Just because I don’t have enough to do in World of Warcraft, I’ve decided to start a new level 19 Horde twink. I’m kidding about not having enough to do, of course. I miss playing Battlegrounds and I figured it would be faster to get a character from 1-10 than play my Shaman, Warlock, or second Paladin to eighty. I’ve converted my banker, a Tauren Hunter, to my PvP twink and am currently level seven. As my banker is firmly planted in Thunder Bluff, she — yes, I said “she” — can easily queue up for Warsong Gulch and watch the auction house for twink gear that non-twink players put up for sale.

My shopping list currently includes all of the following: Sentry Cloak, Forest Leather Bracers, Gloves of the Fang, Scouting Trousers of the Monkey, and Twisted Chanter’s Staff. My Leatherworking Rogue will craft a Deviate Scale Belt, rounding out my bind-on-equip gear.

My current goal is to level her to ten and head to Trisfal Glades outside of Undercity. There, I will tame a Vicious Night Web Spider for their Web ability which “encases the target in sticky webs, preventing movement for 4 seconds.” I predict hijinks ensuing very soon!

Posted in 200 Words, Twinking, World of Warcraft 3 Comments »

BC seems to be having a good time with his well written and entertaining “200 Words” blog. It’s got me flashing back to our days with the OPK and how we used to post a write-up on the SoW/PAG/OPK forums the next day to much /loling. As anyone who got to participate can attest, we had a lot of fun even though we were chronic wipers (see what I did there BC?). Most of the wiping was my fault for sure, but what’s because I was afk a lot to refill my drink. Who plays WoW sober anyway?

While BC is off having new glory days running Naxx, me and the local boys on Ursin are having our own brand of fun. We started by /gkicking anybody who had a problem with failure. That left us with a 6 member guild and one ready alternate who refuses to have a guild tag but who is happy to run with us whenever. We have other local friends on Ursin, but they don’t much like chain wiping so we had to let them go.

When I started playing on Ursin again and noticed that we had just enough folks to start running instances, I talked everyone into trying some. Noone in our little group had yet to set foot in a single WoTLK instance so everyone was excited to have an opportunity to give it a shot. We started with regular UK since everyone (including our one level 80) had the quest for it, and off we went. We blew through it like 18 year old bullies picking fights with 3rd graders. I read up on the tricks of each boss fight and let everyone know what to do, but it didn’t matter. With 3 DK’s all pulling aggro off each other, me on heals and an enhancement shammy on “more dps”, we were an inelegant hammer crushing any content Blizzard could throw our way. Occassionally someone died, but that was because they didn’t realize they were standing in one of the many “circles o’ doom” Blizzard has implemented to keep people from going afk during boss fights.

We continued in this manner for three weeks (we just started last month), and saw almost all of WoTLK’s dungeons on regular mode, experiencing the same thing time again: 1) See boss; 2) Beat him down; 3) Loot! I think we felt pretty invincible.

Last night we stepped into our first heroic. We went back to were we started, UK, thinking we had better do something we are familiar with and low on the totem pole as a warm up to heroics. I told everyone what to look out for, to be careful with aggro now and watch positioning.

Nobody listened.

We blew through the first room as we always did, with everyone going willy-nilly and aggro jumping around between the DK’s. I was starting to notice that when our one blood DK got aggro, it was all I could do to keep him alive on trash. He would start at 28K health, but would drop to around 3k in a matter of 2-3 seconds if he pulled aggro. This wasn’t a problem on our MT who was wearing his tank gear. He had 24k health but 540 defense and he was a piece of cake to keep healed. I warned everyone to try not to pull aggro from the MT, and they said they would.

In the second room – the one with the protodragons, our blood DK grabbed aggro again and BAM! He was on his face kissing the floor. We recovered, I rezed him, and we moved on. On the last pull in the room it happened again and he went down, followed quickly by everyone else – our first wipe. Oh noes!

He died on a couple of more pulls as we worked on our pulling strategy (our “run in and kill stuff” strategy having failed so far). We ended up getting to the Prince with only one more near wipe which ended with our Unholy DK main tank being able to re-establish aggro after everyone else but me and he had died, and I just kept him up until he killed everything. We talked about what to do on the prince, and I reminded everyone to watch out for the frost tombs and the adds.

Now, on regular difficulty, we never paid attention to the frost tombs. I would just put a hot on the tombed person and he would get an 8 second break to get a new beer.

Here’s Steakum’s Tip O’ The Day: This does not work on heroics.

You have to (at least at our gear level) deal with the frost tombs as there is too much healing needed on the MT to also try and keep the entombed alive at the same time. Plus it hurts dps and add-management too much. We wiped twice before we got the hang of it, but it was a good lessoned learned. Everyone was much more on the ball after that.

