Nothing Beats A Vacation

Well, maybe chocolate does, but other than that vacations are great.  Taking a break from 25-man raiding is proving to be very enjoyable, even if it means listening on vent to everyone else raiding (and collecting their epic loots) without me.

I’ve dabbled a little, taking Mingle in for a couple of 10-man Ulduar achievement runs (and picked up a fourth T8 piece for that very nice shadow priest set bonus), but I’ve probably spent more time out of WoW than in it (apart from some extended periods spent fishing and herbing).  Mingle is also sporting a new haircut, to try minimise the really blatant clipping that the priest T8 head has with most hairstyles.  (I find it quite annoying, but I guess it’s the price you pay for being fashionable)

Speaking of herbalism, it’s proving to be surprisingly profitable on Snowfall who has just reached the dizzying heights of level 13; the small assortment of beginning-zone herbs she’s picked and put on the AH (along with some Small Eggs, which are ridiculously profitable) have raised her bank balance to 15g already.  Needless to say, this has clearly demonstrated (to me, at least) that if I ever have the desire to make a clean start on a server, gold won’t be too much of a problem.

Snowfall has finally completed the starting zone quests, and is ready to begin exploring Ghostlands (unless I get distracted again).  It’s quite a change of pace, as the starting zone I usually run is solely the Gnome/Dwarf area.

It’s just unfortunate how…  anorexic the Blood Elf character models are.  The animations are really quite lovely, but the models themselves are personally rather unappealing.  I’m undecided whether to continue leveling her or if I should try rerolling a race that has a bit more substance to it.  (I guess it says something about my aesthetics that I find the dwarves most visually appealing – apart from their really awful dances, of course)

Kringle is facing the possibility of some time spent pet-levelling, and I’m keeping an eye open for a spirit beast (Gondria would be awesome, although it’s me and pretty much every other hunter looking for him).

I’m following with some interest the new addon manager from WoWInterface:  Minion looks interesting, but the early bugs have left me wary of trying it out for now, especially with the large list of addons I run (rough estimate of around 135 or so, between all my characters, including class-specific ones).  But I’ll probably be giving it a try when it’s a little more mature, and the addon-identification bugs have been stomped into submission.

Finally, I’m currently battling an old keyboard, having celebrated a return to drinking coffee by spilling some of my first cup in almost six months on my lovely Microsoft Natural Ergonomic Keyboard 4000, leaving it with several unresponsive keys.  I’m now looking at buying a keyboard protector and hoping I don’t have to buy a new keyboard (although fortunately the 4000 isn’t a hard model to find) to protect – with luck it’ll be possible to clean the spill off the traces inside the keyboard, but my initial disassembly and examination has left me uncertain about it.

And on the subject of buying stuff, I was reminded of an young-adult fantasy novel from my youth while browsing the comments of a post on Welcome to Spinksville!  As someone who’s ready prolifically all my life, the thought of revisiting fiction from my past is quite appealing, and in that spirit not only have I ordered a copy of So You Want To Be A Wizard by Diane Duane, but I’m also getting a copy of Next of Kin by Eric Frank Russell from a local speciality bookstore.  (Yay for literacy!)

For now, though, time to get a couple of dailies done before 10-man General Vezax.

/wave

Shifting The Goalposts

As I’ve previously mentioned, I’ve been dissatisfied with raiding lately (especially 25-man), and this week I decided that it was time to make some changes.

I really enjoy WoW, both the game itself and the social side of it with my guild, and the thought of becoming so disenchanted with raiding (and the pressures that are surfacing with the hard-mode bosses in Ulduar) that it taints the game as a whole is something I want to avoid.

Of course, the tricky bit about making changes is working out what changes are to be made.  My idea currently is to cut down a lot on 25-man raids (with the exception of coming in if there’s a shortage of dispellers or ranged dps in-guild), and maybe do some 10-man raiding if I can get an invite.

This means Mingle will be getting demoted (probably to casual raider or possibly just to member), which also means less loot (as full raiders get priority, and casuals aren’t eligible for tier loot) but as I’ve been passing on everything lately that’s not a concern.  But it gives me the chance to change my main

Any what will I be doing instead?  Well, I’m considering my options.  I’ve spent a bit of time playing Kringle and Pringle lately (and took Pringle into Naxx-10 with quite a bit of success – she came out with 7 epics, but sadly no tier items), and there’s always my anorexic horde hunter and lonely night elf druid (the latter is tempting, considering the new druid bear and cat models coming in the next major content patch, which means probably in 3.2).

There’s also a few other interesting games that have been underappreciated due to the time I’ve spent in WoW, such as Fallout 3 (which has had three new content patches of it’s own since I played it, the last of which is supposed to fix the rather abrupt end of the original game) and Mass Effect (which was fun to play through originally, and is proving fun to play through again).

