Noob tanking

A few weeks ago, I payed the 1000 gold for a dual spec as a protection paladin. Since we run Naxx regurly and our Main Tanks are pretty much past Naxx gearwise, I managed to pick up some nice tankgear over the last few weeks. Never used it though. untill this week:

Because one of my guildies had a "low" level alt that had some quests in the Nexus and Azol Nerub and I hadn't much to do that night, I tried tanking those. Despite me not having a clue what to do (forgot Righteous Fury at the start, didn't start using Avenger shield untill the second dungeon, and just don't start about Blessing of Sanctuary) it went well. My gear was unenchtend and ungemmed, so I took care of that the next day. Our shaman healer still needed gear upgrades and practice. What better way to practice than a noob tank? So I tried my hand at a few heroics: Azhol Nerub, Utguard Keep and Utguard Pinacle. Why not everything went smoothly as normally, I think I did ok (mainly because the group asked for another run after the first two).

I quite enjoyed tanking. I still like dishing out damage better, but I see myself tanking more often in the future. My gear is good enough to cover up my total lack of skill (crit immune and hitcapped), and with some more practice I might be able to do some serious tanking if needed :)

So what's going on further? We're trying to 8man Naxx at the moment. Got spider and plague cleared now, and are on the third boss of the construct quarter. Hopefully we'll be able to clear it on sunday. Repwise i'm still grinding with ogri'la (Honered, 16 more days of dailies) and sha'tari skyguard (Revered, about 5 or 6 days left). Have started with Netherwing (honered, 7 or 8 days left) and thorium brotherhood (honored, about 54 cores left to go). So I won't be bored any time soon :)

Dating you up-pahpah

*slaps self on the wrist for stupid Jeff Dunham-joke*

So, what have I been up to lately? Weeeeeelll...

* I helped instance-boosting a lvl 79 shaman to 80 because we lack healers in Vintage. (we should have a rule that forbids them to go on holiday together... No use doing anything with both our healers in France)

*I am working on my Sons of Hodir-rep, and thanks to the previous point (boosting him through HoL and HoS) and to some very friendly guildies whom I can't thank enough for their relics of Ulduar, I am now halfway to exalted. Shoulder-enchants, here I come!

*Tecrin has broken her previous record but is no longer the Vintage Champion of Going Pop in Naxxramas. Booooh. Can't remember who it was, although I'm quite certain it was Necrotica, but the entire raid group broke my old record of 9 deaths in 1 run and pushed the bar up to an astounding 16 deaths. Good job, everyone. Good job. Also thanks to the new MT and freshly levelled lvl 80 shaman for making it possible. (:P)

*Panoramooh has undergone some changes. While my way of testing a new character works perfectly when I'm not the only one running around killing things, I don't have a Kavash near me to save my butt when I'm in trouble and therefore spending my talent points by order of fancy doesn't quite do the job.. So I decided to go with an all-Feral build because it is the fastest way of levelling according to Wow Wiki, and I am loving it. LOVING IT. Feral charge = utter win. I can totally imagine Mooh-in-cat-form going all karate-style HiYAAAAAAAAH! when pouncing on her prey from behind... I wish I could do that with Tecrin. She'd be a total ninja. (in a good way. not in a 'I haz your lootz, muhaha' kind of way.) Now all I need is some kind of airborn-backstabbing attack to do while soaring through the air and Mooh is the real new karate-kid.

Anyway. It's a quicker levelling build, I'll tell you that, but it kind of defeats the purpose of my Dignified Headmaster's Charge because I don't really use the spellpower and intellect anymore. I already trained her in daggers and fistweapons (because I was in Orgrimmar and figured it couldn't do any harm to learn those, just in case) but I need to check into those other heirlooms and see if there's a more suitable weapon I can give her for this. It might speed up my levelling even more ^_^

So, I'ts been a few days since I last posted. This is what happened over the course of the last days:

- I hit exalted with the consortium

- I hit exalted with all the goblin faction (and now dislike dire maul, who would have thought). I've now hit 30 exalted

- I ran Naxx 10 again, and finally got my tier 7 shoulders, not to mention a nice hitrating belt and a funky DPS ring

- Since I didn't need my tier 7 pants now, I ran UK heroic to switch back to the pants I wore before getting my tier pants (which i sold.. stupid)

- Malygos went down, finally. I'm now proudly running around dalaran with my Champion of the Frozen Wastes title.

- We went back into Ulduar last night, and we can safely say we have now 5/14 of ulduar on farm. If not for the fact that our 2 mainhealers are heading to france today, we could start on the watchers next week.

So right now, I'm grinding rep with the sha'tari skyguard and ogri'la. Not sure how much time that's going to take, but I'll get there. 25 tabards, here I come.

Your oversized blue arse is ours, Maly!

Ladies and gentlemen: we got him. It took us 20 wipes, I think 4 nights, countless stacks of buff-food and drinks, tons of gold in repair bills, but we did it. The king of the Blue Dragonflight is down.

And only dropped two pieces of loot. Cheap bastard.

