Wednesday, February 27, 2008

PvP goodness

Well last night I was about 900 honor short of hitting 3k honor. Which was my goal.. However, I had a fun night. Why was it fun? lets see...

Firstly I got to group with a solid group of folks and we did AV (via lightqueue), and after queuing for this we would leave shatt to do some dueling.

Here's the make up all guildies
Umai- enhancement shaman, he's rediculous. He practically tanked one of the bosses in ramparts back in early 60's. He's kinda scary since shaman are cloth eaters.. and he's the best I've ever seen

Dathbre- Marksman hunter. I think thats sufficient, but for real this guy is rediculous also. He's tooled recently for what seems more like arena (scorpid? why.. oh to keep healers from drinking). He's got my LEAST liked ability in game.. silencing shot. He's the best marksman hunter I've seen, period. He's been there and done that as far as I've been told, and he's well versed in how to stay alive and kill the other guy.

Yara- Frostmage. He's my buddy IRL, and his mage is crazy. Not rediculous like umai, cause I really don't want to fight umai.. ever.. He was the least scary of the 3 though. This is in no means a statement on his skill/prowess so much as knowing a felhunter all but stops him. I tease him, but so far its accurate "felhunter=you lose".

Ok first dual was me vs yara. I won. He did what he does.. which is root me with frost (why do I care I have dots/drains to recoup that life while the felhunter irritates him and keeps him out of the frost tree). It was closer than it sounds.. cause if you fight yara... and yo uwin with like 35% of your life.. you were about 1 shot away from going down.

Then the bad news.. I had to fight umai. I had felhunter out cause I was being stubborn. I lost. Badly. I think I got him down like 1k hp.. not down TO 1k hp.. down 1k hp. humiliating and reasonably expected..

Then dathbre (still with the stupid felhunter). Basically the same fight as umai. My pet brought nothing to the table so I was basically gimped.. Yeah!! stubborn-ness! Whatever... /grumble

Then I did some shard farming off the basilisks and a wolf. THEN I pulled out my succy. Redo the fights.

Umai- I almost had him. Meaning he was down to like 2% health. My succubus was there JUST to beat on him. A misconception from succy's is that they are for seduce only. I typically don't seduce right off. Sometimes I don't do it at all.. Why? I want that as a fallback.. A reason for them to worry that my succy could pull that out if they ignored it.. and if they ignore me they might get feared. It worked well. (sidenote.. I beat him the third time.. probably luck). The strategy here is pretty sound, so its one I'll keep. If i had been equipped with more pvp goodies.. who knows.. Maybe me winning would be a standard.

Dathbre-part deux. He beat me. Pretty badly really. I consider it bad because I had no burst to knock that last 5% health off him, a problem I have is that I consistently forget to do searing pain.. a quick/dirty Direct Damage (DD) spell. Would that have turned the tide? A crit might. If I still had (sniff) shadowburn I'd have pwned him with it (I used to hit in white on shadowburn close to 2k).. keep in mind I have 200 more dmg now than I did back then.. So I'd either have won.. or gotten scary close. The way to fight a hunter is not breathtakingly new.. get in his dead zone. The pet gets curse of weakness.. and siphon life (if you have mana do corruption.. maybe a nightfall proc ya know?). This gimps the pet a bit, and regains some of your life (maybe nightfall!). Then you go nuts on him.. Fear him, dot him drain him.. basic stuff. Just stay close don't let him out to range. Hunters don't seem to remember that they can OMG kill a clothie in melee.. Maybe not a warrior in melee, but a warlock? sure. SO they will spend time running instead of fighting. The way "I" would have done it if I'd have been him, would be explosive trap, wing clip.. serpent sting at a distance then go nuts on melee (he is a good hunter, which means he kept my felarmor gone with arcane shot). Wing Clip keeps me in melee range, the trap keeps me dot'ed, along with serpent sting.. Then there's the actual MELEE dmg he can put on me. He's pretty uber when it comes to raiding, and I don't KNOW that my "go melee" idea would have worked.. but.. it surely would have gotten him more hp after the fight. I just see time running as dmg LOST.

