The Joys of Killing Paladins

So, we moved Nick’s DK over yesterday. By the time I got home from work, he’d already headed out to Hyjal, and was over it because of the constant ganking. So we tried the Vash’jir heroes call, which started okay, but then was cut short because the first quest refused to complete for Nick. (He found out this morning how to fix it, yay!). We went back out to Hyjal, started questing, and immediately, a level 85 Horde pally named Arvalon, or something like that, started displaying his douche-bag-ness. We’re in the middle of a bunch of mobs, and he jumps in. With a level difference of 5, Nick couldn’t even hit him, and frankly, Nick’s a PvE tank, not an arena player. I fared a bit better, and I can testify that Improved Blink is the shiznit in PvP, but I also haven’t mage PvPed in about 5 or 6 months. We hurt him, and finally got him to drop an AoE, and got some guards on him. We died about 5 times to his 1, but I still count it a minor victory. He camped the questgiver, and laughed at me. I laughed right back at him, and even gave him a mock-salute. I find it amusing that someone can misses the stupidity of making fun of someone they’ve killed who can’t really even hit them back, and let’s face it, that sort of person gets their nut on thinking they’ve pissed someone else off. No worries, it’s a big world, I can go elsewhere to level, and yeah, fucker, what goes around comes around, and the day will come when I’m what comes around.  My son hasn’t really had that sink in yet, I’m hoping he can be taught.

Caraway and I were talking at work, and he was marveling at the survivability of paladin’s in general, particularly prot. I was regaling him with tales of Hartbane‘s battle-healer spec in the good ol’ days, and as I told him, you don’t so much kill paladin’s so much as you dismantle them. Sort of like peeling an onion, and far more painful and full of tears. But hey, a Blood Elf pally died last night, so at least one new angel has a set of wings, and the day was a success.

My first experiments with Arcane PvP were interesting, though. I complete forgot to use things like Arcane Power (need to get that macro-ed in, dammit), but that really wasn’t a factor. As I said, Improved Blink rocks. I haven’t had time to evaluate the Glyph of Arcane Power (I’ve heard some discussion on how it’s supposed to work, but doesn’t). The biggest thing that jumped out at me was the lack of a really spam-able Arcane spell. Arcane Blast just isn’t suitable for quick use in combat. My initial cast with haste adjustmetns, is still like 1.9 seconds. In a battleground, with distractions, that’s probably doable, however, 1 on 1, or in Arena, that’s an eternity. Of course, there’s always Scorch or Ice Lance, but those really aren’t optimal for Arcane.  I sort of have visions of running along a freeway, throwing pebbles at trucks. Then again, Shatter is available on the first tier of Frost, for double/triple crit chance… and Arcane Blast has a 40 yard range, AND slows the target with Nether Vortex.

I’m having this vision of stacking AB a couple times at long range, then jumping in with a Frost Nova, and cutting loose with a PoM + AB that crits for what Christian Belt describes as “ also doing damage to his posterity down through seven generations, causing his children’s children’s great-great-grandchildren to speak in hushed tones about the time many generations past when a mage blew up his forefather”. Granted, Layjos is only level 80, and doesn’t have that kind of spellpower yet, but the principle is there, and yeah, I find it exciting. More research required.

All that said, I’m going to experiment with Fire and Frost as well, I think.

 

 

Son of Manic Monday

So, I’ve been seriously delinquent in posting the last couple weeks. Manic Monday has mutated to “Manic Days Ending in Y”. And truth be told, there hasn’t been a lot going on in my WoW world that I consider that noteworthy.

Noblegarden came. Last year, I was like “Meh… eggs? Are they deviled? Can I throw them at a boss for a stun? No? Blah.” and moved on. I was leveling. This year, tho’, I’ve got “the Pilgrim” and “the Elder” knocked out, so “the Noble” was just another one to check off the list. So, climbing out of bed, jumping on WoW, with a quick glance at WoW.com’s Noblegarden writeups, I got on it. Found a hotspot for eggs, and commenced to scarfing down chocolate. When the dust cleared, I hadn’t purchased a single item, except the Tome of Polymorph: Rabbit. Everything else dropped, along with a metric buttload of chocolate eggs.

My momentum was too much, as it turned out, because I missed the fact that the rabbit disguise inflicted by the Blossoming Branch allows one to lay the eggs that you need for the Hard Boiled achievement. When I hear the word “Achievement”, I assume that it’s going to involve some time and effort, so I didn’t bother to dig deeper. End result was me and Edelestar waiting to be polymorphed by opening eggs, then hopping out to Un ‘Goro to lay our eggs. We hearthed, to take the Cavern’s of Time portal in Dalaran… except my hearth is set to Wyrmrest. (Reason being is, I can normally teleport to Dalaran, and the Wyrmrest drakes are an express flight, centrally located. Method, madness, all that stuff.)

