I’ve wanted a pally tank since Burning Crusade. I have a 73 pally. I’m getting my tank.
*sigh* One more time through Northrend, Jeeves. No, don’t take the scenic route! Let’s just get there already!
I can’t believe I’m doing this again…
I’ve wanted a pally tank since Burning Crusade. I have a 73 pally. I’m getting my tank.
*sigh* One more time through Northrend, Jeeves. No, don’t take the scenic route! Let’s just get there already!
I can’t believe I’m doing this again…
Did something happen to bear tanking in 3.3 that I missed? Did they nerf something that made them so unusable that everyone changed their druids to something else? I find this very unsettling.
I decided this week that I’m going to make Flouria’s second spec a bear tanking spec. Originally, I had planned on leveling another toon to 80 (my DK is 73 currently, my paladin is 72), but I honestly am sick of it. I’ve ran Northrend 4 times already, and I think I’m done with it. It’s just not fun anymore.
So, I’ve decided to consolidate. Flouria will be my Tank AND Healer (w/ Healer being the “main” spec) and Cila will be my DPS.
What’s great is that I decided to do this about 3 days ago, and I already have a full heroic tanking set. The Dungeon Finder is a great way to get a new spec geared up quickly. Since everyone is basically just greeding on the blue and purple ilevel 200 drops in there, you an need yourself a set pretty quickly. I only spent emblems on an idol, everything else was AH or drops (mostly drops).
But, now I’m starting to realize that I might’ve made a mistake. I’ve PUGged a whole lot in the past week. What’s concerning is that I haven’t grouped with a single bear tank. Not one. These days, it’s mostly paladins with a smattering of warriors and DKs.
I hope I’m not making a mistake by tanking on a druid. Of course, I’m not wasting too much time doing this, so if I find that I can’t survive as a tank anymore, then I’ll go back to leveling another toon.
I just hope I don’t have to.
Tags: druid, dungeonfinder, feral, flouria, groups, levelling, pug, tanking
*sigh* Another one?
I swear, I’m taking a levelling break. Even I’m bored with putting 80s in my toon collection box. This actually happened a few days ago, but work has been busy and the baby hasn’t been sleeping, so time to do anything outside of those is minimal.
This one is a bit special for me. This is my toon that I’ve totally levelled up on the Alliance site and in The Other Side guild. I actually have a Horde druid who raided some T7 and now just sits dormant on another server. I was tempted to faction transfer him over, but I was so close to 80 already (75 at the time faction transfers came out) that I didn’t bother.
What’s interesting is that I’m trying Boomkin as my alternate spec along with my Tree spec that I love so dearly. Boomkin has an advantage over Feral for me for two reasons.
1. Less bag space wasted because you have a big gear overlap
2. Can actually do decent AOE damage on heroic trash. It’s amazing how useless you can feel on 3 and 4 mob pulls.
I’ve only ran an instance or two so far, but I’m liking it. I actually haven’t healed at all yet, even though I’m totally setup and gearing for it. Until I feel my healing gear can compete, I’m PUGging as a DPS and rolling on the heal-y gear (of course, I’m asking first). I figure a week or two of that, and I should be in good shape to heal heroics and T7 again. I can’t wait.
Otherwise, I’m just running dailies for the time being. I want to get at least honored with Hodir for the shoulder enchant and will probably stop doing it after that. I just can’t be bothered grinding those dailies… they’re pretty terrible. I’m finding that I’m actually caring about this toon, as opposed to my hunter. If it wasn’t for all the achievement points on Cila, I’d seriously consider making a change on mains. I love the idea of being useful in 2 of the 3 main roles… something I don’t get on my warlock or my hunter.
LFG? Yes, please
Several weeks ago, if you ever wanted to hear me curse like a truck driving sailor, get me into a PUG. I would be amazed at how much people not knowing how to play with frustrate me.
Am I an elitist? Probably.
I assume that people research as much as I do. And I know fully well that it’s not the case, but I forget. The fact is that most people treat WoW like any other game and don’t give 2 thoguhts about it when they not in game.
It’s going to take time, but I’ll adjust.
The fact of the matter is that my guild is made up of friends. All long term players who have been around for years… And close friends if mine for well over a year now. I love my guild and the people in it.
But, like a lot of long term players, we go through periods where we dint play. Avid gamers have a tendency to see the newest console games and drool… Me included. And it’s THAT time if year. Ever comapny and there mother are releasing games in time for the holidays…
Thing is… I don’t have a PS3 or XBox 360. And, I don’t have the budget this year to buy games anyway.
