Archive for the ‘Things’ Category

The other night is I ran a few non-Heroic dungeons with the guild (it was four lvl 85s and a lvl 84). It was all my buds, and we were on vent so that was fun too. Above you can see the lot of us in Stonecore.

Oh no, it’s High Priestess Azil! Whatever will we do??

Kick her ass, of course. The non-Heroic Stonecore was a breeze.

After a protracted process of getting our lvl 84 a high enough item level in Stormwind we headed to Halls of Origination.  Having never been here, I was at a slight disadvantage.

Thankfully vent makes everything easier. It’s so much easier to coordinate over voice then typing everything in the head of the action. The bosses were explained, we blitzed the place, and finally came to the final boss.

He fell with little effort. I learned that, vice Heroics, normal dungeons can be burned through by the tank-and-spank method allot. We rarely had to deviate from that other then to dodge the occasional AOE or floor attack. I wonder what Heroic would be like?

We spent about 15-30 minutes in Stormwind after that just chatting about gear, future dungeons, and how to maximize what we’ve got. One of my buds in the guild pointed me to the Belt of the Ferocious Wolf since I was exalted with the Defenders of Hyjal. He then crafted me an ebonsteel belt buckle for it. That was really nice of ‘im. Thanks dude.

Actually after one of the bosses in Halls, his weapon broke. Of all the things to have happen! It finally allowed me to use Jeeves in a group, who I got while in Ulduar with the same guy. It took me some time to build him, but I was like a proud parent when I did. Yay for engineering!

Happy belated 4th of July, everyone. I slept thought most of the holiday because I’m a lazy dumbass, but I got up in time to see some fireworks in Stormwind this morning. Later I saw more fireworks, this time in Tol Barad.

I didn’t do great, as usual, but I got an achievement. We were on defense and were within a second or so of saving the match. The Horde had 2 building and was converting a third (Slagworks) and we were racing to convert Ironclad Garrison. We were literally just on the cusp of pulling control away from them – seriously, mere seconds – and they grabbed Slags and won. Dammit.

One of my guildies, Luciditii invited me to go run a heroic, and I agreed. I’d not run a Cataclysm heroic yet so I didn’t know how I’d fare. Another guild mate, Drannen joined as well so it was officially a guild run. Drannen (an elemental shaman) had pumped his DPS up and was eager to put his 10-14k to use, and I was eager to see it. Luciditii (resto shaman) came as heals, and I was my usual ret spec. It was, as I said, a learning experience to see if I was capable of running a heroic. Let’s see how it went.

Pâmëløt (an arcane mage) and Jaconsus (a prot warrior) rounded out the group. We cruised up to Corborus who wiped us once. I died because I got hit when he resurfaced which made me feel kinda dumb. Anyway, we killed him on try #2. I also died on Slashhide but the group took him out. Yay for teamwork!

This is where it got interesting. We took time to prepare for Ozruk so I read up on his moves in the dungeon journal. We did ok for a while, but back luck got our tank killed, and soon it was down to Drannen and I to kill him. Yup, two DPS against a boss. The funny part is that we were doing pretty well. I kept myself relatively healed, Drannen pitched in, and with me dodging and striking I swear we could have pulled it off if I hadn’t backed into a second group of mobs. That turned out to be too much and I died. Try #2 was a win and we moved on.

Our first assault on Azil didn’t go so well/ Between getting overwhelmed by adds, Luciditii’s  mouse going AWOL, and  those accursed Seismic Shards, we wiped. While waiting for Luciditii to find a new mouse I was back in the dungeon journal. Eventually I got bored and called out, “Luci! Luci, you better get back here, you got some ‘splainin’ to do!” It got a chuckle from Pâmëløt, anyway.

Round two, as in the last post-wipe battles was a rousing success. I ultimately didn’t get what I really wanted (a chaos orb). Jaconsus and I both rolled need and he got it.  Damn. I guess I’ll have to run a few more to make my goggles. In any case it was a good time and I look forward to doing it again sometime. Thanks guys for taking me!

Gav found his way into his first Cataclysm dungeon tonight. Four guildies, including myself, took to Grim Batol thanks to the random dungeon finder. We were joined by a helpful gnome mage. Above you can see us ready to face a boss.  Big deal, he fell easy.  However, after our third boss, I was convinced we were done.

After we put down Drahoa Shadowburner I was certain the dungeon was over. No, we had the real final boss left to fight. Great. We wiped twice in the dungeon (once when we overdrew and once when the tank backed into a second batch of mobs and I backed off a ledge to my doom), but Erudax would prove to be a true test.

Keep in mind that I’d never faced him before, and I’d not researched him prior to meeting him. What happened was comedy gold. Here’s how our first encounter with him went.

