Maybe I’m Not As Burnt-Out As I Thought

Yesterday I officially started raiding on Mingle as a disc priest, and it was pretty enjoyable.  Apart from the Faction Champions.

I’m not saying I dislike that encounter – indeed, it’s very much the opposite.  Healing through the Champions on 10-man was Awesome!  Seriously, that fight alone was the most fun I’ve had playing WoW in quite some time.  And the rest of the night was pretty good as well.

I’ve yet to get some feedback from the Healing Officer about my performance so far (I’ve been told not to expect too much until I’ve several raids worth of WWS for officers to study), but I’m cautiously optimistic.  I think part of that is the fact that healing (at least, Disc-style) plays up one of my strengths (reaction time) whilst avoiding my two biggest weaknesses (targeting mobs at range as a dps class, and hesitation when starting to dps).  But it’s quite a turn-around from the last time I did the Faction Champions on my priest – that left me fuming and probably the angriest I’ve been in a long time, when I last did it as shadow.  (That was the 25-man version though; I’ve yet to see what it’s like to heal)

I was also in for the first guild 10-man run of VoA and the new boss, Koralon, on tank Dingle.  It was easier than Emalon (and probably almost puggable, given decently geared people with at least a little competence), but a fun little fight.  I still haven’t been able to get in there on priest Mingle; missing out on the 25-man VoA run last night was annoying, but considering that we had so many new raiders that we ran a 10-man Ulduar simultaneously with the 25-man ToC run to give people something to do, it’s not really worth getting upset over.  (I guess I’ll have to see if I can get Mingle into a VoA25 pug)

Anyway, I haven’t done any ToC25 so far this week – I’m really hoping I get the chance, as I have enough emblems of triumph saved to be able to buy a t9.5 piece (probably the Shoulders) but need to get my hands on a Trophy of the Crusade.  It’s a pity the tier 9 is such a plain, characterless set – hopefully the tier 10 from Icecrown will make up for this set’s boredom.

But I have been in ToC10, and the guild group managed to clear it all – even Anub’arak (which was more fun than he was in AN).  After the 25-man raid, we went back to do heroic ToC10 and managed to get through both the Beasts encounter and Jarraxus.  (Sadly, the bosses don’t drop the Trophy I need for my shoulders – apparently they only drop from the tribute chests after killing Anub’arak, if you have enough attempts remaining)

Unfortunately we’re stuck on the Faction Champions again, which is even nastier than it was first time around.  Fortunately while it’s irritating to be wiping on the encounter, it’s challenging to heal and not mind-numbingly frustrating the way I found it when specced as shadow.  We’re going back tonight after 25-man, and I’m looking forward to the challenge.

For now, though, it’s time to get busy with the little bits and pieces I’ve been putting off – not least of which is grinding Netherwing rep on Fingle, who’s going to be my designated drake-rider.

/wave

And Now For Something Completely Different

It’s…

PvP!  (And good PvP, at that)

Now, I’m pretty sure all my guildmates are aware of how much I’ve vocally exclaimed how much I detest pvp on my rogue (an attitude that dates back to some awful experiences in WSG and arena).  They must, therefore, have been quite surprised to see me raising my hand for an invite when doing semi-premade battlegrounds.

I started off with Dingle last night (still specced and geared as prot), and not only did Wintergrasp twice, but also ventured into AB and EotS.  I have to say, PvP is a lot more fun when you’re not being used as a doormat by your opponents (which had been my previous experience).

Later on in the evening I decided to try something quite out-of-character, and switched to Fingle, my discipline priest.  Yes, I was going to try my hand at healing.  And you know what?  While I was pretty ineffectual, it was still fun!

It was actually so much fun that I’m considering whether I want to invest some time into farming honor in order to put together a set of PvP gear for Fingle, to see what it’s like when I’m less squishy (which was something of a problem).

For now, though, it’s time to do my chores (an accurate description of the glyph industry process if ever I heard of one) so I can afford to PvP.

/wave

Diplomacy Has Its Place

Exalted with Timbermaw?  You know what that means…  Meet Dinglemouse the Diplomat.

