Tuesday, December 23, 2008

New toy...

Last night, logged in to do my normal rotation of dailies, with half a mind on helping Thomas with his Ogri'la pre-quests, I ended up with the hit trinket from Cyanigosa. Of course Thomas didn't say what time he, himself, was logging... so w/e, went to finish my dailies for the SoH and the chic at Brunnhilda, having done the fishing and Dalaran's cooking in the morning. Nope, still no bear mount but tomorrow is another day.

I would have to say it was very much karma that I finally got the Mark of the War Prisoner from Cyanigosa, as the first time I saw it drop, a shaman healer won the roll, for his off spec which ticked me off but it was the last boss so w/e, and this time, the tank was a test of my patience.

I get it that some people don't do dungeons until they were level capped or that they might be new to certain encounters but this guy takes the cake and ate it too. Didn't let anyone know that he didn't know the fights, was quiet, and was tanking with a FIST weapon, which I didn't noticed 'til the hunter pointed out, ah well. Xevozz was the first boss and if it's your first time fighting him, it can be challenging but if you slowly tank him up the ramp and then slowly tank and spank on the ledge, you pretty much avoid being cornered by two orbs. Of course our tank didn't ask, didn't say anything, start to tank him, the orbs come out and bam died, we wipe. Rezing at the GY, the hunter and I just scratched our heads and was seriously thinking about just abandoning this lost-cause but w/e, we were saved so back in. After telling him to fight his way to the ledge, we started again. The guy had the nerve to say that people on Cho'gall were mean; I'm guessing it wasn't the first failed in his resume as a tank. Sure, people on Cho'gall are used to blasting through the instances without fail but I'm sure it's the same on most normal to high population servers. It's not like Wrath's heroics are hard, not like they were in the beginning of TBC. I have yet to see any CC required for any of the heroics, AoE away when you got a good tank, which always make the instance run extremely fast. The tank and the healer died on Xevozz again when he was at 3% or so, plenty of time for me and hunter to pound into the ground. Lucky we had plenty of time to summon their arses back into the instance after he went down. I guess that would be super annoying for groups without a rezer or a warlock.

On the 2nd boss, it was Ichoron, I did not hesitate to use the crystal activators to zap all the water elementals, by this time the shield was down to 98% so if they didn't have the achievement for VH yet then they weren't getting it this run anyway. Most of the remaining fights were uneventful but a bit rough, the hunter stop AoE on those Sorcerer pulls and I just dps lightly to avoid pulling aggro. If nothing else was good about the tank, at the very least he did listen but you had to offered it to him on a platter. The Cyanigosa fight is the easiest fight in VH since she's a pure tank and spank dragon-fight, which means facing her away from the rest of the party and stay away from the tail. The priest, who at this point I was pretty sure is a friend of the tank but he had to be told to stay the frak away from the tail. At least he did not roll on the trinket, which I feared when I saw the loot. Oh well, this tank is definitely on my list of bad tank. Also oh note, I'm 6 emblems short of the T7 robe so most likely will push to get it either tonight or tomorrow, depending who else is on and what's going on.

Monday, December 22, 2008

Nice weekend ends with a T7...

Being done with both the Oracles and Kula'ak in term of reps, I have cut their dailys from my rotation so now it's just checking the Shatt's cooking for Manalicious (last for the achievement), fishing for old man Barlo (here baby croc, here baby croc), Dalaran's cooking, fly to Brunnhilda, then finish off with the Son of Hodir.

Finally motivated myself enough to finish the Grizzly Hills quests, which actually took a bit of questing each day during the weekends. As of last night, I earned my Loremaster of Northrend and learned me the pattern for Deathchill Cloak. I made said cloak and embroiled it with a Lightweave Embroidery, cha-ching, then Kel'Thuzad drop a pretty nice alternative cloak but with mp5, being the least geared person in that raid I got the welfare epix.

Ah, speaking of Kel'Thuzad... the nice folks of Attrition, hehe, mainly Rocketajax got me a spot in their 10-man Naxx. They had done most of the place on Wednesday, except for the Frostwyrm Lair. I really love the Sapphiron fight, what I learned that I did not know before doing it with Attrition, thanks to Sukuza for explaining, is that in that particular fight, it is not a DPS race, it is a healing check. I think that fight would really sucks for Holy Pallies, so much movement and environmental damage to the raid. The whole idea is to stay spread out but don't be the NooB that is way across the room when the ice blocks are down, cause you ain't making behind them before the orb of frozen doom hits the floor and you get blasted to the graveyard. Honestly, the first time through that fight with Blood Council was way rougher, as it was less organized then with Attrition. Sapphiron was a dead dragon after 3 tries, I'm sure more tries then they normally have to do but then 2nd wipe was just pure bad luck. Two blizzards on top of the two ice blocks that are 5 yards apart. I'm proud to say that I was not the 30 second NooB that night, I'm ready to play with the big boys now, lol.

