Lvl 70 and flying.. high.

Well through a stroke of kindness (allbeit unexpected) a benefactor stepped in and gave me a quicky loan for a flying mount. I won't mention names not because he doesn't deserve the honor of being so kind, but because I don't want 900 people begging him for gold 'cuz they herd on blog he givz it away'.

His reasoning was sound, he said the daily q's he does on a regular basis are the skyguard q's that involve bombing. So he helped me get there and I have some juicy items ready for AH this weekend that should put me back square with the guy. The bombing q I've been doing awards me about 11g and I had to run around and kill guys in Skettis for another stupid q. Anyway I'm quickly approaching friendly, which is a long way from exalted, but.. I'm a long way from 6,000g or whatever crazy amount the epic flying skill costs.

I need to get logged on early one night and push through my dailies and then rush to karazhan and start my quest to get into that place. The people I prefer running things with will be doing so on christmas break. At this point it would take a subtle miracle to just get HALF the quests done in what is apparently 5 days. I'm willing to give it a go though, and I'll let you guys know how that rolls on later..

The switch Evil to Holy

Well as the name of the blog implies I am a Warlock, I dabble in the forces of evil the same way fat people dabble in buffets...

My favorite, favorite character in all of World of Warcraft is my priest. I started him with the expressed intent to be a shadow priest, and he may well swing around and do that at some point. However I am LOVING healing. I was main healer for 2-4 VC runs, and it was grand. I heard that mana was a big consideration for priests, so I have a lot of spirit (for my level), as well as heal/mana pots on hand, with some good bandages. Basically my intention is to be able to heal myself with bandages/pots.. and my group with my mana and healing abilities. I do almost no damage at all. It's really pathetic. I did find in my last run I was doing more damage than a same level rogue. I took this to mean he sucked. My offensive abilities are described thusly, and are used only when the group has an "oh crap!" moment, or when we are fighting a boss:

1. Shadow Word: Pain
2. Wand (continually, and I'm wand spec'd so I do okay here if I had a good wand anyway)

That's it. I can DoT, and wand, and thats all I ever really do. I have been known to mindblast the runners to see if I can kill them.. but thats about it. DPS is for everyone else.. I heal.. If its not intensive I can do a little DPS but wanding is best (save mana for heals).

Being Dranny I can use a nifty spell called "symbol of hope" which increases mana regen. If you're in a group with a hunter/lock/mage.. they instantly love you for doing this in a fight. So Dranny priests get much love with our extra HoT (Gift of the Naaru), and Symbol of Hope.. we apparently rule all.

I'll try shadow someday, but now..I'm happy healing.

Weekend Questing

Well I FINALLY hit 69 last night, (no applause, please) in doing some random grinding after turning in some q's in Netherstorm. Now for anyone who is a caster, you won't really like Netherstorm, a lot of the mobs are magical resistant. For a mage, this could be terrible. As a DoT-master, it didn't bother me much. The little crab people were shrugging off my shadowbolts, but my drain life/soul was working just fine. I am making a note of this so I know not to run here till I am high enough to really put out damage as a mage (since she'll be probably my next one here).

Wow.. Ok so I hit 69, and immediately flew to shat, port to Stormwind. Ran to the slaughtered lamb and got trained up.

Then I met up with a hunter buddy of mine to do some (group) quests in Nagrand. Personally, I like Nagrand, but everything is spread way the heck out for questing. Nothing is ever just right HERE. Its some here and some on the other end of the freaking zone. The good part is that there is always some elemental something or other patrolling near you. Thats the bad part too.. if you stand still too long.. a big rock elemental will try to pummel you.

Anyway so we meet up and I immediately want to take down durn the hungerer. We knew of a MM hunter to help out so we snagged her, then a priest/druid came to finish off the group. For me, I thought the tank was low (64), but we steamrolled durn in a quick way. I have seen many fights with elites take much longer, but with the BM hunter, the MM hunter and me.. we had a crapload of DPS. I consider myself a big bad dude when it comes to dps.. my unbuffed +dmg is almost 600 now and I'm just 69.

Anyway this night was a grindfest with a good group running through many hard q's (I could've solo'd probably tho). I am now about 3/8's into 69 so not quite halfway, but I'm moving there tonight. Tonight I am pushing through a quest in zangarmarsh for a good trinket to up my damage a wee bit more. Then off to shadowmoon to get acquainted and find the altar of shadows, etc etc... I am not excited about finding a NEW place, but thats just me being huffy. The goal is to level, and then get my gnomey butt to azeroth to finish my mining (I mean once leveling is no longer a point of pressure). I want to get up to 300 so I can round out my mining in outland.

And then I get to push to get a better ranking than my friend Yara.. He's got a big headstart, but we'll see.

WSG-apalooza

So last night when I should have been studying, I took a break and jumped in 3 WSG matches. My record: 1-3. The final score seems much less about me than the rest of the team. I credit myself and at least 2 other folks who I seemed to be running with (even if not on purpose) with allowing the matches to last as long as they did.