Yay! for the WoWWiki Timbermaw Hold reputation guide, which made it quite a bit easier.  (Just a tip: If you want to work on it yourself, it’s a lot easier when you’re not doing at the same time as anyone else – I had to slow down the speed I was killing them in order to avoid getting delayed while waiting for respawns)

It’s actually been quite a fun few days.  My assorted decks have almost all sold (I’ve still got a single Berserker card to liquidate), and I was able to get a second pair of Spiked Deathdealers crafted.  That was sold, and I used the proceeds to get a pair of Indestructible Plate Girdles crafted, one for Dingle and the second to sell.

I’m currently waiting for it to sell, with a view to getting another item or two crafted for resale – sadly, patience is essential when trying to sell items at this kind of price, even when there’s no competition.  I’m also dabbling in the Eternal Belt Buckle and leg armor markets, and picking up cheap Runed Orbs as the opportunity presents itself.

If there’s one thing I’ve not experienced anywhere near enough, it’s the pleasure of tanking for a capable (and well-geared) group of players – this occurred last night, when I managed to finagle my way into the hard-mode Ulduar 10-man run that was idling last night.  They weren’t working on hard modes though, other than plans for hard-mode Mimiron – the main tank wasn’t able to get online at the planned time, so there was a couple of hours to play with, and they had Thorim, Freya, Razorscale and Ignis to play with.

Needless to say, I felt a tad overwhelmed (as this was my first time tanking these bosses), but apart from a nub mistake on Freya trash (where I used thunderclap next to some CC’d mobs, causing a wipe) I think I performed competently enough.  I was the Arena tank for Thorim, and we finished without a wipe (and in good time).  Freya wasn’t quite as smooth, but we downed her despite some co-ordination issues with the 3-add group where we kept killing one too soon, and had to deal with the trio self-rezzing while we were dealing with the exploding swarm of lashers that came next.

Thorim dropped the T8 shoulder token, but I passed on it for the other tank (who tanks the 25-mans, and needed it to get the awesome 4-piece bonus).  I was rewarded for my generosity with the T8 glove token from Freya, which has given me my first piece of T8, the Valorous Siegebreaker Handguards.  (The fact that it co-ordinates with my awesome new boots and belt is something I’m quite happy with – sure, the better stats are nice, but there’s still something to be said for aesthetics)

I’m still doing the fishing dailies on all my characters who can reach Dalaran, but the appeal is slowing fading – probably because of the lack of interesting rewards.  I think I’ve got a Porcelain Bell once in the last four days, and worthless glass the rest of the time.  (Mingle really needs that skull fishing rod – the one from the Walrus-men is quite lacking, especially for a shadow priest.  And whatever became of those fishing bobber models?)

Mingle only has four days remaining of Argent Tournament dailies before she’s an exalted champion with all the Alliance factions; she’s currently working on Gnomeregan.  It’s a pity that the limited appeal of jousting runs out so quickly – only Dingle has completed the grind so far, and the new dailies with 3.2 are quickly approaching, with the extra dailies that are only available when you’ve completed the existing Tournament quests.

But now it’s time for dailies (and regular AH checks – Yay, the belt just sold!)

/wave (of a profitable nature)

More Numbers and an Ex-God

You’d think the flu would end a lot more quickly, but nooooo.  Which isn’t to say I still have the flu, because I’m no longer contagious, but I’m still coughing.  Needless to say, I’m getting rather tired of the whole thing.  (cough)

Raiding with Mingle has progressed, and above me is exhibit A.  Meet the ex-old god, Yogg-Saron.  Of course, that’s the good news.  Now we’re going to be doing hard-modes in an attempt to reach Algalon.  (Sadly, I wasn’t blessed with any loot to commemorate the event, so I had to make do with a fleeting feeling of relief – it’ll be interesting to see how we do next week)  We followed that up with a 6-minute Malygos kill which was quite satisfying.

I’ve spent a bit of time on Dingle as well, running Naxx10 and some Ulduar10.  Naxx was as much of a pushover as you’d expect, but Ulduar was a tad more punishing.  (Just a tip:  The trash before the cat lady Auriaya can’t be 9-manned by alts – we had someone go afk to go to the dairy and buy some cigarettes who didn’t come back for over an hour, and we had to do something with our time.)

