I keep promising to post and I keep failing. I blame myself for not having just stuck with what I should have stuck with the whole time.

Stuck with what you ask? My Rogue. It’s the only class I never tire of. I can play for days on end without even going “man I wonder what this other class is like”. It’s the class that I feel at home on, I just know how to do what and why and when and feel I do so pretty well.

If I do say so.

I was running around on a Ret Paladin before the expansion playing Mana Battery again. The first weeks of OP were fun but got boring fast and felt like it took virtually no skill to play in PvE content, again this is my personal feeling. Oh, I know not everyone will agree with that, but when your rotation is “First Come, First Serve” it seems a little bit silly. (FCFS means as soon as an ability comes off cooldown you use it.) And if you’ve taken offense to that I’m sorry just remember it’s my opinion, and not anyone elses. People were kind enough to let me switch back to my Rogue. For that I’m grateful.

I’ll be focusing more and more on the Rogue, trying to find that niche of a money making scheme in Northrend. Much like the days of Mana Tombs in Buring Crusade or further back yet farming the Arcanite Reaper Pattern in Blackrock Spire in the Vanilla WoW days…Oh yes I will makes me some cash!

Last time I found the cash cow (Mana Tombs) before I even stumbled across the idea of farming on the internet (yay me!). While everyone else was doing the Mechanar Chest Farming which Blizzard eventually fixed, I was in Mana Tombs having a blast. Once I find the new cash cow, I’ll be sure to share. And from the taste of the expansion so far, these past 6 days, it looks like we’ll need it.

Of the dailies I have seen or bothered to do this far, the max gold I’ve seen rewarded is 4g and 40s. Even the old Outland dalies have been fixed to that amount. Even the lovely “Gather Nether Residue” I could do via mining nodes which gave 18g and some odd silver has been removed completly from what I can tell. Maybe it’s bugged?

I dropped my Rogues Leatherworking in favor of Skinning. At first this was to make some cash off the AH, but it turned into funding my guilds Off Tank’s Leatherworking. He’s of course sharing the benifits with me and often tells me how awesome I am. I’ve also been dontating all my ore to fund Ego’s Jewelcrafting as she doesn’t have a miner either and threatened me with doom if I didn’t do it.(Mostly kidding, but not really. No kidding, but seriously. I need HALP, she’s after my SOUL!.)

I am now kicking myself in my ass for not doing my dailies on all 3 of my 70s like a diligent person and having close to 20,000g by the time expansion hit. While it would have been nice, I just didn’t feel like doing it at the time. To busy hanging out and goofing of to bother. Now I know I’m only 74 and things may change at level 80, but I haven’t seen anything about it. We shall see. Gold has never really been a problem for me, but I usually have a plot already started by now.

I will add that I have been mining Thorium in my free time. Seems as if a lot of people need the ore and are more than happy to pay the 40g a stack on the AH. And until they stop doing so I will gladly go to Silithus in my free time and continue to supply. Pro-Tip!:if you have a miner and are bored or leveling with friends and don’t wish to get to far ahead or just need the cash for those freaking expensive skills, go bum around in Silithus for a while. Assuming your server is like mine and Thorium is the most expensive ore on the AH, regardless it will sell.

My Rogue is 74 and as to my first impressions about the expansion? It sure is pretty. I can “see” why they didn’t want us flying past everything untill later in the levels, cause you’d miss a lot of cool looking stuff. And man oh man some of those instances are just stellar. My personal favorite, going of the whole instance would prolly be Ahn’kahet: The Old Kingdom. If I was just to pick a room it would have to be where you fight Grand Magus Telestra in The Nexus. All those Runes are sooo cool.

I give mad props to the Art Team this time around, I actually spend time looking at my surroundings rather then running past them at top speed. The armor so far has some pretty cool models but as usual soooo many of the new models are reused over and over agian. I know it’s not easy to make everything unique but they could mix it up a little bit.

So far I’m enjoying this expansion. I hope everyone else is too.

See ya next week.

I promise otherwise Ego has permission to “punish” me.

P.S. - Kwane pointed out all Rogues should be steller dancers as all we ever do is count “One, Two, Three. Four, Five, Finisher.” And for this I hate him, mostly because I can’t argue agianst it.