So I’ll continue posting here, although not quite as much as I was when I was so enthusiastic when I started.  And I intend to continue playing WoW, and hopefully write posts consisting of more than lists of upgraded loot that my characters have managed to accumulate.

Speaking of writing, this post from World of Matticus is well worth reading if you’re a blogger:  The Purple Kodo: 13 Points of Blogging

Anyway, I’m still fishing.  For all that some things change, some things are still the same.

/wave

Meet The Family

For those who are curious about the motley crew of my characters, this post is for you both.  (Presented in no particular order, with the possible exception of ‘Chronological’)

First up is Pringlerouse the rogue.  When I finally decided to settle on this server (my highest level character previously was an undead rogue who managed to get all the way up to the dizzying heights of level 46 pre-TBC), I rolled a dwarf rogue to have something more aesthetically pleasing to play that I could use my existing knowledge with.  Needless to say, I was an utter nub when I started playing Pringle.  (Some mean-spirited yet accurate individuals may claim that not much has changed, and who am I to argue?)  After losing his status as my main to Ringle, it was entertaining to refer to him as my bankrogue or my level 70 bank alt.

Kringlelouse the hunter was the next to be created, as I was curious about the rumour that hunters were incredibly easy to level.  70 levels later, I had to agree.  Having just reached 80 on him, I think they’re still easy to level, but it is easier when your pet is the same level as your hunter.  On the subject of pets, all of his pets are called Tanstaafl; it’s a literary reference, and it’s easier than remembering multiple names.  (Note to self: level Kringle’s pets)

Dinglemouse the protection warrior followed, as I was intent on doing my part to relieve the great tank shortage at the time.  After hitting 70, and running Mechanar with guildmates, I realised that a newly leveled (and undergeared) warrior had no chance of tanking for dps classes wearing T6 at the time.  But I kept her around, and she was my second character to reach 80.  She was also my first female dwarf character, in reaction to all the references I heard about how rare they were.

Ringleprouse the rogue was next, as I wanted to play a rogue with all the nifty crafted epics that TBC gave us.  However, Pringle had a lot of enchanting and jewelcrafting recipes that I didn’t want to lose.  The logical decision (for someone with way too much time on his hands) was to level a second rogue.  This I did, and this character was my raider for all of the T5 and T6 content in TBC.  She was also my first to reach 80.

Mingledouse the priest came next, with the idea (at the time, during TBC) to level her as a healer to help out with guildmates needing to do heroics.  However, after Wrath launched, it was suggested that we needed a shadow priest to fill out our 25-man raid group, so I finished bringing her up to 80, geared her up in the best crafted gear I could managed, and the rest as they say is history.

Binglerouse sort of snuck in while I wasn’t looking, basically because a paladin was the single dwarf class I didn’t have at the time.  She was fairly easy to level, but I’ve yet to get around to bringing her to Northrend.  (I’ve no idea what spec I’d make her – she leveled as prot, which felt painfully slow yet was my fastest to reach 70)

Tingleflouse the druid was my solitary, token non-dwarf (it’s hard to get more opposite to a dwarf than a night elf), and was created with the tentative idea of making her my primary gatherer (as flight form works very well with mining and herbalism).  However, I was distracted around the time she hit 30.  She’s still 30, and still sitting in Ashenvale, waiting for me to regain some degree of enthusiasm.  (Maybe when Blizz finally brings out those mythical new druid forms)

Finglethouse the priest was that distraction, mainly due to someone on Vent (who obviously didn’t know me that well) making the comment “You’d have to be insane to level another priest.”  8 days, 17 hours and 19 minutes /played later, my second priest dinged 80.  (She was leveled 100% disc spec, which felt a lot slower and mana hungry than Mingle did leveling as shadow, but she got there)

The last character on the selection screen is someone quite new (and a bit out of character for me, not being a dwarf and all).  Meet Snowfall, the blood elf hunter.  This is something of an experiment to see how easy it is to level a character without the resources that I’ve been able to give my dwarves as they leveled (such as gold and gear), relying solely upon herbalism and enchanting for additional income.  It’s off to a good start; she has over 9G already at level 11.  I’ve no idea how long or how often I’ll play her, or even if she’ll get out of the blood elf starting zones, but she’s something different to do on those many occasions where I’m bored.  (As an aside, Blizz have really improved their animating skills since vanilla WoW – blood elves move beautifully.  It’s a pity they look like anorexic matchsticks.)

I did briefly try leveling a death knight, but the runic power thing just didn’t make any sense to me.  It was tempting to level one to 80 just to say I’d done it, but “bankdk” doesn’t have the same ring to it as “bankrogue”.

And that’s my extended family of characters.  It’s nice to meet you.