We proceeded to own the instance after that. No fight was as difficult as the Prince fight and it was all free loot and badges afterwards, although we proceeded with much more caution and our dps-crazy blood DK did die on each boss fight in spite of my very best efforts to keep him up.

When it was over we were all happy and a little proud to have overcome our first heroic. We learned something very important: Don’t be suckered into thinking that owning the super-easy regular content means you’re any good. On heroics you have to use all the same tried and true skills we learned coming up in vanilla and BC. Our blood DK (who is a really great guy by the way and not a bad player at all – I hope I didn’t make him sound like one) said he would work on getting his defense up to help for the next time… and to keep from having a 20g repair bill – ouch!

Oh, and I did get a purple feral belt off the last boss, which is awesome considering I’m specced resto.

Next up: WTF is up with WG anyway?

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I was tasked with main-tanking the Loatheb fight in Naxxramas with our second tank – a feral Druid – watching the spores and contributing DPS. I put my recently-upgraded gear to the test, and fine-tuned my spell and attack rotation on the fight. Things got dicey towards the end of the fight when Loatheb’s casts of Inevitable Doom became more frequent. During one of the last Necrotic Aura phases, my health got dangerously low. Our aforementioned feral Druid taunted the boss off me. I panicked, thinking that a spore had struck me, or I somehow wasn’t holding threat. I popped Avenging Wrath and taunted Loatheb. I received two big heals returning me to full health, but half the raid was lost at this point. Those that were left burned all available cooldowns and finished him off.

We then ventured into the Military Quarter and worked our way down to Instructor Razuvious. The other tank and I spent about six attempts learning how to control the Death Knight Understudies. With some macros, a tweak to my Bartender settings, and communication over Ventrilo, we had the fight down pat. Our challenge for next week is to try and clear both quarters in one night.

Posted in 200 Words, World of Warcraft 2 Comments »

Great video games give you a sense of accomplishment. When you can accomplish something with a group of people, though, it’s even more satisfying. Our Naxxramas group started over with the Arachnid Quarter after the weekly reset. We cleared more in one night that we did in two nights last week! The group of people I play with are motivated, quick-learning individuals who like to have fun, but take what they’re doing seriously.

Before the raid began, I spent fifteen Emblems of Heroism on the Libram of Obstruction. This was an excellent upgrade for me since it increases my shield block value on every successful Judgment. I could definitely tell a difference working it in with my 96969 rotation.

We had a few issues starting out with Anub’Rekhan. I was silenced on two attempts because I was too close to him when he cast Plague Swarm. This ended up wiping the raid because I couldn’t control the Crypt Guard. Everything finally came together, though, and we got him down. We went on to one-shot the next four bosses and I picked up two new pieces of tanking gear: Gauntlets of the Master and Cloak of Armed Strife. Now for Loatheb!

Posted in 200 Words, World of Warcraft 2 Comments »

I was planning on getting my Warlock to sixty-eight and get him started in Borean Tundra. However, when you play as many alts as I do, things don’t always go as planned. Just as I started in Terokkar Forest, a friend of mine came online and was itching to play his level sixty Death Knight. My Death Knight is sixty-one, so I offered to come help him with some quests. We started off with the Ravager Egg Roundup and made quick work of the ravagers. I hadn’t played my Death Knight (specialized in Unholy) in quite some time, so I had forgotten about what rotation to use. I found a Death Knight site that listed a cast sequence macro for Unholy, and setup the buttons on my action bars to match. After that, I was quickly reminded of how much Death Knights are overpowered.

After slicing through ravagers like two hot knives through butter, we thought we could handle the group quest “Cruel’s Intentions” by ourselves. We got Arazzius down to under ten percent on our first attempt, and wiped quickly on the second try. After finishing our humble pie, I asked a nearby Paladin and Priest to help us.

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We ventured into Naxxramas for the second time, attempting to clear the Arachnid Quarter and explore the Plague Quarter. We had some troubles with Maexxna the night before, but we were able to one-shot her. I was concerned with rounding up her spiderlings and trying to tank them before they reached our ranged players. I posted a question on the Maintankadin forums and received some solid feedback. Users replied with their experiences of ignoring the spiderlings. I took this approach and focused on helping with the Web Wrap and healing.

The Plague Quarter was a nice change of pace after battling spiders for a night. I was tasked with handling the adds during the Noth the Plaguebringer encounter. I controlled them fairly easily, and our healers did an outstanding job of keeping me alive during phase two. It was another one-shot and on to Heigan the Unclean. After great progression on each attempt, we took him down. I assisted with cleansing and healing during the fight, and had fun running through the eruptions to the safe zones.