So, I have WoW. And an empty guild.
I sense that there was some burnout as well, but it’s come to head this year, and it’s bad. People that would log on nightly are logging on every 4 or 5 days.
Guild runs are rare now and I’m kind of stuck.
So what do I do? I do the thing that I swore I’d never do again. The thing that frustrates more than anything else.
I’m PUGging. I’m finding the folks that aren’t burned out on the game or playing Brutal Legend.
It started with the daily and it just went from there. Today, I got into a group of achievement junkies and had a blast trying to get some if the harder achievements. I actually had a hard time leaving.
And they all knew how to play. And they all had friends lists of people that knew how to play. And it was fun.
Of course, there’s a downside. I may never see these folks again. They probably won’t remember me. I didn’t get to bitch about life on vent with them, which I enjoy, but I did get through a few podcasts.
I know that not ever PUG will be great. I’m waiting for the other shoe to drop. But in the meantime, I can out my alt levelling down and just concentrate on having some fun.
At least until my guild gets back.
Stop Taunting Me!
Every time Blizzard makes achievements based on the random number generator, a puppy dies.
Cila, my achievement toon is now on year #2 of trying to the Hallowed title and achievement. My problem… the Sinister Squashling. This thing is giving me more problems than is possible to imagine. What’s frustrating is that I have every other thing done. I got all my toothpicks. I did the battleground achievement. Everything… But that Squashling would not drop for me no matter how much I ran the Horseman.
This year, it’s even more frustrating. I logged my druid in yesterday and did one Trick or Treat with her. Bam! Squashing. This would be wonderful if that was my achievement toon, but it’s not. And I’m not about to start doing the rest of the stuff required just because she got the pet to drop the very first time.
Instead, like a moron, I’m logging my warlock in once an hour when possible and getting penny bags and turned into a ghost and whatever else. I’m running the Horseman every night and not seeing it drop for anyone (except once the first night — I lost the roll).
Sorry, I’m really not much to QQ about these kinds of things, but I think any achievement based on the RNG is just ridiculous. Achievements should be about skill and dedication to doing things outside the bounds of the normal game. Logging in every hour and praying to Elune that you get what you need is just tedious. It’s not dedication… it’s asking too much.
I’m lucky that I’m in a situation where I work from home in front of a computer, so logging in every hour isn’t too much of an issue. But for people with a real job and lives, it’s just not possible.
Seriously, if the Squashling keeps me from getting the title for the 2nd year in a row, I might have to just give up on the Strange Trip. *sigh*
Tags: achievements, cila, hallowed, qq, warlock
Breylyn, my hunter, has finally hit 80. It was actually a little frustrating at the end, to be honest. 79 was a very quick level, which was a first for me. Usually 79 might as well be two levels. I generally do it in Storm Peaks, but I dinged in Zul’Drak, so went to the Basin instead.
Armed with my trusted Tour Guide, I proceeded to run through Sholazar as quickly as possible. I’ve never done Sholazar as far as I did this time around, and it was pretty enjoyable… and then with 5% left, I hit Returned Sevenfold. This quest is REALLY hard for a hunter to do. Unfortunately, it was the only quest I could do in Sholazar, so I attempted it 4 times before giving up.
With nothing else to do, I had to head off to start Icecrown for my last 5%. This took about 10 minutes.
I immediately went to Stormwind, got my dual spec, and talented up my second spec. I decided to go with the most popular Survival spec out there, the 0/15/56. I grabbed all the proper glyphs (Explosive Shot, Kill Shot, Serpent Sting, Feign Death, Revive Pet and Mend Pet) and some 80 blues off of the AH.
I then went to Crystalsong, tamed myself a 78 Sinewy Wolf, specced him with a solid PVE spec and was on my way.
I was ready to go and run an instance to figure out this new spec and see what kind of DPS I could do… but no one in the guild was on so I was stuck just logging off and going to bed.
*sigh*
I’ll let you know of my progress with Survival. It should be fun to learn something new.
My little “hunter that could” hit 78 last night in Zul’Drak. To celebrate, I headed off to Valgarde and got myself a shiny new Sawed-off Hand Cannon. Might as well put some of that rep to use… though I have to admit that I wish I had grinded more of the 4 main factions. There really are some decent upgrades to be had once you hit 78, and I’m not eligible for any of them.
