Egotistical Priest recieved an award this week from Ithiel, over at WoW Fail Blog.

“This award is bestowed upon a fellow blogger whose blog content or design is, in the giver’s opinion, brilliant.”

Ithiel’s exact comment was : “The level of writing on this blog is second to none, and I challenge you to try and get through this post without laughing your arse off. This twenty-mumble still-male-until-proven-otherwise (sorry, had to take a digg. the ‘about‘ page leaves me no other choice :p) computer programmer tells it like it is in a way that has you tearing up from laughing so damn hard. Definate must-read.”

To which I can only say “dagnabbit, I am TOO a girl!”

*winks*

The bloggers here at Ego are excited and pleased to be named, and of course we’ll play along and send the feel-goods to our favorite blogs. Hannelore, of course, would assure you that her posts are the only reason we were named, and Zasp wouldn’t say anything at all if I didn’t make him.

Since we have three bloggers, I forced…err…persuaded my fellow writers to assist in the answering!

Here are the rules of the award :

1. When accepting this auspicious award, you must write a post bragging about it, including the name of the misguided soul who thinks you deserve such acclaim, and link back to the said person so everyone knows she/he is real.
2. Choose a minimum of seven (7) blogs that you find brilliant in content or design. Or improvise by including bloggers who have no idea who you are because you don’t have seven friends. Show the seven random victims’ names and links and leave a harassing comment informing them that they were prized with Honest Weblog. Well, there’s no prize, but they can keep the nifty icon.
3. List at least ten (10) honest things about yourself. Then pass it on!

10 Random Facts about us :

Vonya

1. I am still afraid of the dark, and my feelings toward spiders go so far past fear that we do not have an appropriate word in the english language to encompass it.
2. I have not had “television” for about 10 years. We own a tv and watch a lot of movies, but any tv shows I watch have all come out on DVD.
3. My hobbies include : blogging, writing, podcasting, reading, movies, anime, gardening, crocheting, drawing, pets, papercrafting, coding websites, cooking, singing, collecting perfume oils, creating clay figures, collecting hobbies and gaming. My husband REALLY wishes I would narrow that list down.
4. I am 5′3”. This is the exact same height as Wolverine from the comic books. Don’t mess with me. I do not hit like a girl.

Hannelore

1. I’m the oldest member of my guild
2. I’m a financial analyst that hates everything to do with numbers
3. I have been playing on Kirin Tor since the realm was created, and thus have a character with my real name.  No I’m not telling you which one.

Zasp

1. I can do do “mundane” tasks for hour upon end as long as it has an end goal. For example power leveling Blacksmithing and Jewelcrafting to professions perks as fast as possible while farming as much as you can yourself.
2. I love silence… Well more of not hearing anything other then the hum of my computer. This is when I’m the happiest.
3. People are often surprised that I like “silly” cartoons such as Squidbillies, Aqua Teen Hunger Force and the like due to my often serious nature.

Awesome Blogs of Awesome

Vonya

• Resto4Life

Phaelia may have closed her doors, but her posts still stand out among the blogging community.

• Twisted Nether

The Twisted Nether Blogcast is one of my favorite WoW blogging resources. They allow us all to meet the voices behind our favorite blogs, and they have a great time doing it.

Hannelore

Zasp

• http://angryraidleader.com/

He voices my inner raid leader at times.

• http://rrvs.blogspot.com/

Plays a Rogue and gives general common sense out, me likey.

Last Weekend, we decided to take care of the And They Would All Go Down Together achievement. We’ve been trying to push towards Plagued Proto-drakes but to make excuses, the retooling of our raid force has set us back some.

The goal of this achievement is two kill all 4 of the Four Horsemen within 15 seconds of each other, which sounds a lot more challenging then it really is.

Breaking down our raid force once more:

Tanks :  A Protection Paladin and a Feral Druid

Healers : A Discipline Priest and a Restoration Shaman

Melee : Retribution Paladin, Enhancement Shaman and a Fury Warrior

Ranged:  FFB Mage, Balance Druid, and a Shadow Priest.

*Note don’t stare at the pure DPS class he gets scared*

We broke the group into “sub-groups” Tank and Healer for the Melee Horsemen and a ranged “tank” for the Caster Horsemen. With 2 floating DPS groups.

LOOK AT THE PRETTY PAINT PICTURE!