Also, PvP.  Yes, Dingle actually did a little, and even picked up a couple of the simpler achievements from it.  (She picked up the end of a fail AV, an AB, a couple of EotS, and the tail end of Wintergrasp)

The Midsummer Fire Festival has been and gone (yes it was very funny, celebrating summer in the middle of the southern hemisphere winter while I was sitting in front of a heater, wrapped up in multiple layers of clothing, sipping a hot cider vinegar and honey drink while recovering from the flu), and I mostly ignored it.  I did a little exploration while honouring/extinguishing fires to get Tingle some flightpoints and a little more xp (she’s currently in Southshore, sitting on level 35), but I didn’t spend much time on it with any other characters.  (My money is on the next in-game event being Northrend Children’s Week, which is apparently being introduced some time after the 3.2 patch goes live.)

Glyphs are continuing to treat me well, not to mention profitably.  I’ve switched from manually price-checking and listing them over to batch-posting, and the time it takes to post them all has more than halved (plus I can be afk while they go up).

Anyway, here’s the (100% batch-posted) numbers for last week:

For the seven days from 29th June – 5th July:
Total glyphs sold: 721
Average price per glyph: 8.88g
Average sales per day: 914.89g
Total income from the AH: 6404.22g

Remember those extra books of glyph master that I assumed I’d be able to resell for a profit?  Well, do you remember the saying about assumptions?  Needless to say, I suspect if I want to sell these anytime soon, I’ll have to eat a small loss on the deal.  On a more profitable note, I’ve sold about half of the decks I made for the Faire; I still have a handful to go, but I expect to have them sold before the faire moves on.

I’ve spent quite a bit of the proceeds already, on Runed Orbs to make a pair of Spiked Deathdealers for Dingle (which was a little cheaper than it would otherwise have been, thanks to Mingle being able to buy four orbs with Emblems of Conquest) and a Scroll of Blood Draining to put on Stoneguard, which dropped from Kologarn.  The crafted plate tanking belt from Ulduar is the next upgrade I have planned, but I’ll have to check if we have a blacksmith in guild who has the recipe.

After the mixed results from my minimal time spent tanking in Ulduar, my respect for Ulduar main-tanks who also lead their raids is substantial.  I had enough trouble keeping track of the things currently pummeling me, without keeping track of everyone else at the same time.  But on the positive side, I’ve managed to get an achievement on Dingle that my ‘official’ raiding character hasn’t managed yet:

Meet Flame Leviathan+2.

/wave

(cough)

Still Selling

Still making glyphs, still selling them, but now I’m trying not to undercut everyone else out of the market.  (Gevlon wouldn’t approve.)

I’ve been reconsidering my approach (sell often, sell cheap), and will continue in a mostly similar vein, but with a higher limit to my prices.  After reading Gevlon’s old post on his routine, I’m also going to reduce my inventory even further, and I’ve managed to make some sense of the batch-posting system built into Auctioneer which should cut down the workload even further.  A Just-in-Time system will be more efficient, given a sufficient stock of ink.

I’ve spent a little time (and a little gold – a level 30-ish character shouldn’t be wearing gear in to low 20s) on Tingle, and she finally went up from 30 to 31 yesterday.  I think her new gear will make a difference with the upcoming levels.

Dingle had another 10-man Naxx run, and we may get into the other 10-man instances this afternoon – maybe not Ulduar, perhaps, but certainly Archavon, Malygos and Sartharion.  (She won Thane’s Tainted Greathelm, which was one of the few upgrades left for her outside of Ulduar).

Before I go, some other links that were food for thought about my growing glyph industry:
From QQ pwn more; My Goal: 100k Gold
A guest post on Warcraft Econ; Inscription & Glyph Market II

Time to check my mail (here’s hoping I can afford to splash out on another ten Books of Glyph Mastery – Mingle is getting closer and closer to having the entire range of glyphs available to make!) before getting dailies done.

Oh, and don’t forget that it’s the Midsummer Fire Festival!  Easy xp (and exploration, and flightpoints) for low-level characters!

/wave

A Merchant’s Work Is Never Done

Inscription is proving to be surprisingly time-intensive, but the semi-steady income makes up for it to a surprising degree.  But does it really need to take an hour to price-check and list the 580-odd glyphs I put up last night?  Well, at least I had 10-man Naxx to distract myself with.