I’m really getting psyched about the idea of running some 80 content with her. I REALLY love the hunter class. They really get a bad rap, but if done right, it’s done of the most nuanced and toughest classes to play “correctly”. I’m still undecided on whether or not I’ll do Survival or Marks on my second spec… I’m assuming Survival, since I won’t have the Armor Pen. (not to mention how it was nerfed anyway) to get competitive DPS. Plus, having another toon with Replenishment doesn’t hurt either.
On another note, I’m finding the west side of Zul’Drak to be some of the buggiest quests in Northrend. I think they tried to do too much. I basically had to look up the “right way” to do the Drakuru quests in Wowhead because they were either obvious or bugged. It took me about an hour to get 5% of a level because of this.
In the end, I just skipped the rest of the quest chain and moved on to Argent Stand… and lo’ and behold, I got 5% more in about 5 minutes. I don’t think I’ll go back there, since this isn’t my achievement toon. It’s bad enough I don’t have the Zul’Drak quest achievement on Cila — no way I could do it twice.
The Other Side has gotten into this habit of farming ToC. Since we’re trying to gear up some of our new 80s, it’s the perfect place to do it. Since we have this place down and have demolished most of the other heroics in WoTLK, we gave it a shot.
Wow, what a wake-up call!
The first bit is pretty much the same. Jousting the non-elites is no problem, especially if you have an order. We always do the left one first, get him down in about 5 seconds, and then move on to the other two. There’s no coordination on those, but with only two, it’s not a problem to get them down quickly.
The jousting bosses are a little tougher. They definitely have more HP and seem to be using their cooldowns a little more. I got into a situation where all three were ganging up on me, so I didn’t make it through the fight. Luckily the other guys did, so it wasn’t a problem. Then they dismounted and reset.
We had the Tauren, Troll and Blood Elf. As usual, we took the Tauren first because he’s the healer. Wow, was this guy tough… he was just healing himself almost as fast as we could hit him. Really, it was an issue of not having the interrupts that we needed. Class makeup didn’t exactly allow for a lot of options, so we just steamrolled it and evetually got him down.
After that, the other two were very easy. Gamaken (our tree) got an incredibly nice upgrade from that fight, so it was worth it.
Ok, next phase. Again, the packs of 3 were pretty much as easy as they are on regular. However, then Argent Confessor Paletress was up… and we started to feel the sting of it being a heroic again. She’s actually a pushover, but when she summoned the Memory of Onyxia, that’s when it went horribly wrong. We did wipe, but what we didn’t realize is that she casts a heal on the Memory — so again, the lack of interrupts was giving us issues.
Second time in, I pulled out my Fel Puppy who can do a little bit of interrupts, and Thorvash (our mage) made a focus macro for casting Counterspell. No problem getting them down this time.
So, so far we’ve realized that not having a rogue or shaman in the party makes this much harder…
Last up, was the Black Knight. I have to say, this is one of the hardest heroic fights I’ve been in. It’s amazing how much this ramps up in difficultly between regular and heroic. I lost track of the number of wipes that we had, but I have to guess it was around 5.
In a way, it was fun. It’s nice to have a challenge and not just push an encounter over the first time. It actually required us to figure out how to handle it and find a good strategy.
Phase 1 is pretty easy. We had our hunter pet and DPS run immediately to the add, and knock him down quickly, then everyone of the Black Knight. He went down quickly.
Phase 2 was a little harder, but we got it after a try or two. It came down to just using AOE on all the ghouls first, then moving on the Black Knight. We didn’t do that originally and they were just overrunning us. Once we took 2/3 of the ghouls down before touching the BK, there was no problem in the least.
Ugh, Phase 3. There’s something about this phase that I just don’t get. It seems like there should be a trick, but there isn’t. It’s literally a healer’s mana vs. DPS vs. boss fight. There really is no way to do this without just pushing through, and that’s where we had our issue. I think it came down to just a bit of lack of DPS. Both our Hunter and Mage are pretty new 80s, and while they’re awesome, it probably wan’t quite the numbers that were required.
We were literally dying and running back in, getting off a few spells, and repeating. But, in the end, we did it. I was expecting an achievement… oh well. I didn’t keep track of the drops, though I should have. All I know is that I had about 40g worth in repairs (cloth!!!) by the time it was said and done.
After that, we ran it two more times on normal. It was all of the sudden, SOO easy.