So as you can see everyone was assigned a specific role. Healers were to keep the Tanks and rotating DPS alive, and the tanks were to make sure none of the mobs used their respective YOU ALL GOING TO DIE NOW SPELL.

The Ranged tanks were our resident Balance Druid and Shadow Priest, they were mainly concerned with staying alive as we have no third healer, so both were out of their normal forms using healing spells on them selves.

Switching “tanking” postions every 3 Marks of Blaumeux/Zeliek. Which if you are attempting this achievement you know they apply at a different rate then the “melee” horsemen. This could be simplified if you had a third healer but, if you don’t and have two hybrids that can heal, they should be able to fill in at the cost of DPS.

In the front we had the tank healer combo of our Protection Paladin and Discipline Priest on Baron Rivendare. And our Feral Druid and myself(Restoration Shaman) on Thane Korth’azz. We set it up this way because Thane would be doing the most damage and Hybrids don’t have the mana to keep everyone alive, at least I don’t think they do. I could be wrong.

The tanks traded Baron and Thane at three marks by the run to the middle and taunt each other mobs and run back to their respective corners method.

Our two roaming DPS teams were our Enhancement Shaman and Fury Warrior on the right side(Baron and Zeliek) and our FFB Mage and Ret Paladin on the left side(Thane and Blaumeux). They swapped everytime they got three of their respective marks. Meaning Left side rotated either up or down to Baron or Zeliek, Right side did the same only on Thane and Blaumeux.

They DPS as normal holding cooldowns till 5% to insure we get it. Now for us Thane and Baron died far faster then Blaumeux and Zeliek did, so on some switches our DPS simply stood around waiting for the Blaumeux and Zeliek debuff to expire and run back in for more stomping, we eased them down to 15% then 10% then finally 5%.

At 5% we split the DPS even more.  We had the the DPS team keep one Thane/Baron and one on Blaumeux and once everyone was in postion popped herosim, and had everyone help DPS, and they all went down together (see what I did there?).

This took only one try for us, so I’m fairly confident it’s a soild strategy, maybe not the best one out there but, I think it’s better then then one listed on wowwiki!

So, not going to lie. Of all the stuff in patch 3.1 (and there’s a ton),  I’m prolly the most excited about the new Feat of Strength “Insane in the Membrane”.

The achievement awards the title “the Insane”, probably because you’d have to be insane to complete it.

I’m going to get it.

Why? Mostly because I’m regularly called insane. Sometimes it’s because I actually enjoy farming, sometimes because I level characters at breakneck speeds, and sometimes it’s the great lengths I go to as an Achievement whore.

So how do I get the title, “The Insane”?

To get this Feat of Strength, it requires you to be at a certain level of Reputation with the following factions :

Honored with Bloodsail Buccaneers

Exalted with Booty Bay

Exalted with Everlook

Exalted with Gadgetzan

Exalted with Rachet

Exalted with Darkmoon Faire

Exalted with Ravenholdt

Exalted with Shen’dralar

Dinner with Bloodsail and desert with the Goblins

Now, I’m going to assume that you have to be Honored with Bloodsail and Exalted with the Goblins at the same time or this Feat of Strength won’t be that impressive in my eyes. Simply because it’d be super easy to grind your Bloodsail Rep to Honored then get your Hat and Title then grind the Goblin Cities back to Exalted without doing the crazy dance.

And honestly I don’t even think that’s the hard part. DM North Runs can give around 425 Rep to each Goblin City if you’re lucky enough to find the Key to Free Knot, as it’s repeatable. The other 75 Rep comes from the Repeatable Quest for the Orge Suit, and it doesn’t trash your Bloodsail Rep. While it may take a while it’s in a completely up to you to do it, no one else to compete with less your buying the Rugged Leather and Runecloth off the AH.

A trip to Darkmoon Faire

Darkmoon Faire rep comes from turning in some of the Repeatable quests at the time of the fair but the “easiest” way is going to be turning in Decks. Which is either really expensive or really time consuming if you have an herbalist and you or one of your friends is an Inscriptionist.

Getting mugged for junk

Ravenholdt Rep comes from turning in Junkboxes for the repeatable quest Junkboxes Needed. Just in case you are curious, it turns out to be 2,870 boxes needed to go from 0/3000 Neutral to 999/1000 Exalted. Makes me glad I have a Rogue to go farming for em. If you have a Rogue it’ll be super easy – if you don’t, I pray for your wallet.

