For the Horde!
So, on Monday I was playing around with Vean a bit – ran around Durotar and the Barrens for an hour or so, farming herbs and ores, and then finally got to Outlands. Playing on the Horde side still scares me a lot – I have almost no reputations, no idea where to go for quests, level 1 skill in two gathering professions, and no discovered areas at all… It’s really strange to see all that at once – and I don’t have the luxury of having high level main to support my leveling.
Oh, and the achievements. The absolute lack of Vean’s achievements, apart from the Collector’s Edition pet one. Hurts my eyes…
Words of Warcraft
I think that everyone knows how dull and repetetive Warcraft can be. Of course, I’m talking about farming stuff – you fly around looking at your minimap, pick a herb, fly to another, and another… I would probably lose my mind (or whatever is left of it) if I did it for too long. So, since I like my mind as it is, I listen to WoW podcasts while doing that. Here’s a short list and a bit of reviews of what I’m used to listen to.
The “reviews” aren’t of course the best and by no means complete or objective – I hope you didn’t expect anything other. ;)
Lost in Orgrimmar
This is Vean, and she’s lost in a large, unknown Horde city that looks like a maze. Say hi, Vean.
I’ve finally got few hours spare to make a Horde character on a new realm, and thanks to the patch 3.0.8, I can skip leveling from 1. Not that I won’t do that – I’ve also made a little Tauren druid there, but I won’t show her here for now.
As for the server – I chose Terokkar-EU, which is a pretty new realm that was released in October. To be completely honest, I chose it because the game client was showing it as the only “recommended” PvE realm. At least I hope that it will spare me some cursing of being ganked. And finally, I can see the other half (or rather a 1/3 of the other half, but that’s also good for now) of the game. But first, I will need some tourists guide to the Horde cities…
How to do it from behind – Useful macros
Macros are the little scripts that are used for combining abilities together. To add a new macro, type /macro command in the chat line (or use the Macros button on the game’s menu), choose “New”, type in a name and select the red question mark icon. Then you can just copy the macro from the website and paste it in the WoW client.
Since patch 3.0, the macros are saved on the server, just as your keybindings – that makes it a lot easier to maintain if you are changing the computers on which you’re playing.
Healing Naxxramas for the first time
This Saturday was the day that I’ve finally went into a proper 10-man raid to Naxxramas on Sheven. Fortunately for me, it was almost exclusively a guild group (with half of them already geared in Naxx-25), so we didn’t have any huge problems with clearing the instance.
Of course, I have expected to get absolutely nothing out of the run besides badges and experience, but it wasn’t that bad. Of course all the tier tokens were for warrior, hunter or shaman type, but I’ve managed to get few items as well. The [Boots of the Follower] replaced my previous Leatherworking epics (they’re a bit better with haste in place of stamina), [Ring of the Fated], while it’s rather a caster dps ring, replaced one of the blue rings I’ve had since level 76, and [Bone-Linked Amulet] with [Contagion Gloves] are nice to have while grinding badges and waiting for another chance to go back to Naxx. Oh, and the masterlooter threw some feral gear my way as well… I guess while I have no intention of going feral anytime soon, it can’t hurt to have some gear to consider it as an option if needed.
Healing-wise, it wasn’t so bad as well. Other than Patchwerk and Four Horsemen, all three of us were just healing whatever needed healing at the moment, which turned out to work pretty well. The only problem I’ve had was with Kel’Thuzad’s Frost Blocks – I couldn’t cast Regrowth fast enough to keep the players healed, and my Lifeblooms weren’t healing enough to let them live. I guess next time I’ll just have to stick to Rejuvenation and Nourish there. And I still don’t know if I’m doing things right – and how am I supposed to even know that? I just go and heal people, if they don’t die and we get shinies, I guess it’s good…
The run was very fun thanks to my guildies – I liked healing you a lot, and it’s a really nice, refreshing change from playing my rogue all the time. Now to finish with the gearing up, and maybe I’ll even be useful once in a while.
Raiding with a HaT on
Of course, I mean the Honor Among Thieves build, not a normal hat. Although I must say that one of our guild’s warlocks (portrayed on the left side) has four pieces of T7 and a blue hat on his head. That combination looks totally awesome and makes me smile every time I see him. :) Anyway, back to the topic.
My rogue has always been Combat Swords (with an addition of Fists at the end of TBC), and me being the rogue Class Master of the guild, I consider it wise to know some things about the other specs, so once in a while I try them at our 25-man raids. This time I’ve respecced into 3/23/45, the HaT build and went as that for Naxxramas-25.
I have to say that I’m not satisfied with the results of this test, and I was glad to spec back Combat Swords for the next evening. If you want some more detailed information, read the rest of the post.
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No need for flying?
A little something that I’ve remembered while playing with screenshots and replacing the images on the site’s first post. This happened on this Tuesday, when we were in Naxxramas with a pug group. Forgive me the absolutely crappy quality, but I’ve had to do some heavy editing on this – at the same time all my auctions were ending, resulting in a flood of yellow text on my chat box.
I still don’t really know what to think about that. It’s not that he doesn’t have the Cold Weather Flying skill, or the epic riding skill and mount (I wouldn’t be as much surprised if it were the latter one), but I’ve checked his armory page and he doesn’t have any flying skill at all.
How in the name of the Light can one level to 80 and not have enough gold from quests to get that? My view might be a bit skewed, since I use the Auction House to have all the gold I need, but there are so many quests and so many items that you can vendor… It should be possible to have enough gold to buy at least normal flying and learn the Northrend flying skill, just from questing your way from 70 to 80.