Yara-part deux- Pretty much the same fight, except he killed the felpuppy first. fel domination popped an instant one back out in less time than his frostbolt took. Which means he got locked out of frost. Yara gets pissed when the felpuppy pwns him, but really the felpuppy is my only hope against a mage. I mean.. He can literally 2-3 shot me! I gotta keep him FROM 2-3 shotting me. LOL!

Then Umai logged off and put on his priest.
***Sidenote: Umai's main (Bellatrix), in question here. She is the best healer I've ever seen.. ever... ever ever ever..

So when it was my turn for a dual with Bella, I just wondered if it was POSSIBLE that I could kill her with all that +healing. I did. Actually it was really scary close. Like I said.. a lot of +healing. I would get her down..way down.. she'd shield then greater heal and boom.. full health. Was like fighting a pally with 2 bubble's!! Felpuppy could eat her shield sure, but she's still casting. I hadn't tried to manually spell lock, but eating buffs was good for that point. It ate her fort buff :).. If you ever get the choice.. remove fortitude. Its basically like taking a huge dmg attack on someone. She can reapply this buff.. but not with the felpuppy tryin to eat her lunch, not to mention the friendly lock draining/dotting for all he's worth. In the end I think I did more dmg to her than all my other duels combined.. but I won.. Barely.

The BG's were lame. We won a few though, so big honor!! Plus if you check armory.. The Goo-meister is now in a 3v3.. Hopefully I won't appear to be the scrub I am in arena.. :)

--sidenote: if Bella ever went shadow.. I'd be terrified. Just saying if you convert all that +healing to +dmg.. and that rediculous high mana pool.. She'd be a monster.

Tuesday, February 26, 2008

Honor grinding.. still

Well I hear a spitting of slurs about "welfare epics" regarding bg gear.. All those people can BITE me. My semi welfare epics got me into 2 pretty competitive raids WITHOUT kara gear. So eat me.

In the end I'd like to roll in Tier 5/6 and have a set of PvP gear to get down and dirty with people of the opposite team. As of right now I have 1 (thats ONE) gear set. The major differences are:
  1. In PvP I equip a spellstone instead of a wand for dot removal
  2. I have a pvp cloak and a pve cloak.. PvE has better dmg but no resilience.. you see where that's going
And that's it. I basically have 2 cloaks, thats my whole pve vs pvp setup now. I wanted to get into bg's last night and push another 3k honor in a night (which is, the awesome.. just so you know). Unfortunately the mongoloid mouth breathers were playing last night and I had ppl dancing on the dun baldur bridge while horde ran past. I realize I can report them as AFK if they are, in fact.. afk. I wish there was a button for "report as not really playing" which would kick them from the battleground and automatically sell all their gear and bank belongings. I hate that crap. Look, I realize that the horde come in with Force and it can be daunting to stand there and die 4-9 times while keeping the bulk of their forces at bay. But it is the game.. You have to. Or you shouldn't play. That is just how I see it. So I ended the night with my only win being AB (we stomped them that game.. all PUG on our side.. didnt' check theirs) .

