Passing Time While Waiting Impatiently

My playing has slowed down a little lately, which I think in part is due to the pre-patch anticipation starting to make itself known – it’s hard to think of a reason to spend time running heroics now, knowing that if I wait a week or two* I’ll be getting something useful in the shape of Emblems of Conquest instead of just sharding or vendoring everything that drops and stockpiling Heroism badges.

It’s kind of telling that, apart from time spent with glyphs and scheduled 25-man raids, I’m probably spending more time helping a guildmate out with farming heavy junkboxes for Ravenholdt rep (for the achievement, Insane in the Membrane) than anything else.  I’ve been exploring Lower Blackrock Spire, and I have to say, that’s a nightmare of an instance to navigate if you’re used to the almost-linear designs from Burning Crusade and Wrath – still, for all its faults, it’s not as bad as Maraudon.  Anyway, it makes a change to get out and about on Ringle – it’s been too long since I’ve spent much time being rogue-ish.

On a mostly unrelated topic, it’s easy to tell when Darkmoon Faire is coming, as the cost of herbs goes through the roof due to people who hadn’t planned ahead and are frantically trying to get enough inks and eternal lifes to make their cards (as has been happening over the weekend).  Oddly enough, Lichbloom has stayed around the same price (starting at roughly 26g per stack), but Adder’s Tongue and Icethorn have both rocketed up to 30g per stack and higher.  For a change, it’s substantially cheaper to just buy Ink of the Sea instead of buying and milling – sure, I miss the free Snowfall inks, but it’s easier (and cheaper) to start re-stocking those after prices return to more sane levels.

I’ve been letting my dailies slide a little as well – the rewards from fishing are pretty ridiculous when the RNG doesn’t like you, and I’m getting tired of travelling half-way across Northrend to get a handful of useless glass as a reward.  I’m still doing the JC quests with Pringle, though, as the tokens are well worth stocking up on in preparation for the 3.2 landrush.  I’m also trying to get Mingle and Fingle caught-up with the Tournament dailies, but it’s proving to be something of an an uphill battle; as far as irritating grinds go, the tournament is (from my perspective) one of the more tiresome (especially jousting, now I’ve done it as much as I have).

For now, though, it’s time to do dailies and mill herbs and craft glyphs.

/wave

* – My money’s on 3.2 going live this week, with next week being my backup guess.  When do you think we’re getting it?

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

Fishing Makes Everything Better.

Even Lake Wintergrasp yesterday, where I spent almost 100 minutes fishing in a rather contented manner.

That’s what I caught in that time, thanks to one glow worm and four sharpened fish hooks.  And on top of that, from the clams, I scored 9 northsea pearls and a siren’s tear.  All in all, I’d call that a pretty good haul.  It was actually pretty enjoyable (other than being killed twice by horde players who obviously don’t fish); I just put on some good music (first was the self-titled album by Genesis from 1983, and after that was a collection of Crowded House tracks) and kicked back (in a manner of speaking).  All I needed was a floppy hat and a beer.

I’ve now got 5 fishing toons, having brought Pringle back into the fold (it was fun getting him to the central flight path in Sholazar Basin), and Kringle might join in the fun today if I have the time (I checked and found I’d done some fishing on both characters, so it’s not quite the grind of starting from 0).  I also scored a Porcelain Bell from Mingle’s fishing reward yesterday, which has the virtue of vendoring for 100g.  Still no fishing rods (or Sea Turtle), but there’s always tomorrow.

We didn’t have the numbers for either guild 10-man Ulduar last night – the main group didn’t get enough healers, and the secondary group just didn’t get enough sign-ups.  Disappointing.

Fingle has started doing the Tournament dailies, with an eye towards getting a replacement to the BoA mace she’s still wielding at level 80.  Kringle’s still waiting to be levelled.  And re-talented.

I’m also finding my aggregate gold total going up, thanks to multiple characters doing dailies – much more of this and I might find myself getting around to giving one of my characters dual-specs.  It might actually be interesting to do it with Fingle, and see how hard it is to gear up a second shadow-priest (mostly) from scratch, with a backup set of gear for disc.

Lastly, I’ve been reading this fascinating article on WoWInsider that delves into the differences between 10-man and 25-man loot in Wrath, and why the difference may be necessary to keep 25-man raiding viable.  Have a look here if you’re interested.

(Oh, and I might finally be able to remember how to correctly use an apostrophe, thanks to this)

For now?  Addons are updated (again), so it’s time to be endailyfied.

/wave

Perseverance. We Has It.

It took 15 tries, but we finally got Kologarn down last night.  (Personally, I think he died because he felt sorry for us)

I’ve also come across some wonderful daily news – you remember how I thought the cooking and jewelcrafting dailies had been changed to require level 80?  Well, it turns out it was a bug.

The level requirement for the following quests has been appropriately set to level 65: Shipment: Wicked Sun Brooch, Infused Mushroom Meatloaf, Mustard Dogs!, and Cheese for Glowergold.