So, I dunno about you guys, but the thing I was looking forward to the most Tuesday was my Rogue getting the title of Bloodsail Admiral.

I’ve been wanting to get the sweet Pirate outfit ever since the person who introduced me to Rogues and taught me the way of the Rogue, did it so long ago. Mostly because his Undead looked freaking awesome in the whole get-up. My human Rogue comes close to it, but not quite. Then again, I’ve always been partial to the Undead male model. Its the damn dance and laugh, I tells ya.

I ended up finally doing the grind Monday in about six and half hours. Which included a grand total of 3 Deaths and 2 broken off hand repair bills. Which was far less than I was expecting - those Goblin Bruisers are named so for a reason.

Very few of my Sneaky Rogue abilities worked…well mostly just one.

Vanish (of course) didn’t work as their stealth detection is insane. If not for that fact I most likely would have never died. But if it they didn’t have such great stealth detection, I’d be able to gank in the goblin towns and that’s what Blizzard was trying to prevent.

I, being a Human, had an easier time on the grind as I get 2.5 extra rep per kill on the guards and this adds up; ie: every ten guards I killed I got the rep for eleven. But what you have to remember, unless you were planning on doing this grind and skipped booty bay leveling up, your in the hole pretty badly with Bloodsail Buccaneers. Now, since I wasn’t planning on doing the grind on Zasp, I did not skip the quests.

So I started with a pretty big hole to climb out of.

If I remember right I had to make up almost 15k to get from Hated to Hostile. Surprisingly, it went pretty quick. I rarely get bored of grinding when I have a goal. As long as I’m not competing with a billion people for the mobs, I’ll do it till I pass out on my Keyboard. And what better a goal could I have asked for than a sweet title and a pirate outfit?

The nice thing when you’re first starting out is that you can just go around wailing on all the guards because they don’t realize you’re at war with em. Which gets you a lot of strange looks, and whispers with the whole, “WTF are you doing?”.

Which made me laugh and I responded most often with, “I want to be a pirate.” and they either further inquired or just laughed at me. Had two people go as far as calling me insane, which just made me laugh even more. (Insertion from Ego : Obvious proof that they were right, in my opinion!)

You learn where they patrol pretty quick and what spots spawn more as you’re doing the grind. I got a tip that the best spot for a Rogue was up by the tailoring shop, which worked super well. Two Stationary Guards, with two pats that patrol the area. I started out by dispatching those four guys then entering the tailoring shop to send another Bruiser after me. Once I was firm into my routine I had anywhere from no one watching me, to up to five people just standing their watching me go to town on the Bruisers.

One person even sat there for a good 20 minutes watching me, and it could have been he/she was just AFK but their char never flagged AFK once. So I’m pretty sure they just sat there watching me. Which I couldn’t see being much fun, but to each their own.

A couple tips, bring lots of food. Learn where your safe spot is, because you’ll need it, my Rogue had to snack after about six to seven of the Bruisers. Their swing hits for about 400 and will crit every so often.  Aside from their net, I never had any problems. They do have a nasty attack with a gun that can spell death, as it knocks you back and stuns. If you land near any of the other Bruisers they all want to play too.

I only encountered the gun attack once and I’m still not 100% positive on how it happened. A group of 3 Hordies started their grind up sometime during and mine and I saw a couple’em fly past me then I ended up flying with’em. That was one of my deaths, but I don’t want to count it since to my knowledge it wasn’t anything I did short of simply becoming hated by Booty Bay.

One of my other deaths came when I alt-tabbed to talk a friend on Gmail. I quickly learned that the spot I had picked to sit in stealth and eat was not a safe spot at all, which gave me a good chuckle. I’m positive that being a Rogue gave me a distinct advantage, as I could stealth anywhere I wanted to. I could see almost every other class having a harder time with it…save prolly a Feral Druid. I could see them going for years before stopping.

The final quest may be a doozy for some people but with the ability to stealth up to Fleet Master Seahorn and Baron Revilgaz, and pop all  my cooldowns made it easy. Especially because they are still only level 60. I ended up jumping off the top into the water and swimming to see if I could make out safely but those Bruisers swim freaking fast and net. I was quickly dispatched, but the death was not on my mind. I was finally done with my grind and off to get my Pirate outfit and look forward to patch day and wandering around with the title turned on.