AB last night. Sketchy at best. I played 2 times and won 1. We stomped them to the point that a pally/shadowpriest/me were graveyard camping the horde at their starting area. We didn't keep them all in there.. we didn't try. What we did do was recycle them a bit and frustrate their game plan. Putting me next to a shadowpriest is almost always going to mean 2-4 people getting killed at a time. Couple that with a pally (who are ridiculous to fight as they take FOREVER to kill), and what you have is 3 people with an occasional hunter helping out just smacking down horde. Having a felhunter on a priest then popping curse of recklessness and having a mm hunter aimed shot the guy means he dies. They had a lot of shaman who put up some good heals/totems. They pushed us out of the gate on a few occasions, which didn't really bother me cause I can run in.. dot the folks that just rez'd and then run back.. (LOS, for once on my side). The real issue was what I ALWAYS have issue with.. pally/warrior. Well, I really hate pally/hunter duos. This team was pretty slick, I have little doubt that they were in an arena team also as they worked together well and switched targets well. I called burst on the pally and we immediately pounded him while he was casting a big heal. I put the felhunter on him and all my dots then waited for his life to get critical.. And just when I'm sure he was going to bubble/heal. He got deathcoiled. Just enough to let the dots tick another few ticks and me to get off a shadowbolt. As suspected, this gimped the warrior as he wasn't on cloud9 with heals. My pally team-mate took him to school on that go round. Well I gimped him with weakness and put corruption on him to help bring him down. Typically a warrior with equal gear will kill a pally if he misses his bubble/heal. That is unless he has had his dmg output gimped a bit (weakness, shadows embrace), and has corruption on him. Oh and the pally is in S3 epics himself. I'm pretty tired of pally's due to the spanking I get in arena. I'm hoping to get back in and tell you how close I came to killing some folks. I think I'm getting better here/there.. but at this point nothing serious enough to matter.

All in all, crappy night. I missed my honor goal for the evening, but I DID get my gold from dailies. So I'm inching closer to 5k gold.. just at a snails pace.

Friday, February 22, 2008

SL/SL

After being in raids 2 nights in a row, SL/SL was breaking my heart...

Then I went into Eye Of the Storm. I don't remember, win/lose.. But I did well. Scratch that, I pwned ppl. I shut down healers, I shut down mages.. It was a marvel. For some reason that night, that battleground I was a baaaaaaad-gnome! I was with 3 ppl from the guild, one of which is a frost mage (he's a much better player in pvp, has the gear to prove it too). I did my normal "let others run in first and come up from behind and eliminate a healer or mage". Problem was.. There were shammy's and mages.. and everything.

I say problem because I have only 1 felhunter. I was all over them though. Shammy was healing so he got locked out of nature for a few seconds and his buffs removed.. only then to lock out the frost mage on the other side of him and remove HIS buffs. I say this because that is the fun part.. I hit my insta-dots and started draining the shaman's life immediately. Shamans are kinda predictable here, they will almost always try to heal themselves. Well, as one of my buddies is the best resto shaman I've seen I know that if that heal gets off.. I'm probably toast. So I do what any good lock does to keep a caster busy.. I Deathcoiled him. While in deathcoil the final bit of curse of agony took hold.. Which if you don't know is when it REALLY starts to kick you in the teeth. Mage was now back to trying to hit me with frost bolt (meh..) so he got feared (undead mofo popped right out tho).. So while all this is going on I put corruption anew on the mage and started casting fear. He Iceblocked to stop this. Which is what I wanted. Him not hitting me so his healer could die. Sure enough the healer was at 2% or so, and casting another freakin heal.. my felhunter was too far off to lock him so I put curse of tongues on him and drained that mother for all he was worth! So I killed him, then the mage popped out and got pwned by me and my felpuppy. He was good, but I made him IB too fast and he lost his advantage. People do this a lot in pvp.. they do things that are better for THEM as a player but deminish the team. Had he kept on I'd have killed him but the healer would be back up to full and would have won due to me finding I was OOM with a shaman ready to hit me with a windfury weapon (if resto's get that, anyway I don't know). Basically I would have died, and the horde's offensive on the mage tower would have succeeded as they had their healer back and their "rediculously overpowered tauren warrior" was spanking the whole lot of the alliance. Yara (the mage I told you about on my team) was rooting and rolling with the guy and doing decent dmg but a druid was popping hots on him.