We’re going to try it all again next week in hopes that we’ll get through these two quarters even faster next time around.

Posted in 200 Words, World of Warcraft 1 Comment »

I ran Naxxramas with my protection Paladin for the first time. We started with the Arachnid Quarter, like most new raid groups do. I wasn’t sure how far we’d get, especially since my gear is not quite optimal for tanking Naxx. I studied a video created by Tankspot that showed how to tank the first boss, Anub’Rekhan. As it turns out, I was made the off-tank for the boss fight. After a few wipes, I finally had control of the Crypt Guards and avoided the Locust Swarm’s silence. He ended up dropping the Chivalric Chestguard and Gloves of Dark Gestures. I took the Chestguard since our Holy Paladin had something better.

Next was Grand Widow Faerlina. This fight was pretty easy for our group with me tanking the adds (in this case, the Worshipers). It was a bit difficult to round them up (as casters), but my Arcane Torrent ability helped keep them grouped together. We nearly wiped when I forgot to change my target icon when it was time to kill the third Worshiper. We recovered nicely and were rewarded with the Avenging Combat Leggings for our Restoration Shaman, and the Bracers of Lost Sentiments for our Fury Warrior.

Posted in 200 Words, World of Warcraft 4 Comments »

I received the whisper, “Want to tank heroic AN?” I replied, “sure,” and accepted the group invitation for heroic Azjul-Nerub. Our group consisted of a Warlock, Druid, Death Knight, Priest, and me (Paladin). The Druid is a tank, but will DPS for this instance. The Warlock is party leader and doesn’t want to mark. We pull the first group that initiates the boss fight, and the Priest — our healer — grabs aggro and dies almost immediately. I die next and we wipe.

On the second attempt, I ask that the mobs be marked or I be made leader. The Druid is made leader, but still doesn’t mark the targets. I ask for the adds that come with the mini bosses to be crowd controlled. I’m assured that one will be shackled, and one will be rooted. I then ask if everyone is ready and the Warlock replies, “y.” I pull, and, as you can imagine, the Priest does not shackle, and the root attempt is either resisted or the mob is immune. We wipe again. The Priest then states that the group does not have the “right consistency” and leaves. We disband at this point and I go back to questing.

Posted in 200 Words, PUG Tales 2 Comments »

News about the next expansion to World of Warcraft (titled “Wrath of the Lich King”) broke last night: Details on Death Knights, videos of the new zones, and the continuation of the token reward system. One particular item has my appetite for the expansion completely wet though: all raids in the expansion will be tuned and made available to both groups of 10 and 25 players. Worldofwar.net reported about this after their presentation at Blizzard headquarters with Blizzard’s Jeff Kaplan:

At this point, Kaplan revealed the massive news that Blizzard are changing the way raids are done in Northrend, and making them similar to the 5 man instances, whereby they can be played on two levels of difficulty. All 25 man raids will also be available as 10 man raids. The loot tables will be completely different, the 25 man raids will have better and/or more loot, but this means that most players will get to see the end game content in the 10 man version, if not the 25 man one. He went on to explain the reasons behind this; Karazhan, the 10 man instance in the Burning Crusade, was the most popular instance in the game by far. The 10 man dungeons are obviously popular due to the fewer amount of players needed, and the easier difficulty level. Secondly, a lot of 25 man raiding guilds did not like to have to go through the 10 man raids to get access to the 25 man raids. This new system should please everybody (but I’m certain there will be the usual QQers!). Another interesting fact is that the 10 man raids and the 25 man raids will be on totally separate cool downs. This means that once a guild has completed the 25 man Naxxramas for example, they could go back and complete the 10 man version of it on the same day if they wish.

Hearing this has totally enhanced my anticipation for the expansion! How cool will it be to be able to experience all the game has to offer with groups of 5 (quests/dungeons/heroics) and 10 people (raids)? I’ve been reading about the arguments for “epic” raids, where certain bosses (like the Lich King) shouldn’t be made available for only 10 people. My thoughts are just the opposite: defeating a boss or completing a difficult quest chain with a smaller group feels more epic to me.

In a group of 25 (or think back to 40-person groups), your role and class is one of many. There are typically 2-4 tanks, 5-6 healers, many DPSers, etc. Yes, what you are attempting to defeat has a higher number of HPs, but it doesn’t feel more difficult or epic than a challenging objective with fewer people.

I’m so excited after reading this! It’s a great solution that caters to people that want to group up in large numbers or small. Great job, Blizzard!

Posted in Gaming, World of Warcraft 3 Comments »