The Kel'Thuzad (KT) fight itself wasn't all that interesting. Start in the green circle, adds comes at you, range dps kill the skele and the banshee before they come to the circle, the banshee floats really really really sloooooowlyyyyy. I swear this is where having at least one hunter is awesome, the skele has next to nothing in term of HP so the speed of auto shot > cast. Melees and tanks take care of of the abominations, and if range has time help on abominations. KT himself comes out after, what seems like 2-3 mins or when about 80% of the adds are down. The MT pick him up, the OT pick up and finish off any abominations left and dps are to kill all adds before they go to KT. Once the transition take place the whole fight is really just simple, stay out of the circle KT randomly casts on the floor. You really do have a lot of time to move out although not enough to stand there and finish of a 2 seconds cast, remember to move then fire as you ain't living through the collapse of the circle. KT also will ice block a random person but if you got a clump of casters you get 2 or 3 ice blocks that your healers has to heal now, so stay spread out no reasons to be a cluster of fail. At the end of it all Kinzlayer made out like a bandit on that raid, the cloak and the T7 helm token. I hope I will get more invites from Attrition as it seems most of their people are out on xmas break and doing raids with them equal welfare epix for Kinzlayer.

Oh, one thing that I'm a bit wary about the T7 set, I had to re-gem some of my gears after getting the helm since it had no +hit at all. Going forward, I might even have to spec to get Suppression and Cataclysm, that's six pts to get 3% hit. I'm going to have to seriously think about where my hit will be coming from as I'm nine emblems away from buying the T7 robe, which Rocket did say is harder to get from raid then the gloves. Using the two pieces of T7 would take away two of the known slots for +hit and that's like 100+ hit between the two best +hit items. The legging I have currently does not have +hit so I might have to look into that. I'm just not sure what Blizzard is thinking when they itemize their gears. Ok, I understand you only need 6% to hit for Heroics and the two pieces of T7 can be gotten from badges so you can easily cover 6% but the transition from 6% to 17% is atrocious when you take the two item slots that has the best +hit gears, being the glove and the robe. The other location is the helm which has a few item from crafting, quest reward, and dungeon drop. I'll definitely have to look at other warlocks and do my research during the break to see what I have to do for my hit gears.

Friday, December 19, 2008

Within reach...

It is definitely very nice to ease into the day by doing some mindless daily quests to wake up, gets you motivated for the rest of the day. I was a little disappointed that the green little midget doesn't have Manalicious today so one more day of waiting at the least. Old man Barlo had the shrimp quest for me which I have done before but I figure I would do it just in case the fishing hat drops for me. After a quick fishing trip to the lakes of Zangarmarsh for some shrimps, I hearth back to Dalaran and worked on the quick cooking quest there. While I was flying over to Brunnhilda, I took a peak at my bag and noticed the Mysterious Egg still had 6 more days on it, bah I hope that will turn into the Green Proto-drake, they look pretty kewl. The quest giver in Brunnhilda only had one quest for me, I was a bit alarmed at first then a quick search on wowhead, I was assured that sometime she's a bit bitchy and only give out one quest. I would have been fine with two random quests but not to have a 2nd chance for the Polar Bear mount? seems dumb. Well, after the quick fly over to freeze them proto-drake eggs, I head over to the SoH quests but was interrupted by a request for help.

I ended my morning by doing the three quests for the Kalu'ak, which after today I will only need one more set of quests to get exalted. I think it will be nice to finish them up and not have to fly that circuit during my daily quests. It's very nice that they take less then 5 minutes to do but three quests in three different zones and still flying at 280 speed, such a hassle.

Northrend is definitely large, still better then walking there.

Wednesday, December 17, 2008

Just in...

Being a bit curious about the rewards from the Oracles and the Frenzyheart Tribe, I did a bit of digging. As of right now I'm not 100% sure I want to continue doing the Oracle's daily quests to Exalted as the only true reward at Exalted for me would be the achievements. I believe I am just Revered with them now so in theory I would still have to keep their rep for buying and waiting for the Mysterious Eggs to hatch but I can better spend my time in either Icecrown, doing dailys for Ebon Blade and Argent Crusade, or doing heroics. Beside I'm not sure if I want to even do the Frenzyheart's rep, as the reward from the Disgusting Jar doesn't look like anything kewl. I should see how much time it takes to do the three daily quests, then I can decide if it's worth my time to do them, it's cash after all.

