Archive for the ‘Lug’ Category

I’ve been gone for a long time, so to make up for it here’s one of those “holy crap this is too way freaking long why don’t you have a life” posts. I’ve been leveling alts, obviously, and one is my level 16 feral-specced night elf druid Wrain (I’ll be referring to my alts by their current level, not necessarily the one shown in the included picture). He’s seen above in cat-form along Darkshore’s coastline, slaying water elementals.

Next we check in on Budman, my level 25 frost-specced human mage.  Budman’s working his way through the Wetlands right now but it’s been slow going.

Here, his water elemental tries to engulf a raptor. Budman isn’t real tough, and his elemental is even softer so I have to be careful with these two.

Here we see my level 31 demonology-specced human warlock and his Fel Guard minion Okiash… Okinasa… Okisaki… Oki-SOMETHING. Whatever, I just call him Oki. Crane and Oki are lethal while running through the (admittedly lower-level ) Northern Stranglethorn.  They got here at level 29 and are just cruising.

Hey, here’s a pic of Crane’s new buddy, a lashtail hatchling. This little guy followed me around as I killed Basilisks for him to feast upon. I was only too happy to kill critters for his consumption.

I eventually drug Buddy (I named the little red raptor Buddy) into a cave to kill… someone. Or four someones. In any event, everyone I saw died and I completed the quest. Yay!

What the HELL?! I was taking Lug, my level 33 beast mastery-specced Tauren hunter from Mulgore to Desolace and I came across a FRICKING RABBIT WITH A GOD DAMN AXE IN HIS EFFING MOUTH! I repeat, for emphasis: WHAT THE HELL?!

Once I dropped down into Desolace, I was smack-dab in the middle of Satyr Central. I had only one tip here (a quest I got from the Warlord’s Post or whatever that signboard in Thunder Bluff was called) so I just knew I had to keep walking and killing while following an arrow on my map. Yay for immersion!

I was eventually sent with Pig (yay for Pig!) to a huge fortress to kill baddies. We went in, killed left and right, and then pig had some kind of Fel fit.

Yeah, Pig! You go! You go with your… giant… black… two-legged… purple winged… self… OK, seriously –WTF?? Getting splattered enough times with these punks blood upon killing them turned both Pig and I into freakish demon-things. It didn’t seem to bother us, so we kept on killing.

That’s all for now. I’m doing my alt-leveling now because they’ll likely go on the back-burner again on Tuesday as Gav grinds to 85. We’ll see.

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.

The latest PTR patch includes a rest ability for boars and bears. This ability increases your pet’s happiness some, but also makes them inactive for 15 seconds. I was aware that bears had this power, but when I took Lug out on the new PTR and Pig refused to attack – opting to take naps instead – I researched the ability to find out that boars share it as well. Why? I know not. It was also set to auto cast, which was what brought on Pig’s sleepy demeanor.

So hunters, take note. Boars and bears are lazy, and you need to tell them they can’t take naps mid-battle. Lesson learned.

Here’s ‘Klug,’ Lug’s PTR alter-ego. I found that I love the new Focus mechanic over mana for Lug. I also picked him up a decent bow to replace his gun now that weapon skills are gone, meaning that I didn’t have to train Lug’s bow skill. Pig was in rare form and we killed random mobs even easier then we do on live, but Stridy was MIA. I had a button that said, ‘Call Stridy,’ but it didn’t work. Stridy’s button under the new ‘Summon Pet’ button didn’t work. I’ll have to submit a ticket on that.

Here’s ‘Krayne,’ Crane’s doppelganger.  He trained up as a demonology warlock and promptly got a Doomguard. Wow. Kirashak is powerful, and the new tricks (like the new soul stone/soul burn mechanic) were cool, but what amazed me was my ability to nearly ignore my mana bar.  Normally Crane has to watch his mana bar closely because I’m almost always short but here I just cast away with impunity.

To this point, I really like the patch’s changes, and I can’t find serious a fault so far.

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.

I’m back at last with a non-Cataclysm-related post. I wanted to catch folks up on where my characters are.

Lug and Pig are now level 29. I’m almost to my current goal, level 30! Lug still has those heirloom shoulders so leveling hasn’t been real bad. He’s been in the Hillsbrad Foothills allot lately, taking a break from Thousand Needles. That place is not allot of fun to me.