First off, let me say this will prolly come off as a QQ Post. Which is not my intention but it is what it is. You’ve been warned. What a way to start after an almost two month hiatus huh? Anyway, on with it!

Almost as soon as Patch 3.0x (or whatever they’re calling it these days) hits, I will be retiring Genuflect (my shadow priest and mana battery extraordinaire) possibly forever. They’ve moved the spec, in my eyes, from a Support/Buffing Class to an attempt at a “pure DPS” class, because that’s what they want all the DPS specs to be. If I wanted to be a pure DPS class, I would have stayed on my Rogue (which as of now is where I look to be returning).

The biggest change is likely that of the concept of a Mana Battery, because it’s now a flat increase every time it ticks as the replenishment buff.  Where in most of BC I could rest well knowing I’m kicking ass and doing my best rotation to keep my group’s mana near the top, now in Wrath it’s just a mechanic and everyone gets the same amount no matter how hard I push it. To me this removes almost the whole point of why I rolled a Shadow Priest.

When I first rolled her, I knew they didn’t scale as well as some other classes because if they did infinite mana would be a possibility and Blizzard would never want that. So I was satisfied when I started eclipsing 1300 DPS on her, I knew I was stacking the gear correctly and running my rotation right.

I am fairly sure the rotation or spell priority system Shadow Priests use has really yet to change come the expansion, so in order to put out the DPS you’re still going to have to make sure you’re not failing at it, but the only benefit is to show up higher on the DPS meters.

No longer will your group members go “zomg mana!” because you’re busting your ass. In all likelihood, they won’t even be able to notice a difference. Not that I need a pat on the back, but when you end the fight and your group members are giggling because they all finished with nearly full mana, it lets you know you were doing something right. And it’s always made me smile when I pulled it off.

I can see the reason the change was needed…I am just not happy about it.

Also, they’ve removed the Shadow Weaving debuff from affecting other people. No, it didn’t buff everyone but it helped Warlocks and their Improved Shadow Bolt effect (which now also only affects them) used to help me. We fed off each other. And I personally love Synergy, I look for it everywhere. But they’ve seemed to remove most of the caster stacking like this for reasons. I don’t know what those reasons are, due to not having a Beta Key and able to see it first hand. Perhaps because everyone’s supposed to be able to function on their own, I dunno.

My biggest upset is the fact they’ve turned Misery into 3% Spell Hit rather then the 5% Spell Damage, and turned around and gave it to Boomkins at almost 3 times its value…totally confuses me. Now I know the 3% Spell hit is going to be helpful, but not as much as 5% Spell Damage. You can make up hit pretty easily, but there’s no item in the game that I know of that increases your Spell Damage by 5%. I know they’ve made up for this loss within the shadow priests spells themselves, but I loved seeing a DPS increase for the other spell casters in my group/raid.

Perhaps I rolled Genu for the wrong reasons and that’s why I don’t look forward to the new patch. But I was having a blast on her till I learned of the planned changes in WotLK.

I want my synergy back.

Another major reason I’m not going to miss Genu is Trash fights.

Going from a Rogue to a Caster of any sort makes me feel like I’m slacking. Doesn’t help that my major damage spells all have cooldowns. Maybe I just haven’t figured out how to do it efficently, but I troll the normal sites such as EJ and Shadowpriest.com and I haven’t read of some eye opening experiance. My DPS still rocks on bosses, and dips dreadfully on trash fights.

So for now, Genu will sit on the back burner till I feel like trying my hand at healing one of our 5 man squads, which most likely won’t happen as we have 4 healers. I may level her to 80 for some Disc PvP but as Arenas stand right now with the random elements, I’m not terribly excited. I usually love me some PvP so I might be able to put up with it. We shall see if Genu ever comes around again.

Expect to start seeing some regular posts from me, more than once in a blue moon.

My oh my. Sorry about the lack of posts for the last 2 weeks. A lot has happened, my Priest hit 70 last week… Thursday or was it Wednesday night? I don’t remember, so much of it’s a blur.

My played time to 60 was 4 Days, 15 hours. For my first “pure” caster I think that’s a pretty good time and it was pure old quest grinding. I did two instances as I leveled SM and ZF one run each just to get the experience from all the quests.