Update: Definitely skipping the rest of the Oracles daily rep grind, I may actually be able to squeeze in at least one heroic, moar purplz.

Clearing the mind...

After reading Herc's thoughts on time management in wow, I got to thinking and realized that I'm a bit lost in term of what I'm actually doing with Kinzlayer. I've got no motivation to work on any of my alts but there's always a minor tug at the back of my head to work on Haman, I love killing stuff with my warrior. Going to borrow Herc's idea and list the things I do daily so I don't sit around Dalaran wondering why I'm bored.

The Shatt cooking daily. I figured for almost a year I was doing those darn cooking quests everyday, I might as well get the achievement for them. At the moment I'm waiting for Manalicious, which I check as I head over to old man Barlo for the fishing daily.

From the fishing daily I would like to get that baby croc and the fishing hat. Also since I did them pretty religiously for a while I would like the achievement for finishing the list of quests for old man Barlo.

After turning in the fishing quest to old man Barlo, I head to Dalaran to do the cooking daily there. At the moment I'm saving all my Northrend spice as I'm not really cooking any particular item but I figure when I'm ready to cook I will have a good supply to use.

After Dalaran, I head over to Storm Peak. Do the five Son of Hodir quests and for the last few days I'm also doing the two daily quests given by the chick in Brunhilda, ever since reading that the polar bear mount drops from the reward pouch, thanks Herc. Finishing up with Storm Peak, I head down to Howling Fjord, grab the seal love quest, then head over to Dragonblights to steal, errr recover pups for them Kalu'ak, then head to Borean Tundra for the supplies. I'm about 4 days away from getting exalted with them and then no mas long-ass flying route. I'm getting me the fishing pole and the penguin.

Done flying, I head over to the basin and do the three quests for the Oracle, hehe I want the mysterious eggs... and of course the achievement for being exalted with them then later on exalted with the Frenzyhearts (I think that's what they are).

Typically I'm done for the night after that as I have spent 2 hours flying around. As of yesterday, I'm doing the two cooking and fishing dailys in the AM, which helps me wake up... otherwise I would just have snoozed the alarm and sleep in till 8:30 then I would be all tired when I get into work; I'm really lazy in the AM. If I can consistently squeeze the fishing and cooking dailys out in the morning, I can add a heroic or two in the PM session. I'm going to try to do Violet Hold once a day, at least it's easy and fast... of course I want that stupid trinket.

Monday, December 15, 2008

Black War Bear



Sitting around Dalaran on Kinz done with dailys, even did a few heroics and the regular dungeon, I do like the extra rep, with nothing to do and was not really in the mood for questing in Grizzly Hills (still need to finish that zone out for the Deathchill Cloak pattern). Then what do we see but an ad for City Raid... garrrrrgggg, didn't like how badly the last one turned out so didn't answer the call at first. Sitting around some more talking to Murd about what heroics to do next then trying to get a group together but failed pretty badly, just starting one so that's extra sad. I have no motivation to start groups anymore, so much efforts. Figures why the heck not and so I whispered the ad. At first I thought, "hmm, this does not look good", as there were only 8 people in raid. Maybe another failure to launch but after 15 mins the raid actually filled out. Got Murd his spot, took the zep to Grom'gol and flew to Kargath then had to fly back as the Raid Leader changed his mind. It took longer just to ride to the bosses then it was to kill them (less then 2 mins on each of the city bosses). Pretty amazing to see that much lag, hehe. It was nice to end the night with a letter from Thrall extolling the courage it took to beat them alliance ninnies to the ground and attached was my very own Black War Bear.

I should not be sad but I am...

garrrrggggg, how does one go about writing this... well no one else is really reading this so I guess it matters not.

I was a bit surprise by an add-request on facebook from the doctor so of course still having a bit of a childish fancy for her, added and promptly go to her profile. What I see under Relationship Status? meh, I should not be sad or surprised as she had never had issues with starting a relationship or holding one, I guess. Just stupid hope and all, not like the logistic would ever work out as we don't regularly talk or write and she does live 2 hours away. Just goes to show how ridiculous my mind is at times... god knows I need help or just WoW.

Meh, just meh.