The Angry Dwarfs

As you probably already noticed, this was another slow week on the blog. Part of the reason is me working at home on a test project, and the other part is being lazy in WoW. I just did some achievements in heroics here and there, finished up some old reputations, got a deaded pony, killed Malygos again, cleared all the quests in Zul’Drak, nothing especially fancy. ;]

Oh yeah, and then there was this flood of news from the PTR. Of course I failed at getting on the test servers as I copied my two level 80 characters just a few minutes ago. Maybe I will do some screenshots when the process will be finished, but I don’t really like to write about the testing stuff that’s likely to be changed five times over before the patch hits the live realms. I have to admit that I like most of the changes, at least those to the classes I play. And the Argent Tournament is an awesome idea – when I saw a screenshot of the faction tabards on MMO-Champion, I instantly knew I’m going to get them. And I did like the idea of the phased Shattered Sun Offensive dailies on the Isle of Quel’Danas, so more of that please.

Another good thing is that Blizzard finally decided to do something with one of the last boring seasonal events, the Noblegarden. The new Achievements asocciated with it seem to be quite fun, and to be honest, you can’t have too many of the fun events – another one is pretty welcome.

And the Wolvar Puppy pet? I’ve waited for that since I did the Kalu’ak daily in Dragonblight for the first time. I hope the pet would have the same cute growl that puppies have.

And then there are the dual specs, but I’ll leave that for tomorrow’s (or maybe Sunday’s) post, as it will be a bit longer than a paragraph here. Until then, you can read some rants on that topic from Dinaer and Big Bear Butt, and an anti-rant from /hug. They should set the mood a bit.

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I’ve seen this recently on Eresin‘s and Zaltu‘s blogs, so I’ve decided to post mine as well. I use RestFu to calculate my alts /played time and give me a total number. It is a bit scary… 

Second place goes to Vrethir, as he was my first main character, now a bit forgotten. Now that both my 80′s are decently geared, I need to level him a bit more.

And this post has nothing to do with me playing on the consoles for half a day, really! ;]

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You can call me that from now on. We almost had it, with no deaths for the whole evening… and then comes a very unlucky frost blast on Kel’Thuzad, that frosted our offtank while he had adds on him. ARGH!

We did some other achievements though, so it’s not a wasted evening after all. It shows that we’re able to do the Undying achievement if we want to, so I’ll probably have this one next week.

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When you go with him to heroic Halls of Lightning, and after clearing the whole instance your Recount window looks like this.

I forgot to make a screenshot a day before, when I was in the same instance on my rogue, but the only difference is that Saithir’s at the first place due to massive damage I can do on single target bosses. Still, the warrior in question makes it a matter of honor to try and beat me every instance we do. :]

It is awesome to have someone like that tanking, as he is practically the only one that I can’t overaggro by accident, and grabbing threat from two out of the three other prot warriors we have, takes a lot less effort.

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I was revered with the Sporeggar folks for quite a while, just because I totally forgot that they have a pet availaible on exalted. And I even have that pet on my hunter… Anyway, yesterday I was counting my pets and updating my list at WarcraftPets, so I started to look for an easy way to get another 14 of them (darned achievements, I tell ya). And since I’m a rogue, farming [Fertile Spores] is very boring. Luckily as a level 80 you can easily get loads of [Sanguine Hibiscus] from Underbog – which is an alternative and much faster way to gain Sporeggar rep.

Here’s a little guide. It took me 12 minutes to get 16 flowers, and that’s with killing some mobs that I didn’t need to kill at all and making screenshots, so it can easily be reduced to 10 minutes. The flower count is a bit random, but if you run through the whole instance, you shouldn’t have less than 10 – and that’s 1500 very easy reputation points.

You can probably do the similar thing if you’re not a rogue – the mobs in normal Underbog are level 65 elites, and when you’re a level 80, you have to run straight through them to get them aggroed. And even if you do, it’s really easy to kill them even if you’re not a prot warrior. Just try not to pull a whole room. ;]

Detailed information after the cut, just don’t laugh at my sloppy, mouse-drawn arrows. ;]

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Yesterday was a good evening in WoW for my rogue. I log in, see a new world event going on, so off to Ironforge I go. And what else could I get from the first [Gift of Adoration] than my very own [Truesilver Shafted Arrow]? :] And later on, one of our guild engineers decided to make me a chopper – even though I only had enough gold for the vendor parts. Thanks a lot Miloowool – now I have to dust off Vrethir and grind some Titanium during the weekend.

The other things we did were fun as well. We cleared Mount Hyjal for the achievement with a guild group, which even got me enough reputation with the Scale of Sands to get to Exalted with them. Apart from that, I have to say I’d rather go there next time with a smaller group (5-10 people max) and even wipe on the old bosses, as some people can annoy me to no limit. But that was always the case in our retro raids – some would run off to kill next mobs while we are looting stuff, explaining or waiting for everyone to gather up.

After finishing Hyjal we went with Miloo to check if we can kill some raid bosses without a healer, since nobody wanted to come and we were in STV anyway doing the Gurubashi Arena part of I Pitied The Fool. Unfortunately my luck apparently ran out earlier on the Peddlefeet, so we didn’t get any extra mounts, but we did kill the two mount-dropping bosses in Zul’Gurub without too many problems (the raptor boss did fear me repeatedly into extra packs, so we had to clear the room a bit), and we even went into Karazhan to have a shot at Attumen’s mount. He didn’t drop it of course (I have never seen it drop while I was there), but the fight was quite easy without a healer and with two decently geared people. Sounds like a fun thing to do on lazy evenings.

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Sorry for the absolute lack of posts lately… had a quite busy time with real life (involving work and Metal Gear Solid 4, well, one can’t use up one’s whole free time for only one game ;] ), so the blog lost some of its position on my todo list. I haven’t stopped raiding though – we’ve managed to finally kill Malygos-25, did an absolutely easy 20-man Obsidian Sanctum raid for the achievement, and today I’ve spent almost all of my DKP on the [Valorous Bonescythe Helmet], and completing my 4-piece tier bonus. This makes me need only one major upgrade to my belt and three minor ones, but even without them, I’m ready for Ulduar when it comes. 

The other fun thing this week was some of the bad people in the guild dragging me along to play some 3v3 Arenas. Well, I have to say that was quite fun, but confusing as hell at first. I’ve never done any Arenas at all, so I didn’t have the slightest idea what does the maps look like, what to kill, or even how the hell am I supposed to do damage as a Mutilate spec (never played that really as well, I’ve always liked Combat Swords more). We did fail a bit in the beginning, but finished the day with same number of wins and loses, so I guess that’s not that bad for a first time. At the very least, I’ve spent my otherwise useless badges on the PvP gear, so I wouldn’t look like a total noob there. :]

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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…

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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. ;)

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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.

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