I got a total of almost 300 kills, with close to 90 killing blows. And more damage than a raid group of lvl 70's could mitigate. In the end the 3 stooges (what I playfully named me and my running partners) constituted about 7-9 defenses, and 4 captures. So we were doing the bulk of the work for the team. The last game I didn't get my 2 partners with me, I ended up with some crybaby hunter twink (it happens) saying how the team sucked (nevermind that when we started it was me and 2 druids vs 7 horde... Nevermind that they HAD 1 capture before we had an even CLOSE race in manpower.. or that I had 1k more damage than him and 10 more kills). OK the team DID suck, but to condemn the group when you come in for the last 2 captures is kinda jaded. On MY watch they only got 1.. That's my story and I'm stickin to it.

Anyway so I made 5 WSG marks and now with a little over 8k honor for dwarfenstuff. I am still missing the +20 agi enchant for my 1h weapon. To be precise I am short the prismatic shards, and 2 Greater Planar's. So its not a long journey to get that up, and running.. just massively expensive. The goal is (since all the 49 trinkets seem stupid/lame) to get 2 rune's of duty to maximize my health regen and my stamina. I'm about 4 WSG losses(since, I don't count on wins) from getting my other rune of duty.. So that leaves shoulders. I have good shoulders, but they use spirit and not stamina/intelligence, and lately I am running OOM before I can possibly die. I have mana/health pots, but I HATE using them. I much prefer fending off 5 guys and then drinking to get my mana back. I just seem to ALWAYS be in combat.

Now I've been away from WSG for a LONG time, and the new hunter abilities with arcane/aimed shot are now in full effect. I've found a few things that made life easier.

1. warlocks hate me
1. this is due to me leading off with arcane shot (which removes demon armor), and follow that with viper sting. It seems a silly thing to do, but locks can effectively shut people down, and I should know. The best thing to do is handicap them. Locks can/will lifetap to get mana to hurt you.. This is something I use in MY favor. I viper sting them put the pet on them and then just do autoshot. Conserve MY mana while eliminating his. I got deathcoiled like 7 times last night, which I thought was great. Mcgoo's Deathcoil is reserved for what I call "Oh S*^%!!" situations. So the fact that someone used it on me meant that I was considered a serious threat.
2. Paladins hate me
1. this has more to do with me just kiting the live long day out of them. I use my traps for damage and not immobilization. I use my pet to keep pressure on him and I use arcane shot to remove his mojo that makes him tough. He still bubbles/heals, which is fine. That usually drains his mana and makes him a meat puppet for me.
3. Shaman should fear me
1. why? well cause as a dwarf I can ditch their "frost shock" that slows me, AND I can kite them using my pet to chew their sorry butt down to the bone. They can out melee me, but I can out DPS them. I actually went into monkey aspect and finished a shammy last night. With my Agility so high my armor is buffed from it, AND I dodge like every attack.
   
4. Warriors pwn me
1. I don't know if its that I don't know how to respond, or if the warriors last night were just exceptional. They just beat me down, every time. Don't get me wrong they died quickly after cause I leave people WOUNDED. I just couldn't take a warriro 1:1, and after being with Mcgoo where I can 1:1 take anyone but a shaman.. it was frustrating. Charge/intercept, hamstring.. beat down.. that is how it went.
5. Hunters are a toss up
1. depends on who sees who first. If I see them first I am shooting my "wad" at them and trying to make the battle terribly one sided. If they are BM spec, and their pet is on someone, that is just candy. I blaze through their HP before their DPS machine (the pet) gets to me. If MM spec, its a tie.. he can deal out as much dmg as me, probably more if he has an epic bow/gun.. So its just a matter of how much I got off on him when I started shooting him.
6. Mage = +1HK
1. I've just seen nothing that can stop me from annihilating a mage at 49 bracket. I don't know if they haven't come into their squishy goodness yet or what. I just haven't seen one that can roll with the dwarf.
7. Priest = +1HK
1. They Scream to get the pet off them and then realize that I'm going to hit them with aimed shot, all but neutralizing their heals. Shadow priests can't touch me, I drown them in their own blood. I still haven't been pushed by a shadow priest that could take my pushback with either Mcgoo or Dwarf. And aimed shot all but ends the healing goodness from holy priests.
8. Rogue, tossup again..
1. If I see them, they die and its painful. If they ambush me.. well its just a bad way to start from my perspective. Typically Rogues love going after clothies, as it makes them happy to 1-2 shot someone. So I get ignored. I consider it my honor to kill rogues trying to kill my team's mages/healers (locks should pwn rogues at 49, if they don't they might deserve their fate).

So things have changed, either with my new agility adding sauce to the mix, or people just sucking more than they used to. All but the stupid warrior knuckledraggers.. oh well.

burn out

As sure as I channel Hellfire, I am getting burned out on Warcraft. It is terrific fun, but the key to having this terrific fun is to keep pace with friends.

My school, and my week off due to Thanksgiving have made me lag shamefully behind. The momentum I had had before is now gone. I consider Mcgoo a standout warlcok, mostly due to my ability to play him (I mean really, he's in crap gear and he still is 1/2 on the damage meter in an instance with 70's). Now I know for a fact there are better locks out there. I had one help me get my mount, and he was awe-some. He did SO MUCH damage and without really pushing DPS at all. I want to get to that place where I am the warlock that people say, oh wow.. there HE is.. but honestly I don't think that will happen.

Realistically its not that my friends have blown past me in-game, its that I've run out of things to do. I'm not done questing or anything like that.. I've just done all the stuff that I really REALLY wanted to do. I need some new goals or Mcgoo will live out his life as a 68 warlock with an inferiority complex.

My next main is SO going to be a healer..(healyoself)