I hit 70 in 2 Days, 19 Hours for a total played time of 7 Days, 10 hours. Quickest 70 yet for me. Means I’m getting better at it or something! I had a lot fun with leveling the priest. Even more fun at 62 when I got Shadow Word: Death. I dunno why I like the spell so much but, everything about it is fun to me. It hits like a truck and the casting animation is cool, and while it can save durability if needed, I rarely died. I think I maybe kicked the bucket around 10 to 15 times and I know a couple of those were to drowning. Wee for paying attention.

It took me about 4 hours to get to 375 Tailoring and then I had a lot of the gear so many Shadow Priests take months to accumulate. Full Frozen Shadowweave, The Spellstrike Set, Belt of Blasting and Bracers of Nimble Thought. Started my honor grind Friday to get the Season 2 Gavel and Off-Hand, took me till Monday to get both. I quickly slapped a Soulfrost Enchant on the weapon because I’m not one to skimp and 14 Shadow Damage is 14 Shadow Damage. Man, DPSing as a Shadow Priest is a lot fun and I enjoy being a Mana Battery!

Monday, the EgoCrew did a normal Magister’s Terrace and got me some more gear. Gloves, Ring and Cloak all on the same run. I swear that instance loves me. I get all the loot I want there so quick! Here’s hoping I can get Timbal’s my first couple runs in Heroic mode.

Then later I got invited to a guild that was recruiting a Shadow Priest for their T6 runs and understood I just had rerolled. They had just finally killed Kalegos in Sunwell but didn’t have the time to get serious attempts on Brutallus, and from what I understand, he one shotted the tank the first time he ran in. I really hope to see some of Sunwell and the rest of Black Temple before Wrath of the Lich King hits.

Anyways in Hyjal, we did Rage Winterchill and I promptly died to Ice Bolt due to low life of my current gear, and not having my PvP trinket yet. No big deal, I wasn’t the only one to die to it. Also got to experience Anetheron. I took a Carrion Swarm to the face! And again I bit the dust. It happens especially to me as I have NO stamina. Nothing to new here as I’ve experienced all of Hyjal on a Rogue just not a caster. Looking forward to it none the less.

The Hammer of Judgment dropped of trash, so in two days I did two Soulfrost Enchants in one day. That was fun.  And to think I use to think Mongoose was expensive. I don’t like being handed gear but they could really use a Shadow Priest and I love running out of Internet fires.

Tuesday I got to see Black Temple for the first time in several months. Did the first 6 Bosses, 3 of them being new for me. I was worried about my HP pool on Najentus, as a min of 8.5k life is recommended for the fight, I’m not quite there. However, Power Word: Shield gave me a decent buffer to make sure I didn’t die.

Supremus, was fun as a caster even if the fight was a lot longer then it needed to be. The off-tank wasn’t building enough rage quick enough and didn’t get high enough on threat. This lead to the melee taking all the Hateful Strikes thus dropping a lot of our DPS. Was fun none the less, all the melee were giving the off-tank crap and it got kind of close at the end, but it was a one shot.

Shade of Akama was easy mode and nothing new. I helped DPS the channelers down and collected loots.

Teron Gorefiend was fun. All the spell push-back makes my damage output suffer a bit, but I have yet to learn the tricks to maximize my it on fights like this. I got Shadow of Death’d which I was dreading, because I’ve heard its easy to mess up the constructs. Well I did it so quick I thought I lost track of one of em, just turned out I killed it super quick. Anyone thats played the flash game online, its about 100 times easier then that so if you can do that don’t sweat it.

BloodBoil and Reliquary of Souls we’re pretty fun but very sensitive DPS fights, so I had to watch my threat like a hawk. They we’re a bit worried about my HP on Bloodboil but I didn’t get Fel Raged so it was a non factor.

Overall, 0 Deaths on bosses in BT and felt my DPS was average, still finding my way on this toon, but it has been a lot of fun. Hope to see Illidan and the rest of BT as soon as I can. I’ve missed running out of internet fires quite a bit, especially with a guild that doesn’t tolerate people messing up repeatedly and doesn’t slack off.

Expect more posts from me now that I have stuff to ramble on about.