And left for dead

Now here comes the scary part, the part the really makes this title called “the Insane.” (What? Surely you didn’t think those last reps were the hard part!)

Shen’dralar is located in Dire Maul. You only get rep with them from two quests in Dire Maul and then with Book turn ins. Your class book, which was a Fire Resist Trinket and a random stat, as seen here on the Shaman Trinket, and I love the book name.  Sadly you can’t do that one more than once and you can’t turn in other class books. So you’re stuck with 3 repeatable libram turn ins, Libram of Focus, Libram of Protection and Libram of Rapidity. You need around 84 Librams to hit Exalted, worst part is they are unique so you can’t get carry in a bunch and do a bunch of turn ins. You have to do it one at a time unless you have a Engineer Friend who’s willing to come drop a portable Mail Box for you and you spam click like you’ve never spam clicked before.

I know some newer players have seen a Libram, gone “whats this?” and probably discarded it without ever thinking about it. Nowadays, they aren’t that special and have a completely random drop rate. I know of no location to go farm on end to get the books. Your best bet is to hope they drop in Dire Maul while you’re repairing your Goblin Rep and scout the AH. I’d stay away from Libram of Rapidity if possible due to the turn in needing Blood of Heroes. Those are never fun to farm due to the fact they have a good habit of blending in with where they are, spawning underground in other objects and what have you. It’d make it rather annoying to farm.

You may even want to recruit a buddy for the libram farming DM for Goblin Rep because nothing is going to drive you nuts more then having one of the librams in your bags then another one dropping wherever you are.

I’m currently prepping this grind on my Shaman. I’m trying to get all the Goblin Quests taken care of get keys and what not ahead of time so I don’t trash my Bloodsail Reputation.

I’ll be keeping you guys up to date with my progress most likely.

In other news my Shaman is 5 Achievements away from his Red Proto Drake! Color me excited.

Till next week.

~Zasp

Wait what? We want strange people from teh internets to join our guild?

It appears to be that way.

We recently took a hit in membership. Some of our members have played musical chairs and now we’re looking to pick up two DPS roles.

We are particularly interested in a Retribution Paladin and a Survival Hunter. Yes I know a hunter, but we don’t have any that aren’t alts.

By the way, before any Hordies get excited-  we are Alliance. Sorry.

Kwane note: “These two classes are what we feel would best round out the 10 man death machine that Vanguard is and will be. However, same as those classes and being 80 is preferable, what we really want is the player. A certain mindset, willingness, drive and aptitude. All are listed better below, but it is something that should be mentioned up front.

As an example, the SV hunter wanted fills a ranged dps role. We feel this would be best filled by a hunter. If, however, a player the caliber of Aensu showed up to melt faces, they would likely not be turned away.

We are also looking to pad the rank and file a bit, so people that just want to have a green channel of like minded individuals, please feel free to contact us.” /end Kwane

A little info about the guild, Vanguard.

Vanguard has only been around since August, 2008. We may be new to the server, but most of us have been playing World of Warcraft from the very beginning. We intentionally keep our guild small, because we prefer to run with the same people. This allows us to keep us a strong, cohesive team.

This also means we are rather picky who we invite the guild. Case in point, we currently have a total of 10 accounts. (11 if you play the technicality game but he’s a social friend.)

We are not simply looking for warm bodies to fill raid spots. We are looking for like minded people that look to push the limits of their characters in order to reach full potential. Even after content has been on farm for several weeks or months and a player no longer has loot to attain, we expect everyone to bring their A game. This means on time, fully buffed and raring to go.

Each of us follow the theorycraft discussions for our respective classes on sites like Elitist Jerks. While not mandatory (we don’t assign homework), we do expect you to have an appropriate knowledge of your class. This means squeezing every ounce of DPS out of your character possible.

This isn’t just hyperbole. With this mindset, we were able to get all 11 members of our squad an Amani War Bear from ZA in 12 tries while still working on Kara/ZA/Badge gear. This should give you an idea how we play this game. We set goals and accomplish them, we play hard, we play fast and we have fun doing it.

In WotLK it took us one weekend with 8 people to clear up to 4 Horsemen in Naxx.  Second weekend ALL of WotLK was cleared.

As far as progression goes, we have only one encounter left in WotLK’s current raid content, and that’s Sarth 3D.