So he survived long enough for me to kill both of them, congrats on the selfish move not paying off. So then I turned on the warrior. My felpuppy is more of an annoyance than anything else.. or is he? He had blessing of might and fortitude buff on him with something else I didn't recognize. So he lost a LOT when my felpuppy started in on him. That was my only goal. Put the pup on him and continuously remove his buffs. I dotted him and then he went wacko and charged me. He did a TON of dmg in 1 or 2 hits. I bet he's in arena cause he'd surely pwn me in 2v2, no question. Then I did what I always do when warriors charge me.. I Deathcoiled him and renewed corruption and tried fear (why not? the rage thing doesn't last forever..) Fear took, but he trinketed out. Only to find my drain life on him and a HUGE frostbolt from yara that ended his attack. Funny thing was I saw a druid run behind MT... Druids are hit/miss for me as sometimes I totally dominate them.. sometimes I never see them till I'm dead. I got lucky and he got locked out of nature when trying to cast a HoT on himself. Now HoT's overpower dot's as I'm told. However... I find that if its a feral druid.. HoT's aren't all they're cracked up to be as on a priest or resto druid. I typically in EoTS don't chase people. Typically all I wanted was to hurt them and make them leave the node. I STAY on the node. I think this is better because the longer you are there the easier it is to scout incomings, and you may remember who's coming back.

So needless to say a lot of offensive pushes by the horde were put off thanks in no small part to me. So I just REALLY did well. I made almost 2k honor in the night even with the raid.. So I called it a win. I got my pvp cape after the bg's were over. So now my pvp gear is (head/hands/legs/back). Next will be the bracer, so I can get the +15 dmg to it popped on. I have a whopping 89 av badges 31ab, 49wsg, and 19eots. So if I just had 100k honor I could buy all my crap and be done with the "grind" and get to really even fights against the uber folks in there.

Anyway.. doubts about SL/SL are and should only be, in relation to raiding. Cause it clearly overpowers casters with felpuppy in all bg's. (keep in mind I realize some ppl are better with aff/destro.. I'm just saying I've never seen a lock in as crappy of gear as mine control 2 people at once in a bg.. It happens but its usually a guy in S3 gear and full epics, which I'm not even full S1 yet)

"Buddha provide"

This is a quote from the Karate Kid movie.. Basically if you can't place it, as most won't, Daniel-san is getting ready for the tournament, and Mr Niagi stole him a black belt. Upon noticing he had no belt he (daniel) was put off.. Then Niagi puts the belt on him, and he says

"Where'd you get this? Where'd it come from?" - Daniel
"Buddha provide" - Mr Niagi

Basically all that bull to tell you that somehow.. I've been included on 2 (not 1, but 2) raids in wicked higher rated places than I think I should be. How? Buddha provide.. meaning I don't know and I'm not asking.

Wednesday night the guild was needing 1 dps for SSC. I sent the raid-leader a tell asking simply "I'm not in even kara gear.. is this over my head?"

He had the most awesome response ever... "**** invites you to join a group".
/dance....

So I didn't get to see Leo, or lurker.. which is a bummer. I'd heard from Megan (Out of Mana) that leo was a wicked awesome fight. Apparently my guild has no issue schooling his blind butt, but the only 2 bosses I got in on was Fathom-Lord, and Morogrim. I got all hot and bothered about the T5 pants token that dropped... Why I don't know as this was my first real raid (kara is mostly being pugged so I don't count it anymore) and I couldn't possibly be the only one who wanted/drooled/lusted for these pants. Well of course one of the more frequent guildies got them, which is only right. I mean I was in 1 raid.. why should I get something when a more consistent member could get them and use them better? I wanted them though, and I'm reasonably sure that the master looter didn't take me being a noob into account. He might have, but seriously why bring me if I'm not up to the "dance"?