Not bad for an off-the-cuff group of ex-guildies, alts, and bored mains is it?  (We killed Patchwerk in 2:50, and cleared the entire instance in just over five hours)  Dingle picked up that rarest of the rares, a tanking trinket, but there wasn’t anything else worth rolling on.  Maybe next time we’ll go explore Ulduar.  (Incidentally it was surprisingly profitable; Dingle was 257G better off from gold looted)

The latest Ulduar nerfs have meant the unofficial guild 10-man progression raid downed Yogg on Friday night (I sat out this week), and we’re quietly optimistic about our chances in 25-man tonight and tomorrow

Back to the subject of Glyphs, the exercise is slowing coming together – Bingle listed a substantial number last night which I’m dreading checking today, and yesterday’s goal was to have 10 each of the saleable DK, Druid and Hunter glyphs before I started re-listing.  If I’ve made enough sales today, I’m looking at increasing my pre-sale stocks of the remaining class glyphs from 6 to 8.  (It’d be nice if my nobles deck was to sell, but I may have missed the rush at the start of the faire – time will tell on that one)

But for now, time to do stuff!  (I suspect ‘stuff’ will be ‘Fallout 3’)

/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

Time Flies When You’re Having Wipes

Well, after our first week raiding Ulduar, we’ve managed to down Flame Leviathan, Razorscale, and last night we (finally) got down XT-002 Deconstructor.  The night was finished off with Emalon in 25-man Vault of Archavon, to give some people a piece of T8.5.  In 10-man progression we also managed to kill Flame Leviathan, Razorscale, XT-002, Assembly of Iron, Kologarn, Auriaya, Freya, Thorim and Hodir.  A pretty full-on week for everyone involved.

Oh, and we might not have a screenshot of our XT-002 kill, due to an over-zealous engineer mining his body.  Whoops.

I have to say, the adjustment in 25-mans from Naxx to Ulduar is proving pretty painful.  This is especially evident after spending time in Ulduar in both 10-man and 25-man, as demonstrated by the differing progressions listed above.  I’m really hoping we get it together for 25-man a bit more when we start again next week, but I’m a bit ambivalent about it for now.

On a more positive note, today should be the day that Mingle and Dingle become my first champions of the Tournament, which means acquiring squires and starting to collect the Champion badges for fun and profit.  Well, for profit anyway.  (The pets are BoE, and I suspect the AH will be a popular destination for them)

But it’s time to get dailying, and Kringle won’t level himself (unfortunately).

/wave

No raid tonight? What to do?

So far I’m enjoying 3.1.  Ulduar is great, fishing is fun, new dailies are something different to do.  They’ve even added a direct flight route from Dalaran to Sholazar Basin.

I’ve had a play with the new boss in the 10-man Vault of Archavon on Dingle, and I’m sure it’s more fun to dps than it was to tank - I was designated add-tank, and it really was a tough fight for me; keeping aggro on the mobs I had was easy, but a very restricted camera angle made targeting respawned adds something of a challenge.  But we did manage to down the boss, and one of the druid’s in the group became the first in the guild to pick up a piece of T8.

We had another bash at Razorscale last night, and between the hotfixes (increasing the enrage timer to 10 minutes, and making the iron dwarf casters only do their chain lightning when stationary) and our increasing competence, we managed to get the boss down to 9% on our best attempt.  Admittedly we were caught off-guard by the enrage several times, as it’s not in the Deadly Boss Mods timers just yet, but it’s nice to be able to consistently get that far.

Out of curiosity I decided to put the fishing changes to the test, and picked up the fishing daily on Dingle, who was a fishing virgin at the time (with 0 points of fishing skill).  It took about 50 minutes (not including travel time back to Dalaran to train), but she caught the Ghostfish and had leveled to 142 fishing in the process.

The changes to the tailoring mount, the flying carpet, have made it as useful as a traditional mount now (they’ve removed the mount and dismount animations), so it’s been set as Mingle’s default mount – I’ve been waiting for this change, as I loved the look of it but the delay in mounting/dismounting grew very annoying, very quickly.  On a related note, if I can ever save up enough I’d love to get the Chopper for Dingle – what better mount for an engineer, after all?

One change that has disappointed me is that the Dalaran cooking dailies are now only available for level 80 characters; bankrogue Pringle and hunter Kringle will have to finish leveling before they can continue doing them.  (Curiously enough, the jewelcrafting dailies are still available for Pringle, who’s only level 75)

So I guess it’s time to put a little effort into leveling those two – I’ve respecced Kringle (beastmaster again, my favourite spec), and replaced his pet gorilladin with a turtle (now that Thunderstomp, which made the gorilla so useful, has been made available to all Tenacity pets).  I’ll fire up Jame’s Leveling Guide later and see how we do – Kringle is level 74, and is about half-way through Howling Fjord so far.