Kringle and Pringle can go back to earning their keep.  (Hurrah!)

Did anyone ever play the Bejeweled addon for WoW?  I introduced it to my guild while we were progressing through Mount Hyjal and Black Temple, and it was entertaining to get the achievement messages from the most unlikely players while we raided (and sometimes at the most unexpected moments).  Anyway, they (PopCap Games) have released a new one:  Peggle.  (I can’t wait to see my guilds response to this one)

Three more days of Tournament dailies, and both Mingle and Dingle will have their second faction raised to Champion (Stormwind for Mingle, due to her choice to only ride horses, and Gnomeregan for Dingle because an engineer will only ride a Mechanostrider – until you can joust on a chopper).  Incidentally, I’m getting quite good at the mounted combat now – defeating the four champions is almost a one-shot thing.  I’m also able to down the Boneguard Commander for Battle Before The Citadel single-handedly (provided I don’t pick up any scouts when I pull, or while I kite him).

Hopefully I’ll find out if we’re running a second Ulduar 10-man group tonight – signups for it haven’t been very comforting so far, so it’s still up in the air.  On a related note, I took Dingle in for 10-man Vault of Archavon last night, and we managed to one-shot Emalon this time – my performance was a lot better, apart from some hiccups taunting the replacement adds off a paladin who picked them up to kite towards me after we downed each charged one.  No T8 for me, although I did pick up the PvP chest from Archavon (which I can’t see myself using, to be honest).

For now though, ‘tis time to get a-dailying!

/wave

Yawn. No, Really.

I couldn’t get back to sleep (woke up at about 6am, after going to bed at 2am), so I figured I might as well get some dailies out of the way.  And guess what?  The fourth day of Blood Is Thicker in a row.

Ah well, you get that sometimes.  (But it would be nice to get something else for a change – I’ve done the dailies every day since 3.1 went live, and I’ve still only seen two of them)  I’ve started leveling fishing on Fingle as well, which gives me four characters to fish with.  Fortunately you’re able to do the fishing daily in Shattrath in addition to the Dalaran one, so I can keep myself in Sharpened Fish Hooks.

Ulduar-25 went better last night; after defeating the loot piñata that is Flame Leviathan (well, we downed him despite all the raiders who still don’t know how to do that fight – apparently we’re going to be organised when we do it next week), we then downed Razorscale (eventually – it took a few attempts), and I sat out for XT-002 Deconstructor.  We finished with Ignis (barely downing him before we over-ran our scheduled raid times).  Razorscale was generous, and gave me the Collar of the Wyrmhunter, which has allowed me to drop Haunting Call in favour of The Impossible Dream – the new +hit pieces are making it a lot easier to juggle that particular stat.  (The stats on it are nice, but some of these helms make me really glad I can set them to not display on my characters)

I’m hoping to get Dingle into the second guild 10-man group for Ulduar this week, but her comparative lack of gear may put her out of the running – Ulduar is really quite demanding of raiders, in that they need to be pretty solidly geared before it’s worth taking them in.  While she’s geared enough for Naxx25, Ulduar10 may be beyond her – or at least, her lack of gear may make her impossible to keep up.  I’ll have to see what happens come Friday.

For now, though, I’m going to finish the fishing dailies and see if I can get another couple of hours sleep – raiding and sleep deprivation aren’t a very successful combination.

/wave

Quick Argent Tournament Information And Linkage.

Just a quick post that I’ve been meaning to make for a few days (and kept forgetting).  If you’re having trouble with the mounted combat part of the Tournament, I found this post to be a lifesaver.

Here’s my take on it (having finally reached champion):

• Before you start, make sure you have 3 stacks up of your shield.
• Talk to your opponent to start the fight, use Shield Breaker (attack #2) when he moves into the centre of the right, and immediately follow so he remains in melee range (which means you don’t get charged).
• Move just far enough away from him to use Shield Breaker again, then back into melee range before he can return the favour.  Repeat until his shields are down.
• Move away until you can charge him (attack #3), then return to melee range.  Repeat until he’s been defeated.
• While you’re doing this you have to keep your shields up (attack #4).
• And while you’re doing all that, you have to keep him in melee range when he moves away in preparation for a charge.

Easy, right?  Well, practice makes perfect…  (I certainly got more than my share of practice)

Once you reach Champion rank and start doing those dailies, the optional rewards are quite nice as well.  You get the choice of a Champion’s Writ or a Champion’s Purse, in addition to the Champion’s Seal.  The Writ can be turned in for tokens worth 250 reputation with your faction of choice, and the Purse gave me 10g for each of the three dailies I completed.

Well, that’s Mingle done for the day, time to get Dingle enchampioned.

/wave (again)

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

As Busy As A Dog With Fleas

Between the sudden need to level Kringle and Pringle (Kringle due to cooking dailies requiring lvl80, and Pringle due to cooking dailies and jewelcrafting dailies requiring lvl80), the travel-intensive Tournament (and frequently, fishing) dailies, and the on-going guild exploratory mission into 10-man Ulduar, I’m finding myself with no shortage of things to do in-game.