Anyway logged on last night feeling happy about the previous night's raid (I got a necklace off morogrim), I was ready to commence the long grind of honor in AV. Suddenly same raidleader (he's also heading the guild at the moment) sends me a tell "wanna fight solarian?" I peed a little.. but said hell yes.. and asked him if he wanted me to respec (I'm still sl/sl, which is moderately poopy for raiding).. He said I'd be fine, and that as long as I had>8k hp I could come. I have 11k buffed, so I /danced again and went in. The hope would be that the Void Star Talisman would drop, and since I was the only lock who wanted it.. it would be MINE! The fight was long and kinda lame really. I didn't find it challenging, and I didn't find my dps at all remarkable. I did help with the priests who heal solarian by putting CoT on them to slow their healing while the other lock did curse of elements to help mages burn them down (they have the talent anyway that improves the dmg bonus from that). The AoE mobs that come out in groups were lame too.. hit #3 on my keyboard (macro I made that changes target and then casts seed of corruption). so I hit the right keyboard arrow key, and 3.. a lot. The fight took a long time (a testament to my piss poor raiding spec (sl/sl is breaking my heart now..). I'm not saying "the mighty mcgoo could solo this guy".. just saying.. I have 3 dots. And one of them was put as curse of elements to help the mages (not sure why the other lock didn't do this since they had the talent.. but I did as told). So that leaves me with siphon life, and corruption. So my dmg on Solarian was just a smidge above corruption dmg. I was missing my shadowburn and improved shadowbolt.. and REALLY missing my UA and all the yummy goodness that comes with that. As an affy raiding lock I had 4 dots I could apply before spamming my "improved" shadowbolt. Now I just had 1 (siphon life takes a while, and does poop for dmg). I think I should next time (if there is one) equip my skyguard trinket to gimme a pinch with crit/dmg.

So ask me.. how'd I get into Tempest Keep, and Serpentshrine Caverns...

-buddha provide

Wednesday, February 20, 2008

Tip Toeing into arena

Well I formed my arena team!! 2v2.

Me and a hunter buddy are now officially starting to mess with arena. So we had 5 matches last night.. Here's the rundown

  1. (means first match).. Anyway, we fought a frostmage/slsl lock. We got pwned. No reason for it, we weren't outclassed just outplayed. I died relatively quickly due to me not knowing that 1" of concrete created a LoS problem for drain life.. Lesson learned.
  2. Warrior/Healadin. Pain. Like Mr T said in Rocky, Pain. The good news was it was over quick! I sent felpuppy off against healadin, and the hunter sent pet to him also (BM spec). We pushed and pushed trying to cut off healing (simplest of all strategems). In doing so, the 800lb tauren warrior smacked me with an axe several times and killed me.. then with my felpuppy not stopping heals, my partner fell soon after. I was pissy cause I sucked.. again
  3. Warrior/Healadin. Pain, part deux. I got pwned fast again. He probably barely had time to clean that axe off before putting it up my rear again. (read this as, we lost.. again)
  4. Warrior/Healadin: Feels like we've been here before? yeah, but doesn't matter. In hindsight I wish I had put curse of recklessness on the healadin.. give my felpuppy a chance to do some damage.. and that raptor of my partner's.. maybe he'd have pushed that pally a bit more
  5. Warrior/Healadin: Ok, I realize this is getting old.. but at least you weren't getting killed. This time the group (same guys) decided.. hey that lock dies fast..lets kill the hunter. So they did.. and I died VERY fast without the pet to bother healing and such.
The problem here is.. well... theres a few.. 1) We're new.. literally noobs to arena, and it showed 2) Resilience. Other teams have it.. we don't. 3) we don't have the gear/weapons. These sound like excuses, and would be if we weren't so undergeared. I have "decent" gear.. nothing exciting some welfare epix from bg. But I don't have a respectable amount of resilience... My buddy.. He's missing a lot of stamina, and he's almost in all NON-epix (pvp or otherwise).

We'll get better.. if you are looking for us tho its "goo in your shoe" pvp

Tuesday, February 19, 2008

Running around again

Well even though I have a mere 100k honor points to grab so I can go full epic and mostly PvP, I have some buddies that need to be pushed up in levels a bit. This being said, it is almost painfully boring to do PvE after you've had the ability to down 2.. sometimes 3 people in PvP. Those were PEOPLE, not mere AI entities. The sport of which is pretty important to me nowadays.