Anyway, now we can focus completely on Ulduar! Can't. Friggin. Wait. For. Tonight.

New rants? From me? Oh, I promise I wont break them this time...

Things I learned while in Ulduar.

* I need a macro that says 'Oh crap, not again', or something similar, every time I die, especially for Ulduar. Dying 3 times in a row on trash? Not a big deal for me at all... *grmblincoherentswearinggrumble*
* Clear trash first. Nuff said.
* Razorscale is not that hard at all once you get the hang of it. That said, I still don't understand why I ended up dancing around in blue flame puddles all the time.. Or why she had to land exactly on top of a blue flame puddle so that I could dance in them. Or maybe I'm just blind.
* Photoshopping 'Vintage First' pictures makes me giddy.
* I got lootz! only two weeks after I got my T7 shoulders, I am now the proud owner of a pair of Treacherous shoulderpads!
* The Deconstructor-voice is killing. Nuff said.
* Not reading tictacs correctly is even more killing. Especially when you run in after wiping, not check why we wiped so fast in the first place, and get killed within ten seconds on the second try. I swear, we died even faster that time... Note to self and raid group: Kologarn himself also needs to be tanked. Not just the arms.

Furthermore, Tim and I decided to try out an achievement: Dwarfageddon. (kudos for the achievement title btw) And since we went into Ulduar yesterday on normal mode, we had to do this on heroic mode. Who said anything about Vintage not being hardcore?! Anyway, after Tim died once and we had some near-wipes, we found out the perfect way to do this was to just go in and do it with two Siege Engines, gather up a bunch of dwarves, wait until you think there's more than 100 and start waltzing! It was fun.

New toys? For me?

So the last few days have been strange but enjoyable. Tuesday my guildleader asked if I would be willing to lead the raids on tuesday from now on. While I'm not much of a natural leader, I accepted the offer. The next day, they shocked me by promoting me to officer without prior warning. A bit odd, since I've only been at the guild for a little less than 2 months now, but a nice boost to my ego anyway.

All other things aside, last night was our new regular ulduar run. We cleared flame leviathan two times allready, and while we wiped on him twice due to random disconnects, we managed to down him aswell. After that we one shotted razorscale (even with our MT disconnecting) and downed the XT-002 Deconstructor after a few tries. We had a go at kologarn aswell, but failed miserably due to me not having the tactics correct. We'll get him down next week.

So dar, I'm quite enjoying Ulduar. It's not as much as a cakewalk as naxx, but we seem to manage nicely. If we keep this up, we might eventually clear this.

The Argent Dawn shall hear of my 146 valiant deeds

So, after 146 runs, it finally dropped :) I am now the proud owner of the Rivendare's Deathcharger. Suddenly, running Dire Maul 59 times to free knot doesn't seem so bad.

Vintage went back to ulduar last night. Seeing how we didn't have any healers at all, we just went for flame leviatan. After the fight i had to go sjump around the living room. Ironsoul dropped and despite almost the entire group rolling on it, I won. Should make a nice DPS increase.

Looks like we're heading back thursday, so that means I have tonight to continue rep grinding. Since I've hit exalted with the shattered sun offensive, I've now reach 25 exalted factions, and 21 tabards. I'm a bit torn between going for the consortium next of the sha'tari skyguard. Perhaps I'll do both..

Damn you, Alliance scum! Damn you all!

Oh, the joys of levelling.. There I was, a young, brave Tauren druid (Moooooooh!), exploring, roaming the world outside my comfort zone Mulgore, questing for those fine, lazy people holding up in The Crossroads who sent me on many a useless trip they could have done themselves easily enough and made it home in time for dinner too, but I digress. There I was, flying in from some other place on my trusty flightpath-wyvern, only to find out after landing that I ended up in a warzone. Not one single NPC alive in the whole of The Crossroads, thanks to one Nelf somethingsomething, and one Human DK. (I remember him well, for he looked stupid and had a name with a misspelling of 'death' in it. 'Tis a common thing, amongst 14-year old Death Knight Alliance players..) Who were camping the NPC's bodies for the respawn.

Now, how bored must you be, if you spend your time on WoW killing the same bunch of NPC's a million times in a row? Even more bored than when you start an alt, that's how boring.

I'm glad I hit level 21 and got out of there as fast as my little hooves could carry me.. But DAMN.

Anyway. On to evaluation. After finishing up the aquatic form-quests (that landed me a pretty new belt) I finally hit level 20 (21 actually, just hit it this morning), and got my cat form. Finally, something I can work with! Why, you ask? Because it's just like a rogue, that's why! I realise fully well that I started a druid to try out a different class, but you know.. Working with something you know is so much more relaxing than having to try out different things all the time to see what suits you. So too bad, Bear form, and go DIAF, strange-looking aquatic form with your looks that still boggle my mind till no end, I'm sticking with the pussy. Cat, that is.

I'm starting to dislike Rivendare..

Ok, So I've done 105 Stratholme runs now, and still the mount eludes me. I'm really starting to dislike Rivendare and enjoyed kicking the crap out of him in Naxx last night (or actually.. watching someone else kick the crap out of him. Because we use nuke tactic on the Four Horseman fight, I'm stuck on Zielek most of the fight).