• We attack him head on
• I don’t see anything wrong with a DPS-heavy tactic, so I burn my Avenging Wrath and Guardian spells.
• My guardian decides to freaking wander off from the boss
• I decide to follow him to see what’s so damn interesting that he’s not hammering the boss
• I see my first Faceless Corruptor and have a serious WTF moment

“Oh,” I said. It was at this point, with our mage dead and the rest of our party hurt (and the Boss still alive and very well) that I realized I had to attack the adds for us to win. My guardian knew that, but did I? Noooo. So that’s all well and good, we just have to… oh, we wiped. Ok, next life we’ll kill the adds and win. Hell yeah! Wait, what the hell is a Shadow Gale? Besides freaking lethal, I mean. I lived through one thanks to my bubble, but the second one killed me. Damn. I asked what I should do about that, and our tank said to stand in the vortex it created, which is great because that’s the exact opposite of what I was doing. Next time, we were all on the same page and kicked Erudax’s ass.

No one was hardly even hurt that time. Funny what happens when you actually know the fight. I got an elementium lockbox during the run so I popped back to Stormwind and made some Volatile Seaforium to open it with. Inside was nothing exciting, so I offered to open a guildie’s box (they’d gotten one too). I visited them in Uldum and tried to blow it open in the trade window only to blow myself up over and over. I finally got it open, and that was that.

It was a good night and I’m glad to have that first dungeon run under my belt. Thanks guild!

I was first to 81 in my guild. You all saw that. Unfortunately, I was third to 82, 83 and 84. Dammit. I came on on Saturday morning and was one of three or four level 84s. I was only about 12% through, so I opted to go to Hyjal, since I’d not been there and level my mining skill to 500. I ultimately got Coming Down the Mountain in the process and was over 70% of the way to 85. During all this I’d accumulated over 4k gold so I picked up Master Riding on my way to back to the Twilight Highlands. Finally I got there and picked up where I’d left off (after the beach quests with a certain dwarf who I’ll write about later). I quested like crazy and finally, at last, ding.

I had hit 85 first of all of my guild mates! I was so happy, and my guild master complimented me on it. So I got a completionist achievement in Hyjal, a Masters Flyers License, and I hit 85 first in my guild.

I’m all happy now.

Gav was in Northrend on Monday for a while. He mined up almost 90 pieces of Saronite Ore – with not a single Titanium Ore among them – and generally stopped by a few places he’d not been for a while and may never come back to. One of those stops was Sholazar Basin and the Oracles camp. I bought one last egg from them, for old time’s sake. It cracked open this morning and voila! Instant Green Proto-Drake! Times like this make it feel like the game doesn’t hate me personally.

Then I get screwed on quest drops for an hour and remember, oh yeah – it hates me. Bad.

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!

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.

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!

It’s the Brewfest! I stopped by the Brewfest outside of Ironforge with Gav this morning and did all of the available quests. They included catching Wolpertingers, slaying Pink Elekks, and racing Rams around to deliver beer. I also slayed Coren Direbrew, who was an absolute wuss. We showed up, the tank attacked him and we DPS’d him down. No big deal. The fun part was that I got Direbrew’s Remote. I immediately summoned my personal borer and went to the Grim Guzzler.

I’d never been there, so a couple of nice goblins got the band L80ETC to rock out for me.

That just made my morning.

We take a break from our PTR coverage to discuss what’s going with Gavelier on Live.

I’m not going to open this post with the trite pirate speak, but it is Pirates Day in Azeroth. You can speak to any commoner to get a pirate costume for a short while or speak to Dread Captain DeMeza in Booty Bay to get a 12 hour costume. Make sure you visit DeMeza to get your holiday achievement.

You may notice that I’m going ‘sword and board’ in the above pic, rather then wielding my usual Tyrannical Beheader. That’s obviously because I’d been off playing in a PvP scenario. This time, it was my first excursion into Warsong Gulch. That’s a cozy little battleground, ain’t it? I took my Dread Corsair  buff to the battleground (after waiting 9 minutes!) and had a great round. Sure it was mostly because my team was awesome and the horde seemingly gave up towards the end of the match, but I still had a good round.

I also (because we blitzed the hell out of the place) got a couple of achievements: Warsong Expedience and Warsong Perfection. I say the horde gave up at the end because after pitched fighting around the middle of the zone on our first two flag captures, they were nowhere to be seen on our third run. We all just tailed the flag carrier into our base without seeing a single hordie.  I never died, which was weird. I got hit hard a few times, but never enough to drop me below 50% health. I credit our healers (a couple of paladins and a priest) and my stocking up on resilience with stuff like my PvP armor and the flask I quaffed. I did crap damage but was in the middle of everything for 19 honorable kills. I was using my Seal of Justice, so that may have contributed to my low damage output (that and I don’t have a decent one-hander) Aw well.