I leave ya with a pic of Genuflect.

Sorry for the lack of a post last week. Nothing was happening. I logged into the game, and flew around on my Netherdrake trying to figure out what to do. I even tried pugging for hours on end on my Paladin unable to get a group even formed let alone in the instance. But that gets pretty frustrating pretty quick, so my Paladin sits with no new gear sadly.

With Vonya and the others burned out on the game I’ve been left with myself pretty much, even tried to apply to a couple other guilds for a raiding spot on the Rogue. But I was unable to even get a trial run which frustrated me pretty bad. As, that’s never happened to me before, but I guess it was bound to happen at some point.

I miss doing things other then PvPing and Farming gold. So, I think I’m going to roll a Priest up to mess around either shadow or healing, wherever I can find a home. Expect randomness in my posts from now on, I’ll do my best to update, but how exciting can I make leveling?

Anyways, that’s the story with me till next week hopefully.

It’s Wednesday already? Where has the time gone?

Hope everyone had a nice 4th of July weekend, I spent most of my time hanging out with some friends and grinding honor since it was AV weekend. My rogue’s almost completely done with the honor grind, and it makes me really happy…even if I have plans to do it all over again on my Paladin! I loves me some PvP and I need a Ret set for running around by myself and since the PvP items are better then a lot of PvE items for a Ret Paladin (or so my research tells me) it seems like a solid plan.

Speaking of the Paladin, here’s my pre-heroic wish list.

To be clearer, this is the gear I want to have before I even think about stepping foot into a heroic. Note this is my plan, probably not everyone’s. I’m a firm believer in Effective Health, rather stacking pure avoidance, so you’ll see more choices for pure stam rather then gearing up to be uncrushable. Why? Because in Heroics you can’t be crushed and I have no plans of raid tanking yet. So on to the list!

(more…)

So, for unforeseen reasons, my Paladin barely got played at all this week, still level 68 waiting patiently, kind of. I’m 29 bars away from my second level 70 Paladin but this time it’s something I really wanted to play instead of conforming to get a raid spot, stupid Horde needing Holy Paladins. Yes my first Paladin was a Blood Elf, a male one at that! Stop looking at me funny.

The week, I’ve been PvPing and doing a bit of Arenas, on my Rogue. I currently only do 2’s and 3’s. My 2’s team is an old buddy from my Horde days that I conned into coming to my server with a druid he had back from the days of Neferion in Blackwing Lair. He’s currently 8/11/42, pretty much cookie cutter spec as far as Resto’s go, he’s also in my 3’s team but more on that later.

(more…)

Possibly you were expecting exciting news, along the lines. But I don’t know what you find exciting!

My Paladin has dinged 68 after a very slow week, but it should be picking up over the next couple days and I can see level 70 in my sights!

I am very excited, as I still have yet to stop enjoy tanking other then when I suck it up and not know where certain mobs spawn and they get on the healer and I’m out of mana. That’s not very fun, and I may or may not get poked at for it. But it only takes one time to fix my mistakes normally, which I am pretty happy about. So far it’s been pretty awesome and I’m enjoying my ride to 70 even if it has been far slower then normal.

I still have over half of Zangarmarsh, all of Terrokar, all of Nagrand (save the Ring of Blood because someone needed to tank it) and everything past that. So if I ever get a set of Ret gear around I may go questing at 70 for some gold.

That is definitely my only complaint so far, the pure suck of questing. I simply kill too slow to be efficient at it. Maybe I haven’t learned how to actually do it yet. But unless its melee mobs that I figure out will be awesome for grinding, it pretty much sucks to solo.  I’m lucky enough not to have to do so most of the time.

I’ve been able to keep my goal of no Blessing of Salvation, for the most part. Some bosses I just can’t get my threat up there. Also of course sometimes an Elemental Shaman and a Fury Warrior just can’t help all the threat they produce in certain encounters.

Like Epoch Hunter in Old Hillsbrad? Very hard to not use Blessing of Salvation, even if its most likely going to get dispelled in 5 seconds. It still lets me build a slight threat lead over my DPS for when my Righteous Fury gets dispelled. Which is very frustrating currently, because I lack the training how to keep track of my buffs, position the boss and make sure I’m hitting the right buttons to make sure I keep threat on the boss. I know it will come with time, but until then people will have to put up till I notice it, and then able to correct it without skipping a beat.

