new green Barnacle Covered Greataxe is nice, though, with 46 DPS, 48 Stamina, 40 Strength and  99 hit improvements that ol’ battle axe. Yay!

The above pic is obviously of the Plants vs. Zombies knockoff in Hillsbrad. I didn’t do so well so I quit for a while at the pumpkin bomb quest. Dammit.

More importantly, though, is that Cataclysm will hit the U.S. shores at 12:00 AM PST, and I’m going to be there. I’ve decided that my first goal (unless there’s some guild pressure to do otherwise) is to take Gav to Vashj’ir. Hyjal doesn’t intrigue me, lore-based or not. I’m also set on my new race classes: a worgen hunter and a goblin shaman. We’ll see how it goes from there.  I don’t have big plans for my goblin but there’s no way in blue blazes I’m skipping the chance to play through Kazan and the Lost Isles. They look like way too much fun.

I’m playing with worgen names, and coming up with stuff like Worgone, Worpt, Worrynot, and other stupid crap like that. If I could get Ernest I’d take it. Think about it: Ernest P. Worgen. Yeah! My goblin’s name is probably going to be a spur-of-the-moment thing combined with whatever the hell I can get. You just know there’s going to be an absolute overload of the little green freaks.

While I’m here, I’m going to rattle off some more stuff I’m excited about, and why.

• Flight Master’s License – Absolutely no explanation needed.
• Loot-a-Rang – C’mon, it’s a boomerang that loots. That alone is enough to keep me an engineer for life.
• Guild Leveling – I’m in a smallish guild but dammit, we’re going to level as much as we can!
• Guardian of the Ancient Kings – This is cool, kind of like a spec-modified Gargoyle.
• Level 85 – Just getting Gav back out and playing meaningfully will be a pleasure.
• Archeology – This is going to be flat-out awesome. I can’t wait!

13 hours. That’s all that stands between all of us and Cataclysm. I’m ready!

Finally. It had been too long. Absence, as they say, can make the heart grow fonder. I had to do it.

I had to hit up Wintergrasp one last time.

I’ll likely never got back after Cataclysm launches on Tuesday so I wanted to go back and have one more great match. What I got started out abysmally slow, but ended up being perhaps my favorite match ever.

Blizzard now regulates the number of participants to create even matches, and at the start there were exactly four Alliance players, with me playing Raid Leader. We took everything that was able to be captured in the first five minutes, and then stood around and stared at each other. Finally we got organized and I led the most coordinated, communicative, and well-organized Wintergrasp defense I’d ever seen. Everyone was in touch, and we had all our bases covered, so to speak. Now, if only there was someone to fight.

I was running through the Broken Temple factory (seen above) when I noticed our control had gone down to 50%. A Draenei priest tipped me off that there was a hidden rogue near  by. We smoked out the undead rogue and killed him. Finally some action! Not long after things picked up with an Orc hunter, a troll shaman, a blood elf mage, an Orc Death Knight and some others joining the fray. It was time to put out organization to the test. We pinged our foes on the mini map to keep tabs on them. I was once under assault by the death knight, hunter and mage all at once at the Broken Temple (where most of the action took place) when my allies rode to my rescue. I did the same later, bailing out our Draenei priest buddy who called for help since he was specced for healing.

At one point I caught a troll shaman in the open and began to attack her. It turned out she was a restoration-specced shammy.

Kudos to you, Sisstah – you were (to be blunt) a freaking pain in the ass to kill. My saving grace was having my Draenei priest buddy (God, I wish I knew his name, I think it was Judgeandjury but don’t quote me on that) along for the ride. He healed me some and kept her fire elemental busy while I finally laid the smack down. This was a long and tedious freaking fight. She didn’t do allot of damage but she’d keep healing her stupid ass. Finally, two-on-one was too much and she fell. My big ‘hoorah’ moment came when I tried to take a siege engine down to one of the towers.

This dumb, apparently suicidal Orc hunter kept attacking my ride! I tried to tell him to stop but he wouldn’t listen. I warned him that it was in his best interest to leave me in the tank – I was much more dangerous to him on foot. He ultimately broke my ride, at which point he and his crocolisk assailed me. I was down to 15% health so I bubbled, healed to 80% and proceeded to beat the ever loving tar out of him. Ha! Gav: 1, stupid-ass Orc: 0.