Effort and learning means a great deal to us. If you have great gear but a stupid spec, you WILL be told so. If you wont hear it or cant learn you’ll be invited to use the door. We aren’t mean, but we aren’t kidding about what we’re looking for, either. If you don’t know but are willing to learn, we are absolutely willing to teach. If you want handholding or a free ride, we recommend you look elsewhere.

Basically, we would rather have a player doing great than a body filling a role and collecting gear and dust. We would rather have an empty slot than dead weight in any role. This may sound repetitive but it bears repeating; we are recruiting players, yes, but we would rather have an empty slot than fill it with a screen-licking mouth-breather or emo-cry baby.

Especially if that body just wants to collect loot and then move on to a bigger guild, we’ll just skip the first part and let you move on now.

If history dictates anything, we won’t be needing all the allotted time to clear the instances once we’ve learned them. Currently we use about 4 to 5 hours total to clear Sarth 25, Sarth 10 1D, Naxx, Maly and VoA 10 man. We haven’t used the third raid night in many weeks, but we like to keep it open just in case.

Loot

We have a priority loot system in place. We often gear our Tanks and Healers with set pieces first as its for the betterment of the raid. This simply allows us smoother progression. Main Spec before Off Spec at all times; rogues won’t be taking ranged items over Hunters. In our group everyone carries their weight, and since we are a small group we gear up quickly.

We currently have no plans to move on to 25 man content. Our official focus at this time is 10 man content. Please keep that in mind.

I’d like to stress gear is not an issue here, as we’ve recently played the musical chairs game and I myself have switched to my third character. I am now the Resident Resto Shaman and I will be gearing up through Naxx like any fresh 80. We plan on gearing the raid up to par again then going after Sarth 3D before Ulduar hits.

A little info about Drenden and the Emberstorm Battlegroup.

Drenden is a PvE Server, now supposedly Medium Pop server due to the recent free transfers off of Drenden. Last I knew Alliance out numbered Horde. Our realm is normally stable, but is known to have it’s hiccups from time to time. I can’t speak of the pug environment too much as I don’t partake in it often, but I have been able to Pug 25 man VoA on a regular basis without any wipes so far, so I have to assume it’s fairly stable. Although we do expect our raiders to spend time outside of the raid getting upgrades, heroics are typically available within the guild without having to resort to pugs for those who ask.

I haven’t noticed our economy doing anything stupid as of late but every server’s economy is normally so different it’s pretty much a moot point. Our trade chat can be rather spammy at times with random BS, but on every server I’ve ever played on it’s always been like that.

Emberstorm Alliance Side, AV as of late has been 40-15 in favor of the horde. We control Wintergrasp fairly regularly. AB, I’ve been in a lot of winning games Alliance Side when I bother to queue. WSG pretty much the same. I have not touched EotS or the new BG SotA yet but if it’s a factor of you transferring here I’d be more then happy to look into it for you.

If you have any questions feel free to push that handy email us button up on the right hand side and I will be sure to reply asap.

How to Apply

If you don’t have so many questions and just want to fill out an application and transfer asap, well go here and see this post again with some instructions at the bottom. Follow them!

But please don’t transfer till all parties involved agree it’ll be a good fit. We’d hate to waste anyones time or money…what with the economy and blah blah sky is falling…

Looking forward to hearing from some people,

Zack

aka Zasp, Nyisa and now Kafive.

Today, I’m going to talk about kiting the Zombie Chow adds as a Retribution paladin  in 10 man Naxx.

Please remember it’s 10 man. My way would probably work in 25 man but I’d imagine the kiter would need a little extra help.

What for does the chow?

First, going to point out the abilities that Gluth and the Zombie Chows have that will effect the kiter.

First is Gluth’s Decimate, which reduces the health of everything and everyone to 5%. It’s used about every two minutes. This affects the Zombie Chows as well – that’s how you are able to kill them. Don’t bother dps’ing them until they get hit with Decimate.

The Zombie Chows themselves have ability they apply to whomever they hit. Infected Wound, which is applied on a melee hit, increases physical damage taken by the target by 100. This debuff is often bad news. Once you get too many of them, the damage is really felt.

Whom does the chow?

In my guild, the Chow kiting crew are Misty, the resident Resto Shaman and myself on Nyisa, my retpally. The kiter will need a dedicated healer, and it just so happens that a Resto Shaman can Frost Shock and drop Earth Bind. Frost Shocks are used if I’m not close to the Zombie Chow when it spawns, to slow it down so I can get to it faster.