Its such a different game from a tank’s perspective, I help control the tempo, I “lead” even if I don’t know where I’m going or where I should go. Not going to lie, it’s pretty easy as a Rogue just to skate past everything.

Of course, ask me about Mana Tombs I can tell you almost anything about that place from stealth farming it so much. Even if that place sucks on Normal because there aren’t many good drops and the trash is really annoying. Especially when you are 4 manning or running it before you’re “technically” not supposed to be there yet. Regardless, it’s fun and far more exciting then doing a quest.

I’m most looking forward to Shattered Halls, and anything Heroic. Mostly because I want to see how I manage the transition from easy mode to mode where screw ups are not allowed. And for Shattered Halls because I hear it’s the Prot Paladin’s wet dream, since they are very few casters. And while I put up with casters, I do not like them unless theres a spot where I can line of sight them. That and I have no reflective threat and what fun is that?

Eh that’s enough rambling for now, I should be 70 the next time I write something here and hopefully it’ll be on my gear list for getting ready for Heroics, and possibly getting a set up to be uncrushable if somehow I end up “raid” tanking.

Till next week!
~ The Bloodthirsty Paladin in Training.

So yesterday was my Birthday. Which was pretty awesome. And it may or may not be why there’s no real post from me. I’ll let you guys decide. I shall return next week, without fail.

Untill then, I shall not not be sleeping more.

/Vanish

So my Rogue has gone on vacation to Azeroth and Mana Tombs. He’s pretty much retired.

My Paladin is going to be my main focus with the additional intent to level a Resto Shammy(2^nd One) and a Feral or Boomkin Druid. Druid mostly because they are an awesome gatherer and I’ve always had this chip on my shoulders about Boomkins, because they are either simply amazing or simply horrible. I’ve yet to see a mediocre Boomkin and that intrigues me.

I’ve always wanted to try my hand at Tanking, I’ve just been unable to do so. When you level a Warrior and all your friends are more interested in goofing off or slacking theres only so much pugging you can do before you get fed up with it. At least thats how I feel.

Now that I’ve been blessed with the awesomeness that is Ego crew, I never have to look for a PuG and we just go do the instance, the 4 of us currently. I’m fairly confident we can 4 man almost any instance save Magister’s Terrace and thats only because of the 3^rd boss, and the randomness and “PvP” factor of it. I’d still like to meet that Warrior who hits as hard as that NPC bastard does.

We’ve only just started running Ramparts and because we’re still looking for some drops out of there, have yet to move on to Blood Furnance. There are boots I could use, as they’d be a major Stam upgrade, since a lack of stamina on the tank has been the only hitch we have had so far.

And then its only on Nazan. That stupid Dragon with the fire that hurts! When the tank is short on life, I can imagine its not a lot of fun to heal for, considering there is pretty much 0 room for error. But we’re doing it just fine with our little 4 man crew. Currently not having to worry about any CC makes my job that much easier because I don’t have to do the dance for positioning yet. And while one day I’m sure I’ll have to learn it, nows not the time.

It’s all about how fast can we pull.

I have 10 more levels before I get all my toys and truly see how much threat I can put out. My goal is to be a threat monster, so much so I don’t have to give my DPS salv. I personally know how frustrating it can be for DPS to be threat capped and forced to hold back. I’ve been there and I’ve done that dance. Luckily a paladin tank cannot be rage starved, cannot suffer the same fates that plagued Aensu (when the random number generator would see fit to grant him a string of over-avoidance while simultaneously granting the dps strings of aggro gaining crits) And Aensu was always awesome in the fact less he was off on the day or the games random number generator rage starving him, I never had to hold back. Its an incredible feeling and I hope to be able to return it to him.

I’ve started plotting level 70 gear that I can get crafted and help us do heroics quicker. Because the normals, while fun, are nothing compared to the heroics in my eyes. I like the challenge. And I look forward to learning the instance completely, how pulls are managed, the pats, and how to position the bosses and what not. I’m sure you’ll see my frustrations or triumphs in the coming weeks and, possibly some posts on how I plan to gear in 5 mans. It’s like its a whole new game and I can’t get enough of it.