So last night we (myself and a buddies lvl 50 warrior) pushed up to everlook, through felwood. I quickly realized I had never finished my infernal quest. So I picked it up. I figure if I get on before him tonight I can push around and do this really quickly. I mean it was meant for a lvl 50 lock to do, and I'm a whole 20 levels above that. Higher in HP than most raiding tanks pre BC, and more +dmg than possible before BC also. Surely this won't be a problem. I say this because I want you to realize I'll run into a problem, as sure as the sun will rise.

Tonight on the agenda is schlepping some lowbies around and grinding out their XP. I figure we'll do RED quests only so that we are maximizing total XP per hour. I usually only have the mental ability to stay awake for a few hours a night to play. This being said I will want to do my 3 quests in Blades edge as they are much more profitable than the 2 in skettis. My biggest hope is my badge of tenacity might sell and net me over 1k gold. I spent a lot more than I should have to get my last enchant. I did no farming, no planning. Just decided I wanted something and I bought the mats. It cost me dearly, and I don't think I'll be doing that again anytime soon. The next enchant will be for my bracers (+15 spellpower). These mats will be farmed, as I don't find them to be terribly hard to get anyway.

After that the only remaining enchant I'm interested in is soulfrost. This is a biggy. GREAT biggy actually. It will mean +50ish dmg to shadow/frost spells. This coupled with the knowledge that I will not get this enchant until I have the appropriate marks/etc to get the pvp staff. The staff alone alots me +75 dmg.. couple that with the enchant and you see that this is going to change Mcgoo from a storm to a tornado. At least that's the hope, anyway.. I figure that the PvP staff should be good enough for a long time in PvE.

I wonder so many people argue PvE vs PvP gear/talents, etc.. I have (as a lock) yet to see a difference aside from +hit, +penetration, and +resilience. My guild, although not the best in progression, is doing really well and is in tempest keep. Of the locks they are using (and successfully, by the way) none of which have big numbers in any of those categories. The highest at this point is 100, on an affy lock with 5 in suppression. This is almost what I had before I made my FSW set and started pushing out in PvP. I had no problem reaching those numbers and assume I wouldn't again if the need arose. I just can't get into the runs I need to go through to get what I need. My PvP gear makes running heroics foolish (my gear is better, as is).. and mostly my gear is better than kara stuff. I know I need to push at leat 5-6 heroics... if nothing else just for badges so I can get my silver crescent icon trinket. Its the best trinket I've seen for locks.. till.. well its the best I've seen period.

Anyway.. aside from getting my buddies leveled up 2 levels at least, the next several nights will be mostly a wash. With any luck though we'll find a few bobbles to sell to cover my repair bill and maybe enough to repay a helpful mage for dumping some mana biscuits on me. I do so much dislike using my +dmg or +stam food for goofing around in lower areas. I need to clean out my bank so I CAN have a ton of foodstores/trinkets to hold on to. Right now I have 3 bags full of bolts of cloth, that I may need again.. someday..

Friday, February 15, 2008

Welfare Epics

I try not to rant about personal opinions TOO much here.. But...

Last night as I was doing the push to get the rest of my pvp gear (non arena), someone in guild chat.. GUILD CHAT stated that...

"I don't understand why someone would bother trying to grind for honor/badges instead of just getting in a crappy arena team and pouding out their 10 weekly.. Stupid welfare epics.. So we end up with all these posers who don't know how to play with "leet epix" in bg/arena getting schooled cause they don't know how to play"

I wanted to say so much.. SO much. That not EVERYONE had access to an arena team.. That most of those hose-brains in true Leet Epix are already IN arena teams.. That not everyone wants to come in and loose for 6-8 months so they can have the gear they needed to succeed 6 months ago.. Probably just in time for new gear to come out and the truly elite arena battlers get their gear first (since they have the best gear already, they grandfather in and overwhelm others lesser geared) This is what I call the vicious cycle of PvP.