To prepare for the fight, I get started early. Right after Grobbulus, I turn on Righteous Fury and switch to Seal of Command. With Righteous Fury up, this ensures once I hit something with Exorcism, Judgment, Divine Storm or Consecrate, the Zombie Chows are going to want to kill me. This is especially helpful because of how much the Zombie Chows like to run after the Tank Healer.

Also, with patch 3.0.8, Hand of Reckoning is also very helpful. Just make sure you hit it with something else afterwards, so it doesn’t go after a healer again.

Where comes the chow?

After you run through the pipe keeping to the right, and drop down you’ll notice 3 grates on the ground and the giant Zombie Dog Gluth.

Ignore the dog, you’re on chow duty. The tanks will take Gluth over to the exit door, but the chow kiters need to stay back by the grates.

The Zombie Chows spawn approximately every 10 seconds. I’ve only noticed them spawning from the middle grate, which makes it even easier on me to try and keep a consecrate down on the middle grate whenever possible. Misty also keeps an Earthbind Totem down towards the middle so they have a greater chance of being effected.

How one does the chow?

I kite the adds around the grates trying to gather them all up and as far back as possible for when the decimate hits. If they’re all grouped up tight and as far back as I can get them, it makes it super easy for our AoE to get them down quick and then back to DPS on Gluth.

For a visual reference, I kite them in an oval around the grates, never cutting through the middle. The hardest thing I tend to do is break my kite to go pick up an add that was out of range of my abilities. A Holy Wrath for the two second stun makes sure I don’t get made into dinner for the Zombie Chows.

I also try to save a Holy Wrath for right when the decimate hits to stun them all in place delaying their desire to become “Scooby Snacks” for Gluth.

Why for do the chow?

When the decimate does happen, they ignore you and slowly zombie shuffle towards Gluth. You wont be able to stop them with anything except AoEing them down. I normally let the AoE dps handle that and keep my eyes peeled for new Zombie Chows entering the fight. Continue to kite and prepare for the AoE when decimate hits till Gluth dies.

Tips ta chow chow?

A couple notes. You most likely will get hit by the Zombie Chows no matter how awesome you are, either by needing to break off to make sure you get a stray Chow back in the chow line or one spawning and bee lining for you instead of following your kite path.

As long as the wound debuff doesn’t reach 40 or more, your healer should have no problems healing you. If it is getting too high, see if you can avoid getting hit for a a while. Then when your debuff is about to fall off, Bubble and possibly Hand of Protection your healer. As soon as the debuff is off,  get out of the bubble so the Chows come back to you. If done properly, they won’t go very far and you’ll be super easy to heal again.

The reason I say run Command over Martyr/Blood is you don’t need to take more damage then necessary (unless your healer likes it that way).

Oh, and as soon as Gluth dies, make sure you turn of RF. Otherwise you’ll be laughed at after your first judgment rips aggro from the giants right after Gluth and you get splatted. (I have done this, it was funny.) (Ego note : funnier when you were faceplanted on the floor!)

Whom else can chow chow?

Now if you don’t have a Ret Paladin in your 10 man group to do this, the first question I have is “why not?” Ret Pallies are awesome!

I’ve read that Mages and Hunters and Warlocks can also kite the adds. Warlocks more so if they are spec’d for Shadowfury. Also, if you are running 3 tanks for whatever reason and one of them happens to be a Prot Paladin, they would also have a super easy time doing this.

If your kiter is having problems, you can often spare the DPS to have one extra person help kite. In fact, we started out with two kiters – playing it safe. I eventually told the Warlock “go DPS Gluth, I have this”. And that’s how we’ve been doing it ever since.

Hopefully this sheds some light on Zombie Chow kiting.

And now you can do da Chow Chow too!

The leveling game

I don’t know how many other people are running around leveling alts right now – on my server, most of the 1-70 run was a handful of random lowbies but MOSTLY Death Knights.

I’ll admit the Heirloom Items make it VERY enjoyable. I’m saying that even though I leveled my Shaman as Elemental. While the weapon I used provided a very nice chunk of spell power, it wouldn’t be as game-changing as never having to upgrade a weapon for a physical DPS class.

I’ve always been a sucker for leveling. I just enjoy it. Sure, at times I get bored, but that’s only if I’m doing one of my crazy power-leveling sessions. I’m not talking about a minimum of two or three levels a night, either.  I think on my Shaman the most I did after 40 was eight in one setting.