Gav was in Wintergrasp again today. I did ok, dying twice – once one-on-one to an Orc rogue, which never should have happened except that I was 90% asleep at the time. I had him dead to rights and couldn’t finish him off. Dammit. While running back after that death, WoW froze and crashed. When I logged back in, the battle was down to 45 seconds and everyone was just chilling in the courtyard. WTF happened to the Horde? No one was fighting, and I had been standing in one of the side areas of the fortress when my game froze and came back to find myself alive. Weird.

With the honor I earned in WG, I went to Stormwind and bought a mount I’ve wanted for a long, long time – a Black Battlestrider. I wanted one the first time I saw one but they used to cost Battleground tokens. No more! A mere 50k honor and it’s mine. Gav’s happy now.

This is a self-indulgent new article series where we look back on Gavelier and company’s early days. Some of these pics don’t show me at my best, but they should all be fun to share.

 

Gavelier as he looked as I created him on March 5th, 2008. This is an actual screen from his creation, and not a reenactment. I didn’t have Burning Crusade yet, and was still really uneducated about WoW in general (you’ll see what I mean in a pic or two). I named him Gavelier by combining cavalier and gavel, which is what I thought his big hammer looked like.

 

Yay for kobold killing! I was scared of those kobolds at the time, not understanding that they wouldn’t attack on their own. Gav’s wearing  Frayed Pants, which is a dumb thing to put on a paladin. Not as dumb, though, as this.

 

A robe. A robe!! At the time I thought the robe was very paladin-y. How little I knew about World of Warcraft paladins. Now Gav runs around in huge, heavy, spiked armor, wielding a heavy sword. Oh, how far we have strayed! lol

“Yes, Gavelier, Flimsy Chain Pants are a step in the right direction. Now to just finish the set and stop wearing cloth or leather like some ‘common’ class.” I was happy to see my first mail armor drop, but this wouldn’t be the last time I’d slip into lower-class armor.

 

While here, I thought I’d share my first-ever WoW screenshot. Yup, that’s Lug. Lug is the only toon I rolled before Gavelier, which makes him special to me. So why is Lug only level 23 while Gav sits at the level cap? I have no answer.

Ok, so it’s note quite a “Catch-22,” in that there’s no catch, but Lug is level 22. He picked up dual-wielding at level 20, as you can see. I hit 22 in Stonetalon Mountains with Pig at my side, but for kicks I went back to the Crossroads and picked up Stridy. You remember him, right? My Tallstrider? Well, I learned that it wasn’t just having not played in a while that made Pig feel like such an improvement; Stridy just sucks. Now I’m at a quandary… do I get rid of Stridy, or hold on to him in hopes that I’ll find a use for him someday? I’ll have to think that one over.

I’ve been doing the Sons of Hodir dailies pretty much, well… daily for quite some time, and it’s paid off finally. Sorta. lol I hit Revered with them yesterday, and was able to pick up the Spaulders of the Giant Lords for Gav. They’re not particularly attractive, but whatever, their stats fit me better then my old Tempered Saronite Shoulders.

In other news, Lug dinged both levels 19 and 20 this morning, as did Pig. Now Lug’s got some new toys to play with, plus he qualifies for his mount when patch 3.2 hits. Pig got his fist talent point, which I spent on Charge. I could have upped his stamina or raised his armor, but I wanted him to better engage enemies. He’s, well… kinda slow. lol This makes him engage enemies much quicker to keep them off of me. Plus, it helps his DPS, which is nice. Lug also leveled up his leatherworking skill to 55 and his skinning to 130, so he made himself some new gloves. It’s been a busy night for the ol’ bull.

This is a quickie post to say that Pig is actually a little hard on my heart. lol Seriously, I can’t count the number of times since getting him I’d be running along and he’d lag behind, falling off-screen. Being a natural paladin, seeing just my avatar is nothing odd to me. What is odd is Pig suddenly catching up with me. At least four times in the last 12 hours I’ve had an “OMG something’s attacking me!… oh, it’s just Pig” moment. I’ve also had several, “Wait!! What the hell happened to Pig? He was just… oh, here he is” moments as well.  *sigh* Why can’t I just remember he’s there and not panic when he disappears and then panic again when he shows up?

Pets. The bane of the average class.