No more raids until Sunday, so I’ve plenty of time to play with my alts.  Should gain access to the next tier of Tournament quests with Dingle and Mingle today as well, so I’m getting closer to the shiny new mounts.  For now, though?  ‘Tis dailies time!

/wave

Farming Rep Used To Take Longer

Yet another Dingle achievement post; I’m sure you’re surprised.

I’ve been doing a little farming of reputations, with an eye to completing The Diplomat achievement – I think “Dinglemouse the Diplomat” has a nice ring to it, don’t you? 

As I mentioned previously, farming Kurenai to exalted took a couple of sessions of grinding, but otherwise wasn’t too rough.  Farming Sporeggar, however, had me scratching my head for a little while.  The two methods that I was used to (farming Fertile Spores or farming Bloodscale Naga) aren’t the quickest of things.  The breakthrough came while I browsed the WoWWiki page about the faction, and made a little mental adjustment that made it easy.

The adjustment is, “I’m playing a well geared tank – how hard can normal Underbog be to farm?”  As it turns out, it’s not hard at all.  I mean, it’s seriously easy.  (And kind of fun, to boot)  You see, as someone who previously raided on a rogue (which is to say, is used to being squishy) and currently raids on a priest (which is to say, is squishy), I’m more used to avoiding the kind of stand-up fights where a tank really shines – hopefully next time it won’t take me as long to come to my senses, and play the strength of the class.

On my first time through I cautiously cleared my way through to several of the groups of humanoids after Hungarfen, and stopped there to head back out to reset – it wasn’t necessary to finish the instance, as all I needed were around a couple of hundred Sanguine Hibiscus, after all, and they’re easily farmed in the area up to the first Naga pair.  (It’s quite possible I could have cleared the instance, but the humanoid section in the middle would have been an unnecessary time-sink)

I think I was getting around 30 hibiscus per run, and a bit of vendor trash (plus a couple of greens, and a blue from Hungarfen each time), and I was taking it very leisurely (about 20-30 minutes per run – I’m not really one to rush things when I don’t need to); after six runs (and a clearing my bags once) I was able to head back the Sporeggar and ding exalted.

Last on the list is Timbermaw Hold, and I’m relying (once again) upon advice from WoWWiki.  This is another old-school grind, and pretty slow going (especially when someone else is farming the mobs as well), but I’m making progress.  (If you’re planning on farming this one yourself, the WoWWiki guide is a must-read)

Gear also continued to drop – some helpful guildies went to normal Halls of Lightning with me, and I was blessed with the Seal of the Pantheon on my very first run, much to my chagrin.  (One of the others in the raid had to make several runs on his tank in order to pick it up)

A little exploring also saw the Explore Northrend achievement completed (with the new tabard to go with it, which took Dingle to ten), and the Explore Outland achievement fell not long afterwards.

Sunday saw the guild finishing clearing most of the Wrath content for the week (Kel’Thuzad and Malygos were saved for Monday night), and venturing back into Outland for something to do.  Dingle tagged along as Vashj fell first in SSC, followed by Kael in Tempest Keep, and we finished the night with Illidan in Black Temple.  (I kind of miss the fact that they used to be hard – and in the case of the Vashj fight, lots of fun!)

For now, though, the desire for something new to do is becoming uncomfortable in it’s intensity – the lack of level-80 content has become glaringly obvious and many of my guildmates have expressed sentiments similar to my own, in that Blizzard had better not disappoint with Ulduar.

My gold’s on 3.1 going live tomorrow.  Probably because I don’t want to be re-running the same old raids for yet another blasted week.

Time for dailies!

/wave

Busy, Busy Busy.

I had a pretty full-on afternoon (and evening) last night, and somehow managed to finish Naxxramas, Vault of Archavon and Malygos 10-man raids with Dingle.

Now, for an alt I think that’s pretty good. (At least, it is for my alts, the rest of whom aren’t getting out of Dalaran much) And the group worked pretty well, with quite a few one-shot bosses (including Gothik, who crushed last week’s group). I got to experience the terror of tanking both Kel’Thuzad and Malygos, but our DK tank had the death-of-boredom that is tanking Loatheb all to himself.