So, after hopping my way up from Wyrmrest to the portal up to Dalaran, I hopped to the CoT portal, then made my way across the desert to Un ‘Goro, down the hill, and through the ravasaurs, to get to the hotsprings, and hear someone asking if someone could use a branch on them.  Good thing I was a pink bunny, or the embarrassed blush would have shown. Meh, I meant to do it. Anyone can ride out to Un ‘Goro. My 45 warlock did it. Takes a real stud, secure in his masculinity, to hop out there as a pink bunny! The rest of the Noble title was a piece of cake. Perseverance, patience, all that stuff. Only the Main Four online, so when Innarra came on, we grabbed her to tank, and we ran a random. /sigh. Pinnacle again. Innarra was gulping, but I followed my usual script, and assured her that once you had the encounter down, it was a piece of cake. Same formula…  give the tank time to grab aggro, keep the adds in hand, and get plenty of harpoons, then warn everyone Skadi is coming down in one pass. Slam dunk.

The following evening, Crits’ Classic Raid was AQ-40. Got Ron and Joyce in on it this time, then they had to pack for a spring trip, so we continued the Noblegarden merriment with lowbies. Ran a few Outland heroics. From Tuesday on, it was pretty much Sue and I holding down the fort. Lots of lowby action going on.

This weekend, I was just hanging out, chatting with Innarra, and it occurred to me that I need more pets. Hmmm…. I’ve got a few Sanguine Hibiscus in my bank. I hear Sporeggar is nice this time of year. Gee… can I solo Underbog? Quick step back here. When the last patch came out, I took my off-spec to Frost. Tried it out in AQ-40, and Black Temple the week before, receiving a scathing “Traitor!” from RG. Such an arcane snob. I’ve pretty much decided that it’s going to take some work before I’m ready to try it in a heroic or a raid. With my group, we need me at max DPS, and if I’m invited to a raid, I’m typically with mages geared a bit heavier than I am, so I need to stretch. But for soloing an instance, it looked to be advantageous.

Worked like a champ. After one run, I ripped out the Frostbolt and perma-squirtle glyphs tho’. I miss having the Frost control. In fact, I forgot how much I missed it. Yesterday, I went out to Tanaris to farm mageweave, and it was like a second childhood.

Speaking of mageweave, that leads me to my little gnomie-girl warlock. You can see on the banner the results of a hiccup in my Dimensional Ripper: Area 52. I fell in love. I was seriously considering doing a race/gender change with Lajos, but it just didn’t feel right. After a couple weeks debate, it dawned on me that what I loved best about that particular toon-model was the slight hint of a frown on an otherwise adorable face… the hint of evil… the suggestion of “Don’t #!@$ with me!” In other words… a warlock.

As the Fates would have it, I already had a gnome warlock, Leareth. It was Destiny! Last weekend, Leareth became Liris. Wheee!!!!

This weekend was dead. Did OS3D with Apathy, fun as always, but other than that… just me, chatting with Innarra… finally lo and behold, after a week absence, on  Booters appeared, and we scrambled to get her the bunny pet before the event ended. In doing so, I found another use for the wonderful Traveler’s Tundra Mammoth: sitting on eggs. It wasn’t 20 minutes, and Booter’s had her eggs and her pet, at which point, late nights caught up with me, as well as the imprints of keyboard keys on my forehead from face planting, and I called it a night.

Sunday, after a quick trip to the grocery store, it was more of the same… lots of dead time. Nick came on, and announced he had the urge to try a mage again. We talked about the pros and cons between human and gnome, and he finally decided on a gnome. I finally I decided to get back to work on Liris’ professions, namely tailoring and enchanting. Hmmm… got tons of runecloth, but she’s still on mageweave. Hence, Lajos’ trip out to Tanaris to farm mageweave.

About 4 stacks into that, Edelestar logged in. Shortly thereafter, Booters came on, as did Nickolas, and with only four of us, and it being a rather late start, we decided to just lowby it. Hmm…. my warlock is a gnome. Sue’s mage, Mydge, is a gnome. Nick’s mage, Goodo (to low for Armory) is a gnome. That left only one choice, so after porting my warlock to Dalaran to set my hearth, Nana logged off on Booters, and created a gnome rogue, and it was a gnome party. We helped her cruise through starting area, then headed to Northshire Abby to get some Stormwind rep. Nick has been playing Godfather II his console, and donned a full tux, complete with battered jungle hat, and proclaimed himself Don Goodo, (complete with Brando voice).

As an aside, this seems to be destiny. Nana has always had a soft spot for Gnomeregan, and with the Reclaiming of Gnomeregan coming up in Cataclysm, what more appropriate way to do it than with a squad of gnomes?