Vanilla WoW!

I’ve been taking screenshots of when I ding, keeping track of how quickly I managed to do it and I do feel rather pleased with myself.

My /played time to 60 was 2 days, 22 hours and 47 minutes. I’m pretty sure someone could do it a lot faster (and likely has), but I’m proud of the accomplishment.

There are some tweaks to power leveling (assuming that’s all the intent was) that could have made it faster. Having a constant run speed bonus for those early levels would be pretty awesome. Even better still would be knowing where all the quests where and how to stack them to the most exp per step taken.

Heck,  I’m still not a 100% of where to go for Alliance quests all the time. I still try to click on the Horde Gadgetztan Flight Path and still try to run off to The Barrens when wondering where to go next.

I still love Stranglethorn Vale the most from old world content. It never gets old.

Outland isn’t much different in terms of Horde vs Alliance quests, so I definitely know my way around a lot better and can chain the quests together.

What’s your favorite zone for questing in Kalmidor?

WoW with sprinkles (TBC)

My /played to 70 was 4 days 1 hour and 57 minutes. I very nearly made my 4 days played goal!

After Hellfire and Zangermarsh, I didn’t need help soloing any of the group quests except two in Nagrand – Ring of Blood and Durn the Hungerer. Trust me, if you have yet to experience the 60-70 experience nerf, you are in for a surprise!

Once I got to level 69 from questing Hellfire, Zangermarsh, Terrokar and Nagrand, I elected to run up to Netherstorm to do my favorite quest hub in the game – Kirin’Var Village!

This place is jam packed with quests and mobs that are easy to kill. Once you unlock the major quest givers from doing the Staff of Archmage Vargoth, you have a lot quests in quick succession along with some items that start quests from the named mobs out there and it’s just a really quick level. My Paladin, Priest, and Shaman have all dinged 70 there, and any other alt I plan on leveling will almost certainly do so as well.

What’s your favorite zone in Outland? Mine has to be Netherstorm.

Looking to the Lich King

I’m looking forward to seeing Northrend again, and how much fun I’ll be able to have on my Shaman out there. Though I kind of dread level 77 and how it will be quite the expensive level. Normal Flying, Epic Flying and Cold Weather Flying? Can’t wait!

I’ve been churning away hard to level the shaman, but hitting just 70 wasn’t that exciting. Our raids were far to awesome this weekend. We had a minor let down but it happens, usually just makes us more driven to get our goal.

Recent Rockin!

Friday, we 9 manned Sarth 25. Yes 9 manned. First attempt, second shot.

Now granted, it wasn’t a clean kill. I’m not 100% positive when it will be because when Sartharion goes crazy at the end, it’s hard to lock down all the elementals and our raid quickly gets eaten. But that doesn’t change the fact we have killed the dragon on heroic mode, wearing gear from 10-man raids, and with only nine players. It’s a definite rush.

And just let me say, when you get to focus on the boss AND you get splash damage that hits the Whelps and Flame Adds, your DPS gets a little skewed.

I sustained 5000 DPS on that fight, something still I think is awesome. The only thing that was more awesome was the fact it was so easy to kill Sarth. We had more deaths on some of the Trash Pulls than we did to Sarth, and the Trash was much more difficult than the dragons. Those Flame Orbs that the Onyx Blaze Mistress summon hurt!

We didn’t get any DPS trinkets we were hoping for, but now that we know we can kill him, we’ll be back almost every week we are raiding.

On the same Friday night, we’ve opting to do Plauge Wing just to see if we’d lose someone to Hegin, since that seems to be the toughest place to survive as a raid unit. Well, no one died on the Saftey Dance so we were really focused on getting The Undying title.

On Saturday we made it to Sapphiron without losing a single raider to a  boss and we were golden on the achievement till the final air phase. Sapp came down funny, then swung around, knocking one of our Deathsquad members into a coma. Bummed as we were, everyone knew that it was just bad luck. He got punted out of all healing range and then we’re pretty sure a Blizzard spawned on him just to taunt us. Hopefully, this raid weekend we’ll be able to pull it off.

We also managed to finally get the achievements for Shocking and Patchwerk down in less than 3 with just 9. Two of our raiders have been MIA, and rather than call raids for it, we just go in and kill stuff anyway.

All in all, it’s been a pretty awesome week.