We ultimately won with 45 seconds left to server restart. Go team!

Bored this morning after running my Stormwind profession dailies, I opted to clear the new Stockades for kicks. It’s neat that it’s been expanded as far as baddies and story, but it’s still really boring. The only interesting part was killing Hogger and having him drop a pair of shoes called Corpse Runners. I could have used those about 70 levels ago when I fought him originally back in Elwynn Forest as a young pally.

As anyone who’s following WoW already knows, The Shattering (aka patch 4.0.3a) has occurred on the PTR. Naturally I had to go take a peak, and I had some adventures.

First off, obviously there’s no Old-World Flight in 4.0.3a since that’s a Cataclysm bullet-point feature, but that didn’t stop folks from bitching and moaning the whole hour I spent touring Stormwind. As for Stormwind, it is GORGEOUS. I love the new layout, and the changing pavement is amazingly beautiful. I learned a few things while in the human capital. One, was that there is now a quite extensive crypt below the Cathedral of Light. Two, I had a pillow on my back.

I swear, I have no idea either. It eventually disappeared so I don’t know what it was about. I finally decided to head out and explore, with the stated goal of riding my bear north to the Wetlands. I left Stormwind and headed east to Redridge, and was met by a curious sign.

No transients? Ok, I’m not real bright, so could someone explain what the hell they’re trying to keep out? WTF? I actually first read it as ‘no transvestites,’ which might actually apply to a large number of players. In any case it ultimately didn’t apply to me so I rode through the zone to the Burning Steppes. I learned some interesting new facts about the zone during this ride through. For one, the Dragonkin population has exploded and absolutely overrun the zone. Next, there’s a crazy standing army of Blackrock orcs near Blackrock Mountain, which I guess makes sense. There’s also a new outpost near BRM called Flamestar Post and it has a gryphon master. It’s also the world’s stupidest flight point, since when I tried to catch a ride to Searing Gorge, I was told that I knew no connecting flight points. I was rightly miffed, ranting and pointing at a bevy of nearby flight points, but the dude was unmoved. Thoroughly pissed, I rode all the way back across the zone to Mogan’s Vigil and caught a gryphon north the Thorium Point.

Riding from there to Loch Modan, I came across some advice for those who may yet be working on getting the key for Stonewrought Pass: skip it. Seriously, the damn gate is gone so that key will be scrap come Cataclysm. Once in the Loch I nearly rode to my death while headed through Thelsmar to the Loch because the land just dropped away into the dry loch. I never knew it was that deep! I opted to ride to the Badlands for fun, and was looking around while autorunning when I happened to glance ahead for a second and saw… this.

I literally turned around and saw this crevice just in time to stop where you see me. What the hell is this? Shouldn’t they warn me somehow? I mean damn, I don’t need klaxons sounding or anything, but any kind of heads-up would have been nice! I navigate the game primarily via muscle memory, and I understand that Cataclysm is designed to shake me out of my routine and that there will be an adjustment period, but I see a slight differentiation between “adjustment period” and “getting tossed to my doom.”  You just know some developer is cackling each time a player autoruns to his doom here. I bet they keep stats and everything.

Once in the Wetlands I stopped by the Greenwarden’s Grove for a short before riding to the now-flooded Menethil Harbor to take a boat to Theramore in Dustwallow Marsh. Theramore was thoroughly boring to I boarded a bird and flew to Gadgetzan to see the damage there. The coastal water was – as we’ve been told – up to the gates of the city, but inside not much had changed. Apparently you can fight in a Ring of Blood series of battles there that a number of level 80s were blitzing through.

At this, after a couple hours of exploration, I called it a night. It looks like we’re but a week or two from this hitting Live, so get ready to relearn the old world. Just do everyone a favor and leave Dalaran before The Shattering. If you don’t, the rest of us don’t want to hear you whine about having to hike back to the old world on foot when they take out the Dal portals. You’ve been warned.

I’m back finally. I’ve been playing allot but not taking many pictures so that’s partially why I’ve been slow to post. Anyway, here’s what Gav’s been up to since patch 4.0.1 hit.

I hit up Wintergrasp as soon as I could and had a ball. I died once, but that was it as we blitzed the Horde in an offensive siege. Word of Glory is a God send sometimes in PvP. I also really dig Blizzard’s new raid frames. They worked wonders in Wintergrasp and eliminated my need for the plugin Grid.