Just Another Manic Monday… Tuesday… oh hell, Monday again…

The title of (last) Monday’s post was obvious. Came in to work, and the call queue was ten deep, including a very entertaining customer that I started trading emails with on Friday. See, this guy purchased our system three years ago. Since then, he has called tech support four times. One was unrelated to the current issue. The other three calls – including Friday’s – all come on roughly his yearly anniversary of buying the product. He contacts us, claiming the clocks our system uses are suddenly chewing up batteries. He claims that it’s been going on, and he’s just now contacting us. To put this in further perspective, we have given him, free, a total of four replacements over the last two years. Meanwhile, our largest customer has over four-hundred of these units, situated all around the US, and has experienced less than a 1% failure rate.

A Change in Plans

So, I cut my WoW time short last night, and had planned a post today, concerning such weighty subjects as peace in the Middle East, ending world hunger, and the sputtering economy, but fate, in the form of Repgrind, dictated it was not to be. I am subscribed to her blog, of course, and this morning, I get notified of this post. Ah, raid news. Yada, yada… and then, imagine my shock and dismay as I discovered that I’m being accused of cow tipping some “poor little Tauren druidess”, and then portrayed as trying to blame such a nefarious deed on her guildie.

I had been thinking something was odd. She and I generally exchange pleasantries throughout the day, while at work, via IM, however, yesterday, her end of our workday chat consisted of “hi” in response to my greeting. No “Bye!” at the end of the day, nothing. Last night, of course, she was busy raiding, but even while standing around Dalaran, ignored any attempt at communication on my part. I thought this odd, but assumed she was preoccupied. It appears I was correct.

I encourage the reader to pop on over, and check out this travesty of inaccuracies, half-truths, and hyperbole. Indeed, the statement “poor little Tauren druid immediately shows the vindictive state of mind of the poster. When have you ever seen a “little” Tauren?!? And how does a Tauren flagged PvP – which RG so accurately notes doesn’t happen fighting Omen – equate to “poor”?

What really happened:

As I noted yesterday, Kalyon and her guildmate helped Shalae and I with the Omen fight. Some history here. RG forgets that I came from a PvP server. My hunter was ganked approximately half a dozen times fighting Omen last year. When I saw a Tauren, flagged PvP, bearing down on Kalyon… well, I think it’s pretty obvious what my reaction was. I didn’t ask for applause, or even a “thank you”. It’s what friends do. You look out for each other.

At the end of the fight, Kalyon, for some odd reason, accused me of “killing a cow”. I thought she meant… well, a cow, and I said “must have been the warlock”. Those of you that have played locks know that it’s not uncommon for a warlock to Drain Life on a neutral ambient creature in between fights, and this is what I assumed she was referring to. She started yammering about arcane missiles, and remembering a post of hers, I responded to the effect of if she doesn’t have it on a screenshot, it didn’t happen. She apparently missed the reference entirely.

She starts then going on and on about me being flagged PvP, and finally identifies the source of her distress… “a Tauren”.

At this point, it clicked what she was talking about, and sunk in that not only was she not thanking me, but she was poking fun at me. I was both indignant at the apparent ingratitude, and yes, embarrassed that I hadn’t caught the the reference. That was quickly replaced by realization that she hadn’t even realized the implications of a Tauren flagged PvP. So… I just shut up, and let her have her laugh. Little did I realize that it apparently went deeper than that. I know RG used to play Horde, but when did she start bucking for the “Defender of the Cattle” title???

And now, she’s messaged me. “Hi!” I responded “Hello. ” Conversation? No, she’s gone to lunch. Apparently, she’s disappointed that I haven’t given her feedback on her attempt to… well, do whatever it is she was trying to do.

/sigh. Maybe the troll episode over the weekend was WoW’s way of telling me something. It was fun, and I made a bitchin’ troll.

Another Monday Morning

So,  Love is In The Air ended, the Lunar Festival continued. WoW-wise, it wasn’t precisely an exciting weekend, but it had it’s moments. Outside of WoW, it was one of those daddy weekends. My daughter started her softball season. She went ten-for-ten in the league hit-a-thon, raising $200, to take second overall. The girl who took first place was the daughter of one of the coaches, who got his checkbook out of the glovebox of his Hummer, and wrote a $400 dollar check. The “daddy moment” came when a bunch of the girls were booing the winner because of this, and my daughter told them to lay off, it wasn’t the girl who wrote the check, then trotted out and high-fived the winner.