Hopefully the awesome will continue and I hope everyone else is having as much luck as we are.

Patch was yesterday, which is sweet….other then Wintergrasp going “uhh I crash servers!”

We did manage to get our Red Proto-Drakes though, and I can’t express how awesome they are. Awesome enough that I sat around for about an hour just running and flying around in circles. Expect a screenshot of the team at somepoint, I wasn’t in the middle so I couldn’t get a good one.

And I know some people will be, “AMG You didn’t do it pre-nerf they shouldn’t count!!!!!!1oneohone!!!”

And to those people – you’ll always have when you actually earned the achievement to rub in people’s faces. We simply didn’t want to have to switch our team around to play the Random Number game, because as far as I know thats what the Gotta Go! achievement was pre-nerf. I never read anything different.

I think the Gotta Go! timer definetly needed to be adjusted, and very happy that it was. Even with the nerf, it’s not like I’ve seen a billion people on my server running around with the drakes, so I’m not too worried that they nerfed them too far.

Nyisa continues to spend gold like I can somehow make it back. I dropped the gold for the new Ring of Kirin Tor which was a good investment till Ulduar comes out.

In other news, I’ve gone and started another alt and it’s been consuming most of my playtime lately.  If you have extra badges to spend and want an alt I’d highly recommend the Heirloom Items. No Durabilty is win and the 10% extra experiance on the shoulders has been adding up.

Level 41 and counting…

Other than that, nothing really exciting has happened over the week.  In fact, I’m running back to my Shaman as soon as I post this. I’m leveling as Elemental and having a blast.

Where is the patch? I have so much that I’m looking forward to in it. For example, the “one hit and you get it all” change to mining. Instead of seven taps on that Rich Saronite, it’ll be just one and you still get the same amount of goodies!

Gotta Go!’s timer will be extended to 4 minutes and the little 5 man squad will have our Red Proto Drakes. After a bit of research on the achievement, we decided it was to much RNG for us to deal with. I applaud everyone that’s done the RNG dance and stacked the group to get it done. It just wasn’t for us even if we all really want it. 

And Nysia’s damage (my ret pally) will see an increase. I will enjoy Vengeance stacking to five vs the three stack it is currently.

Not to mention the other goodies people are looking forward to.

I’ve been redoing Nyisa’s professions for Min/Max purposes. Jewelcrafting and Blacksmithing (and I had forgotten how much Blacksmithing sucks). The raw amount of materials you need for one skill up is a little silly, at least in my eyes.

Jewelcrafting, while it was a little expensive (buying a ton of Aquamarines off the AH) was at least faster. I hit 367 in one day of work and then hit the 400 mark the next day, which was my goal. All I wanted was to be able to craft Bold Dragons Eyes and prospect Saronite. If I get more skill ups cool, if not I won’t be worried about it till there’s something BoP that Vonya can’t already create for me.

Blacksmithing, on the other hand, has taken far longer. I finally hit 300 last night on Nyisa, needing 580 Iron Bars and being unable (Unable meaning in this case there was simply no bars or ore on the AH for me to pay for.) to pay outrageous prices on the AH means it takes a while to gather em all up. Especially with competition. And the only reason I even want to level it currently is for the Glove and Bracer Sockets. Which amount to around 80 AP for her if I socket both with Bold Scarlet Rubies. Far better then LW or Enchanting for AP bonuses, which is why I took Blacksmithing in the first place.

It should also be said that the only Tradeskill in the game I have ever liked is Mining – or, I suppose, pretty much any other gathering profession. I’ve had all professions to at least 300 now short of Inscription, and there has yet to be a profession that I enjoy. I usually end up choosing my professions to get some sort of advantage that can’t be gained in some other fashion.

I’m fairly positive if the professions didn’t offer any BoP perks all my characters would have a gathering profession just to try and make money or help my friends out.

I don’t often feel motivated to stop what I’m doing to power-level some profession, so it’s taken some time. It also didn’t help that it took me a bit to embrace Nyisa as my main. And now that I have, that motivation has changed a little bit.

Besides the professions, I’ve actually been doing my Sons of Hodir dailies agian and I dropped the cash to get my Darkmoon Card: Greatness. And let me just tell you the 11k price tag that I paid for mine? Was totally worth it, seeing my Character hit 6.1k AP while soloing with only Imp. Blessing of Might is pretty freaking awesome.