Today I joined my first post-4.0.1 random heroic and it was obvious that I was rusty. It’s been almost a month since my last heroic dungeon, but that’s no excuse for forgetting to take down Crusader Aura for Retribution. I also wasn’t thinking and tried to cast Blessing of Kings on everybody (like I used to have to) when a single cast now covers the entire group. I actually needed to cast Might instead because our druid was already covering out stat buff. It was uneventful until our healer died during a bad pull. Fortunately for us our tank was a blood-specced death knight and all of the DPS could self-heal so we survived. Our druid even battle-rezzed our healer. Go team! I nabbed the Lodi Dodi and King’s Bane achievements on this run as well. It was a good night.

I got thinking this morning about the early-level changes to the classes in patch 4.0.1 and how they would have effected me while I was starting out. I was wondering what I would have done differently, and what would have stayed the same, primarily with my first two toons, Lug and Gavelier.

Thanks to the little icons on the talent trees specifying them as either tank, DPS or healer trees, Gav likely would have chosen retribution or protection for his tree rather then leveling into his early 30s as holy. I thought that I needed all the healing buffs I could get to survive and didn’t understand that increased durability or sound damage-dealing can also help keep my ass  ambulatory. I truly didn’t know what the ret or prot trees did, just that they didn’t give me healing improvements.

The addition of Crusader Strike as a baseline pally power would have sped my leveling up dramatically, and getting Templars Verdict or Hammer of Righteousness at level 10 would have made it even easier. Leveling with auto attacks and the occasional judgment was slow going.

The change for Tauren hunters to start the game with a tallstrider pet wouldn’t have changed Lug’s experience much since his first pet was a tallstrider named Stridy. It may have made the early game a little faster since I would have a pet’s DPS as well as my own, but the big change would have of course been the removal of ammo. Countless times early on I’d be out in the field fighting only to run out of ammunition, at which point I often died. The change to focus wouldn’t have made a big difference then either because well, Lug was my first character and the concepts of rage, energy and mana kinda blended together in my head. It was only after playing rogues and warriors (and later Death Knights) that I would have understood the difference.

It’s going to be interesting to un-mothball some of my low-level toons like Goldfox my lvl 12 gnome rogue,  Priset my lvl. 11 undead shadow priest or Slew my lvl. 14 Draenei Shaman to see if I can re-spark my interest in them. When Cataclysm hits, I’m sure they’ll get some burn.

After Gav hits level 85 that is.

For whatever reason I opted to ride WoW down to the server shutdown tonight, enjoying my last action in the Wrath of the Lich King, patch 3.x era. I have amazing memories from this series of patches. I went hit levels 60, 70 and 80 during these patches. One of my very first posts here covered the changes in the original Wrath content patch. I ran my first dungeon, heroic dungeon and raid during these patches. I fought my first battlegrounds during the 3.x run, and of course, I fought relentlessly in Lake Wintergrasp.

Actually, that’s one of the things I did while riding the Wrath patches to their end. The Alliance again successfully repelled the Horde, even though they had a tenacity of 10x (and health in the 100k range). I went as prot again and had fun. Once that was over, though, I opted to go to Ironforge to wait to train.

While waiting for the server to shut down, I fished for Old Ironjaw. No luck, as you would imagine.

There Gav now sits, waiting for the servers to go live with patch 4.0.1 so he can train his new skills. What will he do with them first? Maybe Wintergrasp again, maybe a random heroic. Only time will tell – and the time will come tomorrow.

Hey, everyone, how are you enjoying Brewfest? Personally, it’s gone pretty well. I’ve run rams all around Dun Morogh and Ironforge for the last few days, but I finally got what I wanted: membership to the Brew of the Month Club. Yay! I also kill Coren Direbrew about every day. Today I ran a group with a druid tank who said, “everybody on Direbrew, make it quick.” Make it quick, huh?

Ok.

I put out  2k more DPS then the next highest player, almost hitting 5k (4.79k, actually). I think that qualifies as doing my job fast. I netted the Bitter Balebrew Charm to go with the Mithril Pocketwatch I got the other day. Pretty nice, but I want a Great Brewfest Kodo. That’s my ultimate goal right now. Onward, Gavelier!