The other thing that is bothering me here is that the Paladin is not even slightly concerned with that. He doesn’t need it – the NPCs gave him a mount usable in Storm Peaks, Icecrown and Scholazar, and he can be summoned to the instance or wait for a ressurection. It’s certainly not a stance that will win people’s friendship, especially when everyone else has to run from the graveyard. I’m really glad that it was just a pug and possibly I won’t have to group with him ever again.
Work, raiding, farming (Daily)
The last week and a half was quite eventful, even if it was a bit repetetive. The guild has done another complete Naxx-25 run, this time clearing the instance in two evenings, so we had time for some tries at Malygos. Unfortunately the 25-man version was quite frustrating – we’ve had problems with positioning the sparks correctly, and the boss enraged while we were in phase two killing the Lords and Scions. This was Sunday – not the best ending of the week I must say.
However on Tuesday we went there again, this time only with 10 people, and after first few tries we finally went into phase three. Getting used to riding the drakes took us another few tries, and we got the crazy dragon down. Unfortunately the [Hailstorm] didn’t drop, but I am satisfied with getting the [Surge Needle Ring] as well. ;)
Then comes Sheven – I did some more healing on him, including a crazy pug run of Black Temple, when at some point I was healing the whole 25-man group with the help of another level 70 resto druid. I’ve also joined a pug run of Naxx-10, but it was destined to fail from the start – the group has cleared two wings and Patchwerk, so we had to begin at Grobbulus, with only two healers and over an hour late. Obviously, we didn’t manage to kill the boss, but I consider it a good training for when I come into Naxxramas with my guildies. Since the last update, I’ve managed to grab both the [Helm of Anomalus] and [War Mace of Unrequited Love] from the Nexus, as well as some other upgrades here and there.
Other than the planned raids, I barely have time in the week to do anything, so I’m mostly flying around Storm Peaks on Sheven and farming loads of herbs to fuel his Northrend Inscription Research and making of Darkmoon Cards. Swift Flight Form helps a lot in this, so I’m usually able to grab about 10 full stacks of herbs in an hour or so.
Don’t make the dwarf angry…
…or he will come there and kill ya. ;)
`
Clearing Naxx-25 on this Sunday made our guild, the Conclave of Shadows, the third Alliance guild on Deathwing-EU to do that, and the tenth overall. Not bad for a group of older, mostly working people with families, kids and stuff. Sartharion is also dead, so now we only have to kill Malygos and then we can gear up while waiting for the Ulduar expansion.
The only bosses in Naxx-25 that shown some problem to us were the gear checks and DPS races – Patchwerk, Thaddius and Loatheb, and the rest was quite easy, compared to what we used to have to do in SSC or TK. Even then, it took us 3 evenings to fully clear the instance.
I’m really, really proud of what we can accomplish if we’re focused, and as I wrote earlier, we’re not exactly your typical hardcore raiders.
Oh look, I’m a dwarf tree!
This Saturday I’ve finally managed to level my druid up to 80. Of course I forgot to take a screenshot of that, even though I was thinking about it earlier this day. I wasn’t really expecting to ding there to be honest, I thought I would have to do one more quest. Apparently not. ;)
Anyway, after a short visit to Moonglade, I ran back to Dalaran, outfitted him with some leatherworking stuff I made earlier on the rogue and started to search for heroic pugs. I’ve also tried to pick some healing stuff from the AH, but found only the [Dragon Prow Amulet] and the [Reanimator's Cloak] there. That was actually quite weird, as usually Deathwing has more of these random blue things floating around, but oh well.
First thing I’ve ran wasn’t a heroic anyway, as I’ve found a group to normal Halls of Lightning, but it made me feeling a bit better about my healing skills, and the two finished quests with some Sons of Hodir rep attached to them are not in my quest log anymore. Not that I actually need that reputation for anything special, given that my Inscription’s shoulder enchants are much better and cheaper, but I like the Storm Peaks zone and all the quests there are just so awesome that I couldn’t resist doing them anyway. And it gives me an excuse to spend a lot of time flying around herbing. :]
Next thing was my first heroic instance that I healed – The Nexus. I love that instance, the looks, the bosses, the idea of “saving” poor Keristrasza, the music… And I would love it even more if the bosses would drop what I want when I’m there on the right character. Saithir still hasn’t got his [Sphere of Red Dragon's Blood], and of course it had to drop now. And so it did. :| At least I got the [Gloves of the Crystal Gardener] from one of the bosses, but of course no headpiece or the mace.
After that I went for even more heroics in search of gear, which unfortunately wasn’t that much successful either. I found a good pug group and we did both Utgarde Keep and Drak’tharon Keep. The only drop I’ve got was the [Battlemap Hide Helm] from UK’s first boss, which isn’t even a tree headpiece, but it will do until I get something better. And I’ve got only 14 badges (well, emblems, but I am so used to calling them badges) even though the Nexus was a daily instance. Sigh, one more and I’d have the healing idol, but I guess that’s just my luck. I’ll try to get into another group after I finish up with this post. ;)
Overall, this was a fun evening even with the bad luck on the drops. I finally got my tree form, and nobody died too much in all the heroics I’ve done. And what is most important, I’ve had a LOTS of fun healing it all, even though I’m still scared as hell. So, happy dwarf signing off for the night!