/wave

Ding 80! (Again)

Kringle has finally reached the hallowed heights of level 80, which leaves Pringle, Bingle, and Tingle to go.  (Having said that, I’m considering replacing Tingle, the underplayed druid in my lineup, with a new character on the Horde side – at least it would be something different to do)

25-man raiding has progressed yet again, with General Vezax falling before us after a single (surprisingly focused) session.  It was actually quite a fun fight from my perspective, and it’s been a long time since I’ve used my wand so much.  However, we were having lots of issues with interrupt-capable players failing to, well, interrupt (even our raid leader, a very capable prot warrior, was having trouble with that for some reason).

With this in mind, I’ve finally purchased dual-spec for Mingle, and have put together two slightly newer shadow specs to play with.  The first one has 3 points in Shadow Affinity (for those painful times I’m called to do AOE, and am paranoid about fatal aggro-pulls), and is closest to the one I’ve been raiding with until now.  The second one is mostly the same, but drops the threat reduction for Silence (and its useless prerequisite, Improved Psychic Scream), for ranged interrupts in a pinch.  Admittedly the silence spec is a bit of a reach, especially with the 45-second cooldown on it, but I’m curious to see if it’s actually useful (especially when we’re having issues as we did last night).

Previous build: link
Shadow Affinity build (13/0/58): link
Silence build (13/0/58): link

It’s actually a little embarrassing to go back and look at my current spec, and to see the holes in it (such as only one point in Improved Shadow Word: Pain)…  Well, hopefully I can learn from it.

Hopefully we can get our act together next week, and reach Yogg-Saron again for more frantic wiping at the end of the first phase.  (Seriously, that transition is insane – which is quite appropriate, considering where you are)

I’m getting Kringle a little more geared up (mostly with crafted epics), after which I’ll either work on leveling Pringle or see about rolling this mythical Horde character I’m considering.  I just wish we had playable goblins.  Or murlocs.

/wave

Contemplating Change, Leveling, And A Meme

Well, 25-man raiding is slow and…  not really fun, to be quite honest.  I’ve had a chat with an officer about my dissatisfaction raiding on Mingle, and have decided to take a couple of weeks (while I continue to raid) to think about what I want to do next.  (I’ll be passing on loot in Ulduar as well, as it wouldn’t be right to take loot that other people can use if there’s a chance I may be not raiding on that character)

Unfortunately there’s no openings for another tank, with one of our old guildmates returning his gnome warrior to the game.  (He’s a far better tank than I am, and a nice guy, so I’m not complaining about it)  I’m trying to come up with ways I can get raid time (in some capacity, probably outside of the guild) on my warrior, but options are pretty limited.  I might have to go raid-hunting, and see if there are any guilds who’d be willing to take a tank from outside their guild, and who raid on nights I’m not raiding on Mingle.  Possibly a bit of a reach, but I’ll see what I can find.

Speaking of Dingle, she has ventured into 10-man Ulduar again, and has another boss kill under her belt.  Most of the raid members are from another guild, and we managed to kill FL, Razorscale and XT-002, but Ignis and the Iron Council proved too much for us.  Sadly, Dingle has no shiny tank loot to show for it (although she did pick up a dps helm that would otherwise have been sharded – I really need to gem and enchant it at some stage).

My tanking inexperience showed itself with two bosses during the raid, both bosses we couldn’t get past.  First was Ignis, where I finally realised my taunts were ineffective if I hadn’t first damaged the target – I was on construct duty, and at the start had trouble keeping aggro on the constructs long enough to get them into the scorches.  I also caused one wipe when I wasn’t tanking the construct far enough into the scorch, so it wasn’t picking up the debuff that turned it molten.  By the end, though, I’d worked out what I had to do (and was doing it correctly, as best I can tell).

With both of these issues worked out (to my satisfaction, at least), we were left with issues with dps (we only had one character capable of enough burst damage to kill the molten constructs, who was unfortunately very attractive to Ignis, and kept getting hot-pocketed) and main-tanking (a DK who was having problems getting positioned correctly, and kept getting the scorches positioned either too far from the pools needed when killing the constructs, or positioned too close to the healers/dps who died pretty rapidly when accidentally scorched).  Eventually the raidleader threw his hands up in despair and we moved on to XT (who we one-shot).

I had a brief positioning issue with the Iron Council, where I was tasked with tanking Steelbreaker at the start, and didn’t pull him out of his damage-amplifying rune quick enough on one attempt, but in general the group just didn’t perform well enough get any further (although it was getting pretty late at that stage).

Other than that, I’ve been putting some time (and gold) into leveling Kringle over the last few days.  He’s currently about a third of the way through 79, and should be 80 today if I don’t get distracted (which is pretty likely).