The addition of a level requirement to the jewelcrafting feels like Blizzard is just keeping it up with the cooking daily change, but it’s pretty effective motivation to keep leveling.

I took Kringle and his shiny new turtletank out for a spin, and was invited to participate in a guild Drak’Tharon Keep alt run – apart from when I accidentally pulled the first group of mobs with my pet (can’t beat a start like that) it went surprisingly smoothly, and Kringle picked up his first gear upgrade, the Helmet of Living Flesh, to replace his T4 helm.  I really need to get used to switching in and out of Aspect of the Viper, though – I’m finding an embarrassing tendency to switch into Viper and forget to switch back.  (Note to self: have a look on WoWInterface)

Both Mingle and Dingle have reached the rank of Valiant in the Tournament, and Ringle completed the first day.  The quests themselves aren’t that bad, but the travel time is a bit annoying and adds up pretty quickly if you have multiple characters trying to work through the dailies.  (Additional travel for the fishing daily doesn’t help)

Mingle also went back into Ulduar for the guild 10-man run, after missing out last night.  When I joined, they had managed to down both Razorscale and the XT-002 Deconstructor.  By the time we called it a night, we’d taken down Kologarn, the Assembly of Iron, Auriaya, Hodir, Thorim and Freya.  Only Ignis (who’s apparently still bugged), General Vezax and Yogg-Saron remain.

The best way to sum it my experience is that you have to plan the trash, and the bosses aren’t friendly towards errors in execution.  Personally, I think Auriaya was the hardest, due to the tricky nature of the pull when you engage her.  Freya and her adds of doom were pretty unpleasant as well (and I failed miserably, dying from pulling aggro on one of the adds, leaving the group to successfully 9-man her down, ressing me as a ghoul a little before she died).

Kologarn was kind of fun, provided you were able to run out from the eye-beams without dying or kiting it over someone else.  The Assembly of Iron was entertaining – stand on the blue stuff on the ground unless it’s covered by green stuff on the ground and watch for when you have to run away.  We also picked up the I Choose You, Stormcaller Brundir achievement – two more to go, for having each of the other bosses killed last.

The trash before Auriaya was pretty brutal – they come in pairs which you have to keep to tank separately, and occasionally one will fire a slow-moving spark to the other which has to be killed before it reaches the other mob to prevent it from giving the mob a tank-killing buff.  Then, after one is dead, the other receives a powerful buff which means you’d better kill it before it flattens the tank.

Auriaya herself isn’t that hard, but her cat adds are rather unpleasant – when they’re together they gain something like 100% extra damage.  They didn’t one-shot the tank, but the tank didn’t last more than a second.  After several mishaps, we sorted out the pull and managed to get her down, gaining The Antechamber of Ulduar.

Next up were the four keepers (who I guess are now the one keeper, Mimiron being the only one remaining).  Thorim was first, and turned out to be a two-group fight.  The first group of players remains in the arena below Thorim (which is where I was), and fights waves of adds until the second group is able to fight through to Thorim and engage him.  Once engaged, he leaped down into the arena (followed by the second group) and it became a simple tank-and-spank.  Simple, but quite satisfying.  I’ll Take You All On was picked up upon completion.

Hodir was next, and was a tricky combination of Keristrasza from The Nexus and Sapphiron from Naxxramas.  You have to keep moving (or finding safe areas to stand) to prevent yourself from being frozen to the floor, and patches on the floor where icicles fall from the ceiling, and find safe places to stand when he casts Flash Freeze.  I failed on this one frequently and comprehensively, but the rest of the group managed to do pretty well.  (I accidentally picked up Staying Buffed All Winter during one attempt, while we were at it)

Freya was the last of the night, and it was pretty rough.  We cleared the trash from the area (which was especially exciting with the groups of lashers), then took down the three elders (the hard mode is where you leave one or more elder up for when you engage Freya, much like Sartharion).

When you start, Freya has 150 stacks of a healing buff which can only be removed by killed the various waves of adds she summons.  The adds I really hated (and frequently were killed by) were the trio of the Storm Lasher, Ancient Water Elemental and Snaplasher; these three have to be killed at about the same time, otherwise they resurrect and pwnage ensues.

We had a quick look at the trash before Mimiron, but decided to call it after we were mercilessly crushed by it.  And that was about 9 hours of raiding completed.  I didn’t pick up any loot, just a bunch of fairly useless Emblems of Valor – the few caster items that dropped weren’t upgrades for my majority of best-in-slot 25-man items.

I’ve got some fishing to do today, as I’m down from 87 to 20 fish feasts from all these attempts.  Hopefully I’ll get an invite to the raid this afternoon, but if not we’re back to the 25-man version tonight (and again tomorrow night).  I’m thinking of respeccing as well, and dropping the points I used to pick up Silence for the Razorscale trash; Shadow Affinity might keep me alive a little bit longer…  (I’m thinking of something like this)

But on the subject of things to do, these dailies won’t wait forever!

/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