I have a question for you all, do you choose Professions based on whats fun for you or do you take the same approach as me and attempt to min/max for Max DPS or that extra stamina for tanking or even the extra spell power for the healing and spell throwing?

I’m rather curious, my guild sees about a half half mix, and not all of em Min/Max entirely, meaning Leatherworking/Enchanting or the like? Just as good as Blacksmithing/Jewelcrafting mostly because they have put a lot of work in their professions already, and that 30 AP they’d get from switching around just isn’t worth it to them. Which I understand, I know not everyone is a freak of nature and can farm for hours on end without getting bored.

I take that back. Iron is my nemesis probably the only thing in game I get fed up with farming for…

As you may have noticed, last week I was asking for the patch to hit so we could do the Gotta Go! achievement. And while I know of the strat Fiest/Faust has mentioned, it leaves a certain priest out of the group for that and… I shudder to think of what would happen if we were to ninja do it behind her back. [Ego edit : Don't you EVEN think about it! I see you on a red proto-drake before me and I will shove its saddle so far up your backside you'll be burping leather for a month!]

Plus she went back and did a couple of the Achievements she hates to get my Paladin caught up to the group, since we started out with my Rogue. And I am grateful for it as I want a Proto-Drake very much so. [Ego edit : Harrumph. *partially appeased*]

Now, if only Violet Hold would spawn the DOG to give me LOCKDOWN!

/cast hate at VH

Not that I’ve been running it every day, but none the less spawn the dog so I can stop saving the place, please. I will be very upset if the patch hits and all I have left to do is kill that stupid dog in VH to get my Red Proto Drake while all my friends are flying around on theirs… Especially because said friends will mock me. (Kwane edit: Oh yes we will.)

And did I mention that I hate the Occulus?

Well, to be more specific, Heroic Occulus… And it’s not that it’s hard per say it just seems luck can factor in, which I absolutely hate.

In our attempts to get Make It Count we decided we’d run the 1 Ruby, 1 Emerald, 3 Amber Drake setup and we get to the Ley-Guardian Eregos with a good 8 minutes or so and just have weird things go wrong. Our Ruby Drake would have the misdirect damage skill up, and it wouldn’t misdirect damage to him even though we could see the awesome bubble up on everyone. Then we all quickly drop like flies only having one healer. Or one of the Amber’s Time Stop simply won’t work.

Maybe we’re messing something up, or not seeing an easier way to do it, but our kills when things go according to plan take about 3 minutes or so. We did the 5 Amber strat (used it to get the Ruby and Emerald Voids) but we hated  it. We know how to bounce charges around so we bring the mind-boggling dps.

We’ve been doing a warm up run in Normal Occulus for practice, but the difference in the boss’s health is astronomical. We drop him in about 45 seconds on normal.

Last night’s attempts were plagued by Server Lag causing more problems and, of course, when there’s server lag there seems to be mental lag as well.

For example, our resident Gnome mounting on his Mammoth instead of his Amber Drake to ride off the nearest edge and plummet to his death. At least we got a good laugh out of it.

I wanna know if you guys hate the Occulus as much as we do? I know all of us would rather be running around hitting him with the abilities that we’ve honed for the last 80 levels rather then flying around on silly Drakes.

P.S – If you bring the Replenishment, then miss the Naxx clear due to the Holidays, people are excited to see you back and mad at you for missing raids, it’s like a love hate relationship!

Being Christmas Eve and having a semi-real post on Sunday I leave you with this:

*Note this is not intended for the eyes of the Dreamcrusher Kwane*

Dear Santa, or whomever gives me what I want,

I’d like the patch to hit so our 5 man group can get the Red Proto Drake, all we have left is Gotta Go! (which is having its time extended) and Make It Count! (Been putting that one off cause we hate the Occulus. At least some of us do, I know I’m one of em.)

Also, if the loot tables could bug out and I could somehow secure Armageddon for Nyisa that would be swell.

And maybe if your feeling really nice, my little mage will magically be 30 so I don’t have to put up with running around anymore. I want a pony. That would be sweet.

That’s pretty much it. Most importantly, I just want our Red Proto Drakes soon, cause they would be sweet.

In all seriousness, I hope whatever holiday you celebrate is an enjoyable one and a semi-safe one. Cause if it’s too safe, how much fun could it really be?

Happy Holidays to all.

And I’ll see you Next Wednesday on New Year’s Eve… Maybe…