  1. get into pvp
  2. die a lot cause everyone has "raiding epix" (which are better than non raiding blues), or pvp epix
  3. slowly grind your way up to get the epix yourself so YOU can school others
    1. realize that new gear has just come out, and those uber folks, just got complete overhauls..
  4. repeat step 1
I don't see a cure for this really. I mean I guess Blizz could coral the people.. the "sometimes" PvPers.. and the "I have nothing else to do aside from delete my excess badges in av/eots/ab/wsg while I wear my leet season X epix".

My issue with this is there is almost no middle territory. There are those totally decked out, and those who work towards it. I'm not hating on you PvP-wild folks.. just saying, how is it at ALL fair to have you compete with me in my "welfare epix"? I've heard its "skill not gear", if this is the case.. drop your purps and put on some blues.. and lets have a go.. I thought not.. chicken! Its gear and everyone KNOWS it. The warriors with the big mace from arena with executioner KNOW its their gear. They KNOW when they hit a non epic'd person, they will most likely die. KNOW. I just wish, if perfect world and all, the un-epic'd got extra kudos for hanging with the crazy pvp'ers.

I'm good at PvP. I'm not the best, nor do I want to be. What I want is to make a lot of gold, and in my spare time, have 100 badges for all bg's (getting there, slowly.. except eots).. Have a set of total epic gear for PvP and required enchants.. I'd like to raid more, as I think as a warlock, I'm best suited for this, but raids are becoming hard to find at my level of gear (again.. gear). I've ran most of kara 2x's now (I have the belt to prove it!) but still no shade/prince/maiden. I realize that this is basically a stopgap and that worrying about this PRE expansion is fruitless. I saw how fast my guild shot their 60's to 70's and started raiding.. My goal is to have reasonable gear (even if just pvp) to jump in and push to 80 with them so that NEXT round, I get to go do some cool stuff. I fear this round is coming to a conclusion anyway, so farm your mats.. stockpile nethers and be ready for the push forward people!

And if anyone says crap about my "welfare epix" they can try to 1:1 me.. TRUST me, they'll loose (I never loose 1:1.. even to the wacked out warrior in crazy lightening bolt gear.. I die.. but so do they.. more of a draw)

Wednesday, February 13, 2008

Respec

Well I was kinda ruffled by a guy in a bg, who gave me crap for not being a "pvp spec" (I was almost pure affliction).. I admit it, he got to me. I went through typical denial, anger.. elation (I did 30k more dmg than him in AV).

In the end though I thought, I've only respec'd Mcgoo one time (ruin.. oh jeez.. I miss it still), so why not try a SL/SL spec? So I did. I was terrifically surprised. The SL/SL spec has a lot of "wasted" points in demonology that you need to get to soul link. I couldn't foresee a reason to have most of these, so I picked up the ones that may have the best utility for all around gaming.. Check my spec and see what you think.

Anyway, soul link is the awesome. You read that right, the awesome. I stay alive so much longer than I used to its just rediculous. I also (by virtue of fel stamina or whatever Tier 1 demonology talent) now have close to 10k hp.. without imp. I chose to buff up the succubus and the imp. More imp than succubus as I figured the imp would be JUST for instances now (instead of JUST for dark pact). Running with succubus buffs my dmg up to a crazy 800 (crazy as I'm not even close to all epics yet). I can only assume I'll top out about 1200 in the end with appropriate enchants, gems.. what-not. I tested my new found spec on a mage friend (Yara), he's got good resilience (not great he says, but better than me by like 2x's). And I smoked him. I smoked him without the felpuppy too. Funny thing is, now with my succubus doing more damage and actually TAKING damage for me, the old "ignore the pet, kill the lock" axiom no longer holds. My succubus can do just enough to keep you hurting while my dots tick away at you. God help you if I can drain you too.. It's like fighting a pally, you gotta practically kill me 2x's.