Some time fishing on Kringle yesterday means he’s now officially a fisherman – which by my standards means he has the 200 points of fishing skill required to equip and use his Fishing Pole.  That gives me 6 characters I can do the fishing daily on, which is about the only daily I’m doing regularly currently (apart from the cooking daily for Fingle and Kringle, who are both working towards the 100 Dalaran Cooking Awards achievement – they’ve both passed the 50 awards part, and are on the home stretch now).

But before I get back to my leveling, here’s a meme that caught my eye.  (Snagged from Mend Pet)

The instructions:

1. Go to “wikipedia.” Hit “random… Read More”
   or click http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Special:Random
   The first random wikipedia article you get is the name of your band.
2. Go to “Random quotations”
   or click http://www.quotationspage.com/random.php3
   The last four or five words of the very last quote of the page is the title of your first album.
3. Go to flickr and click on “explore the last seven days”
   or click http://www.flickr.com/explore/interesting/7days
   Third picture, no matter what it is, will be your album cover.
4. Use photoshop or similar to put it all together.

And what did I end up with?

The first album from BNS Turag.  Brought to you by random wikipedia links, a quote from Socrates, and a photo that felt surprisingly appropriate (well, to me it did).  I’m not going to do the ‘name people to continue this meme’ thing, as I’m just not really into that, but if anyone reading this wants to give it a try, put a link to your results in the comments.  (I’d love to see what other people come up with)

Time’s passing, so I guess I should log on and get Kringle to 80.  (That Nesingwary 4000 he has in the bank is waiting to get brought out and equipped)

/wave

So, What’s New With You?

It’s been a quiet few days, with just the usual raids and a couple of nifty new toys for Dingle to play with.

Yup, this is 3 Tournament pets worth of chopper.  And I have to say, the appeal of the tournament dailies wears off quick when you have multiple characters doing them – Fingle, Mingle and Dingle are all champions now, with Mingle and Dingle champions of four of the five alliance factions.

Dingle has also ventured into Ulduar at last, downing Flame Leviathan and tanking Razorscale.  The zone has been nerfed substantially since I first ventured in there – I suspect it’s actually within my ability to tank it now, provided the raid is geared enough (and 10-man Naxx gear may be good enough, if the players know what they’re doing).  Sadly, she didn’t get any gear from those bosses, but hopefully next time will be more profitable.

Anyway, I’ve cut down my playing time lately because it’s currently just so unsatisfying; Mingle is doing 25-man Ulduar, Dingle will be tanking 10-mans (whenever we can scratch up enough players (which has been once since 3.1 went live), and what’s left is basically just the fishing dailies plus whatever other dailies I can be bothered doing.

I’m deliberating whether or not to put together some gear lists from Ulduar – a list of tanking gear from 10-man Ulduar is appealing, albeit mostly out of curiousity about what there is in there for Dingle to work towards.  I’ve also roughed out a quick guide to setting up Power Auras to display on-screen when Mingle’s flask has worn off while I’m raiding. (it’s happened so often that it got quite annoying).

But for now, I have a little fishing to do (and maybe a handful more dailies) before I head out this afternoon for my second viewing of Star Trek.

/wave

Sometimes Less Is Enough

I went to start doing my Tournament dailies yesterday, and I realised they’d crossed that invisible line from “just another daily” to “sheesh, is it finished yet?”  Time to cut down, I think.  One character’s round of tournament dailies per day, or something like that.  (I currently have three champions, so you can imagine how much time I could put into it if I was of a mind to)

The two tournament pets I listed on the neutral AH failed to sell, so I reduced the price a little, and put them on the Alliance AH instead for 4000g each.  They sold that night.  Can you say Ka-ching!?

Dingle’s chopper is getting closer to fruition – I’m just girding my loins before transferring painfully large amounts of gold to her, in order to buy the remaining mats she needs to make it.

25-man progression is slow but steady – Thorim threw his hands up in despair and gave us his loot last night.  10-man progression is…  Well, I’m sure it’ll start for the second group any day now.  (It’s getting quite frustrating – we almost had enough people this week, just had some scheduling hiccups and a shortage of healers who weren’t saved to the first group’s run)

Fortunately my week has Star Trek to look forward to; it might alleviate my disappointment over the PvP Children’s Week achievement that I’m refusing to do.

Also stumbled across this thought-provoking item: Players > skill > gear?

Not in a hurry to log on today, so it’s time to watch a movie before logging on to start some dailies.

/wave

I Blame Hollywood.

Justification for not posting recently:  Went to see Wolverine, and left oddly disappointed that it wasn’t overtly disappointing.  The time spent seeing Wolverine (and related socialising) meant less time in WoW.  Expect me to catch up in a day or two.

While I get started on my dailies, here’s a picture to distract you.

/wave