We did a full clear of Naxx last night. Went pretty well, although we wiped twice on Meaxxna (WTF, we never wipe there), ended up 4 manning Heigan (I died even before the dance due to a lagspike) and wiped once at Kel'thuzad (all our melee dps and our tank got iceblocked.. whoops). Only some offspec loot me for (Minion Brancers) and again no shoulders, but it was fun :)

Mount runs and Naxx aside, I had some time to grind some rep too. I hit exalted with the Scryers and I'm only 2500 rep away from hitting exalted with the shattered sun offensive so probably will be exalted tonight. And perhaps I'll do some mount runs too..

Of blood elves and cows

So, yet another blog-post, but not by Kavash this time! Get used to it, because while he's busy grinding rep and doing mount-runs, I will be keeping you posted on other in-game woes and giggles. There are two subjects I will be shining my light on in particular: raiding and gaming with my main, the Blood Elf Rogue Tecrin, and levelling up my Tauren Druid Panoramooh.

On Tecrin:
Last week, I was lucky enough to finally get my hands on one of the niftiest weapons in the game for a pre-Ulduar 10-man raider: Kel'Thuzad's Reach. Powerful as hell, but equally ugly. No wonder I now think of myself as Captain Hook.
I also finished all the Argent Tournament-dailies available and earned the title 'Crusader', so no more kissing frogs for this lady!


On Panoramooh (but you can call me Mooh):
I believe that there are only three reasons for someone to start an alt: 1, when you want to see what WoW looks like on the flipside and decide to start a human rogue or dwarf huntard (guilty of both..) ,2, because you are interested in different races or classes on your side and want to try that out as well (again, guilty of both), or 3, because your guild needs you to.

I don't know about the last one, with everyone and his mother (if she's in the guild) starting a similar alt, but I am levelling an alt at the moment because of reason #2. With the blood-elf Tecrin safely stored in the icebox that is Icecrown, I figured it was time for some hooves to do a little rambling and I brought out my alt, the Tauren druid Panoramooh, which I started a while ago because I was curious. Here's a summary of today's 3-hour levelling session.

"RAAAARWHWHROMGSTUPIDMOBOMGRAAAWHRR!!!!"

Conclusion: I don't like levelling. Now, I must say, I tried my best to make it somewhat easier on myself, by buying two heirlooms: the Preened Ironfeather Shoulders and the Dignified Headmaster's Charge. With the +10% exp from the shoulders and the stats from the staff, I think I'm doing quite okay, dps and xp-wise. Unfortunately for me, I keep forgetting I'm not a level 80 Belf but a level 16 Tauren, and keep dying because of that. (note to self: do not jump off of high towers. That is suicide, I repeat, that is suicide.) But oh well. I guess I'll just have to live with that. (hurhur, pun intended, hurhur)


That's all for today!
-- Your friendly neighbourhood Rogue

I'm (going to be) so offensive

Unfortunatly, there was no raid yesterday. Due to some issues at work, our main tank and one of our main DPS had to bail. That left us with not enough people to continue, so we cancelled. Hopefully we'll be able to try again later this week.

So that left me with some time to continue my rep grinding. I'm currently working on the Shattered Sun Offensive and to be honest, it's one of the easiest and most enjoyable grinds so far. The dailies are easy at level 80 and award about 4k rep every day. For some extra rep boosts, you can always run Magisters Terrace (about 1500 rep per run). I will probably hit exalted with them next monday.

An extra plus side of this "grind" is that some of the mobs drop Sunfury Signets and Arcane Tomes which help me with my scryers rep. I just need 530 more Sunfury Signets, or 38 Arcane Tomes.

Because doing dailies for the shattered sun offensive only takes an hour at most, I tried some Stratholme mount runs too yesterday. I'm now at 27 tries, and still no mount. On the bright side, the runs only take me 4 minutes now and it will have to drop eventually. Perhaps tonight?

Confession

Ok, here is goes..

I’m Tim and I’m a World of Warcraft addict. And what’s probably worse: I know it, but as long as it won’t affect my work and I can still function in the normal society I won’t do a thing about it. And to be honest, it sure beats watching TV the entire night.

Anyway, this blog will be about how I spent my time in WoW. Time for a quick recap about what happened the last few weeks. After grinding my way to exalted with almost all the factions in Wrath of the Lich King I joined a “casual” raiding guild called Vintage (see link at the right). Since then, we managed to get naxxramas on farm status, done Obsidian Sanctum with 1 drake up en killed the first boss in Ulduar.

Time not raiding is mostly spend grinding reputation and doing dailies. Most of the time doing both at the same time. Eventually i’m hoping to achieve the 40 exalted achievement (for the nice title) and the 25 tabards achievement (for the spiffy tabard).Might take a few months (currently at 23 exalted and 19 tabards) but atleast I will have something to do.

Tonight will hopefully be the day we finally manage to kill Malygos, so I might have some pictures tomorrow.