Tanking Sapphiron wasn’t that hard (having Dingle defence-capped in her frost-resist gear helped, I suspect), but KT was something of a challenge – originally the DK was tanking KT, but after a couple of wipes I inherited the position and he tanked the adds. It was tricky to fit both HS spam and frost bolt interrupts into the routine, and to move out of the things that appeared on the floor underneath me (at least, to get out of them without moving the boss too much – rotating around the boss slowly seemed to work) but I pulled it off (somehow).

Malygos was something of a shock to the system – in all my (short) time tanking, that’s the first time I’ve been seen my health dropping so drastically, so often and so quickly (no, Gluth doesn’t count). And I have a new respect for our 25-man Main Tank/Raid Leader, for being able to tank and watch for sparks and raid lead.

What I’ve learned from all this is that my tanking, while not as bad as some of the green-clad newly-80 DKs lurking in trade channel, still needs work. I was often rage-capped, and kept letting both my Sunder Armor stacks and battle shouts drop (when I remembered to put a shout up at all).

Fitting Heroic Strike spam into my rotation is tricky, and I’m definitely needing practice getting it all together a bit better. I also need to do a bit more research into the various battle shouts, to get a better idea of which to put up and when to do so. I will probably also have to put together more warnings in Power Auras to help keep track of whether a shout is up or not, although I should probably have a look to see if there are other ways to track them. (I’ll be sure to post my findings on here – if I don’t get sidetracked by new shiny toys and other distractions)

I have an empty ring in Opie that could be very useful for putting up short-duration buffs like battleshouts, but I think this is something I might have to get some advice with – I might see if I can have a word with our Guild Leader (who’s a very skillful prot warrior) and get some tips.

And the run didn’t leave me empty-handed – Dingle has finally picked up some T7, in the shape of shoulders and chest tokens, and Malygos blessed her with a shiny new shield.

Well, dailies are waiting for my participation, so I must get to it. But here’s an image of the fruits of yesterday’s labours.

/wave

A Sword, A Sword, My Kingdom For A Sword

For all the hiccups and stresses, no-notice bails, and AFKs without warning, sometimes a pug will deliver.  Such as, a sword!

And now, the Wrath version of The Sun Eater, namely the Red Sword of Courage, dropped in heroic Utgarde Pinnacle.  And it was most definitely a pug, complete with a shaman who bailed after we killed Skadi the Ruthless (possibly leaving because the drake didn’t drop), and a death knight who went afk while we were waiting for a replacement mage.  (The DK got back just in time to help kill King Ymiron, and was able to pick up his emblem with the rest of us)

But with my shiny new sword, I’m that one step closer to being fully epic-geared (and Ulduar-viable).  And all this is thanks to some useful guides to prot warrior gear (and another guide to consumables, which has proven invaluable)

First of all, TankSpot is a very useful site, and was one of the first to be bookmarked when I rolled my warrior.  TankingTips was not far behind, also very useful.  Anyway, these guides have been indispensible gearing Dingle up:

• Wrath Tanking Gear List (also has gems and enchants – very comprehensive)
• Best In Slot! Warrior Tanking Gear “At a Glance”
• The Badge er… Emblem of Heroism Pick Order
• The Emblem of Valor Pick Order (mostly theoretical for me, as my 25-man experience is limited)

I’ve also found the Tank Consumables post from Tank Like A Girl to be very helpful, while I get a grasp on what’s effective and what isn’t.  Now I just need to get some more raid experience – 3.1 is getting closer, as is 10-man Ulduar.

/wave

Sometimes Your Best Just Isn’t Good Enough

Dingle has had another venture into the depths of Naxx-10, along with experiences with the Vault of Archavon in both 10- and 25-man flavours and the Obsidian Sanctum in 10-man.  While both VoA and OS turned out fairly well, the Naxx run clearly demonstrated that when your group is undergeared it can be a rather unforgiving.

The first part of the Naxx run, on Saturday night, wasn’t too bad – at least, not until we got stopped cold trying to down Grobbulus.  After 6 attempts where we had multiple problems with poison clouds being dropped in the middle of the raid, and some bad timing a couple of attempts with Dingle getting the injection debuff while attempting to pick up and tank the slime adds, we called it a night.  (We did manage to clear the Spider and Plague wings, and downed Patchwerk, so it wasn’t too bad.  Plus I managed to get the 50 Emblems achievement)

Last night we went back with a few less pug members and a few more guildmate alts, and apart from managing to get Razuvious down, failed miserably on the only two other bosses we could attempt after him.  We didn’t have anywhere near enough dps for Gothik (I was tanking the live side, and on our best attempt we only just managed to get down the last adds right before he spawned – the dead side didn’t do as well) or Grobbulus (I switched from tanking the slimes to tanking the boss, and it was an… interesting learning experience). Still, 60G in repairs isn’t that bad for a single emblem, is it?  Right?