Meanwhile, back on WoW, I got my Elder title,  with Kalyon‘s and  Zarchius‘ help on the Omen fight, as well as a couple of the dungeon elders. Probably the most exciting thing, however, was Saturday night. I’ve talked about our guild before. We’re about as casual as they come, and we’ve been smacked with pug-crap a few times, leaving us very shy about pugging, and unfortunately, until recently, we were short a tank. Our pally tanked with his DK over on Thunderlord for a long time, on a laptop that was giving him a consistent framerate down around 3. Any wonder he burned out on tanking? Eventually, my son got his DK up, and started tanking for us, but he isn’t on as much as we’d like. With 3.3 coming out, Nick led the way into pug-a-geddon, and I timidly followed. The other members have been slowly following. Now that my gear is up to a level that I pretty much feel like I’m not going to embarrass myself in most content, I’ve been going back, and trying to organize something to get the others back in the swing of things, and convince our pally to try tanking. With some rotation advice from Hartbane over in Apathy, he’s been coming along nicely. It’s been awhile since we’ve done instances on a regular basis, so everyone was a bit rusty in their roles. This weekend, another guildie brought her high-70′s mage, Bootters, over from Thunderlord, and she joined us in Hall’s of Lightning, which she’s never finished before.

Take a Deep Breath

Back pain sucks. But back pain wasn’t why I called in sick on Monday. Naw, that was because of the marathon coughing fits, lack of sleep, etc.

So, after going back to bed, getting a few hours of sleep, I got on WoW. Loving the new solid state drive that I have Windows and my important programs running from. “Important” being a euphamism for “World  of Warcraft”. Definitely a noticeable difference.

So, I logged in, and continued my mat-farming for Jeeves. Uggg… all that mining. No wonder my back is killing me. But now I’m only a few titansteel bars, and a couple king’s amber away from constructing my “gentleman’s gentleman”. Which, given recent patterns, may be a really good thing. Sure, our guild runs up repair bills rivaling the gross national product of a small third-world country, but that’s to be expected. Most people I’ve come into contact with on Heroics seem afraid of repair bills; “Oh, I want to run heroics and raids and not get my armor scratched!”. Even Kalyon has expressed reluctance along those lines. Meh, plebe. My attitude is, if you’re worried about repair bills, find another line of work. If you wanna play with the big dogs, be ready to piss in the high weeds! If you ain’t wipin’, you’re not challenging yourself. I think that’s really why Kaly doesn’t like to tank.

But even I had to be impressed by Apathy.When it comes to wipes and repair bills, they don’t seem too worried about it.

Another One in the Books…

So, all in all, it was a weekend. You know, one of those where you have free time, and nothing really going on to fill it up? Happily, like so many other situations, WoW has that covered. Can you say “Achievements”? Sure, I knew you could.

Running Ulduar 9 + a spare

Yesterday, on the Grumpy Mage:

repgrind Says:

>.>
<.<

Ok, fine. Strat tonight then. :p

Miracle of miracles, I managed to leave work at a decent hour, and upon arrival at the Cave, hopped on WoW. As related over on Reputation Grind, Kaly was being respecced, and then Karius and Lajos were going to go pillage Strat, spit in the Baron’s eye, and demand the Deathcharger’s Reins. If that didn’t work, Karius was going to try begging pitieously.

Friendship

Friendships come in many different forms, in varying degrees, and manifest in a multitude of ways. In WoW terms, some friends are companions, fun to be around, run a raid with, or just be silly with. Other friends give you a lift when you need a hand getting those last few Emblems of Triumph for your next T9 piece. Others just cheer you up when your down, and help you take your mind off your troubles.

And then, there are those that, in addition to all the above, challenge you, as in this comment from RG, made after I’d told her I needed her to help me find the Jeeve’s schematic:

Help you how? Have you seen the drop rate on that thing??? Get me Deathcharger’s Reins and we’ll talk … til then, have fun farming :p

I woke up this morning, a bit out of sorts. It’s been a rough week, with a lot of ups and downs, extreme ups, extreme downs. Last night, I ended up getting stuck at work, got home late, and my first attempt at my random was a rough pug. Not rough in the sense of rude people, but the group just wasn’t quite up to H-HoL.  RG was kind enough to let me tag along on Karius’ random, so I got my emblems, then I got my lock to 40, but all in all, the whole evening just felt off-kilter.

So, I scanned the auction house while I showered, then decided to see if I could get my random out of the way early. I did my fishing and cooking dailies, then fired up the old Wormhole Generator, and popped up to Storm Peaks. As I landed on the platform for the Library, the random popped, and we got HCoS. Decent run. We missed getting the drake by mere seconds, but other than that, it was good. Thanked everyone, and left the group, back to Storm Peaks.

And a mere few dozen Library Guardian’s later:

So, it looks like I need to get those last few points of Engineering. Folks on Winterhoof, stay tuned. I’m going to be having a clearance on Gnomish Army Knives real soon.

And, to my very good friend over at Reputation Grind, I return the favor: Get your ass down to Strat, and get to work. Last I saw, the Deathcharger’s Reins don’t drop in Icecrown Citadel, Trial of the Crusader, or any other place in Northrend.