However, Dingle needs many more emblems (and yet more loot) to finish gearing up before Ulduar, so I suspect I’ll have to brave the world of pugs again, regardless of whether I’m looking forward to it or not.

Perhaps I’ll get lucky, and get in with some groups who’re capable, competent, and well-geared.  Failing that, I guess I’ll find out if there’s any truth to the saying that suffering builds character - if I have a really well-built character by the time 3.1 goes live, this will be why.

/wave

Passing Time With Achievements

With time dragging between raids on my main, I’ve been working on a couple of achievements on Dingle.  For all the uselessness of achievements (which is to say, the only thing you get for completing an achievement is a completed achievement), they do provide a very convenient series of goals one can complete.

First was completing Ambassador of the Alliance by completing the rep grind with Exodar and Gnomeregan Exiles.  I’ve found that the easiest way in which to do this is simply by going back and completing all the starting zone quests; in this case, I went back and completed the Exodar ones, and dinged exalted with both factions before the zone was cleared.  (It helps that any reputation gain with a single alliance faction also gives an additional 25% of the reputation gained to all of the four other factions – for example, 1000 Exodar reputation gained awards an extra 250 reputation with Stormwind, Ironforge, Darnassus and Gnomeregan Exiles)

I also completed Did Somebody Order a Knuckle Sandwich? and Master of Arms by grinding the captive and exhausted vrykul (and farming more Relics of Ulduar for whichever alt on whom I’m next going to be grinding towards exalted with Sons of Hodir).  I have to admit, it took surprisingly longer than the same grind did on Mingle – caster melee is so much lower in damage that grinding on lower level mobs is much more effective.  With Mingle, I was able combine weapon skill leveling along with reputation grinding, and leveled her Mace, Dagger and Unarmed skills to 400 while (once again) completing the Exodar starting zone quests.

With the much higher melee dps that Dingle was putting out, I was doing so much damage (despite using very low level, low damage weapons, which is a big help when leveling weapon skills) that the low level mobs just died too fast.  When I took her back to Stormpeaks, the Vrykul mobs had enough health that I was getting more than one hit per mob, which made the process more useful.  (Just pay attention to the durability of your weapons, and don’t end up grinding uselessly for an hour before you notice that your weapon was red.  Much like my face, upon realising how much time I’d wasted with that oversight.)

I also came across another useful blog recently, this time about UIs and addons.  You’d be well advised to check out No Stock UI.  It’s where I was told about Multishot, which is responsible for the shiny achievement image linked in this post.  I suspect I’m going to be drowning in screenshots in future, but I’ll just have to grin and bear it.

Well, time to publish this post, and get onto today’s dailies.

/wave

It’s The Little Things.

As I’ve mentioned, I’ve been spending a bit of time (and some not small sums of gold – I picked up about 240 Relics on the AH today, to speed up the Sons of Hodir rep grind) gearing up Dingle, my warrior.

Something I noticed in the latest 3.1 patch notes is going to make Dingle a very happy engineer: she can finally get her hands on a Pet Bombling to go with her Lil’ Smoky.

Engineers can now obtain the schematics for Lil' Smoky and the Pet Bombling from certain creatures found in Gnomeregan. Specialized Gnomish or Goblin engineers can obtain both schematics equally. The repeatable quest that used to randomly grant these schematics has been disabled.

As it stands now, only Goblin-specialised engineers can make Pet Bombling, and only Gnome-specialised engineers can make Lil’ Smoky.  Unfortunately although it is possible to change specialisations, it turns out you are unable to pick up the quest that allows you to make the other specialisations’ pet.  (I found this out the hard way during TBC, when I dropped engineering completely in order to change specialisations, which entailed relearning engineering from scratch – a not-inconsiderable expense, as I had 375 engineering at the time)

So this means I’ll once again be delving into the depths of Gnomeregan, when Blizz finally deigns to bless us with 3.1 (and all the accompanying post-patch bugs and server crashes, no doubt), in order to finally learn how to make the pet which has eluded my favourite engineer for so long.