In closing 1:1 this spec is FAR superior for PvP. Possibly for raiding as my damage is so much higher. I miss improved shadowbolt, and I miss shadowburn the most. UA was mostly used for "hey that healer doesn't see me, lets dot him up" stuff anyway and in instances. I wonder if my damage buff ot >800 would make up for not having UA.. Perhaps I'll try that another time. As of right now I'm grinding AV for honor, and kills. My kills sucked last night, but that was mostly due to the superior groups I was falling into.

Last night scorecard - 5 AV's... 3 wins, 2 losses. This is actually what allowed me to get my new pants (generals dreadweave) for Ole Mcgoo.. So BIG stamina increase, dmg increase.. and 30 resilience to boot. Next on my list I think will be the cape, then rings, then bracer, then... the staff.

If you are wondering why I'm not going for full BG gear, its cause I loose so much damage from getting rid of FSW that I don't consider it an option. I may rejewel my gear to buff stamina constantly and ignore the socket bonus' to try to make up for the lack of stamina on FSW. The damage is not something I am willing to loose tho.

Monday, February 11, 2008

Playing Hookie

This weekend I logged a little over 5 hours playing Warcraft. Most of the time I spent... was on alts.

I call this playing hookie because I secretly KNOW there are things I can do on Mcgoo to increase his mojo, and his epic-ness. I know it. I know I can spend about an hour (slow) to make about 60g. I KNOW this. I also know that if I do this I inevitably end up standing and cursing at the battlemaster for not letting AV pop sooner. Again, I KNOW this.

I really want to have more guys to play around with though. I mean I have a decent bank of gold on Mcgoo, not even 2/5 of what a epic mount costs, but good. Everything seems like such a hassle though. I play the same dailies.. I pound out my 60g.. During the week this usually means I'm tired and I go to sleep. Nothing wrong with that in and of itself.. But like I said.. I want to do NEW things. I tanked VC with my lvl 15 druid.. (yeah.. really), I ended up wiping the group cause I couldn't hold aggro or take the beating I should.. Still though.. 15! He's now 16 so he popped up one level. Then I thought I'll just res and run in the front, which shortly there after I remembered res-sickness. Noob mistake, and I was pissed. However, I had Brepalan (my favorite toon ATM) sitting and ready, and a bit higher in level. So I pushed him in there and we made a good go of it but I had to go (Brepalan is now 18, and loving it).

Then to mix things up I pushed my rogue up to 18. Its not that hard really with my rogue. I have plenty of mojo to deal with people its more or less just a pain to use her cause she gets hit (unavoidable at this point) and then I gotta eat.. I enjoyed pick pocketing though. I am reasonably sure that I am going to make her my herbologist for life, and some alchemy. I think my druid will also go alchemy but without the icky-ness of herbology. I hate mining, but I love it. I see herbology as being about the same, only without making money (till I can transmute.. then.. HOLLA!)

So Rogue to 18.. pally to 18.. Who else.. hm.. Oh my Priest (healyoself) got up to 21! So I popped into the 20's just a bit. Healing is so much fun, I really enjoy it. For some reason though there are 900 preists running around now. Wasn't one my whole way up to 70.. but now.. there's a ton of em. This has been a fun time leveling these guys up this weekend, but I don't know how long I can turn down 60g a day until I go back to mcgoo for an epic flight mount. Of course if I fall in love with my druid, I could just get a freebie on the flight form.. ROFL

Just today though I was thinking of a respec to SL/SL just to horse around with in PvP... hm... more news on that tomorrow I guess

Wednesday, February 6, 2008

Kara, reloaded

While I had been in kara before it was kind of a total misfire. The group had cleared up to curator, and was trying to pass him.

Last night, on the other hand, rocked out. I was in with a destro lock (I think, can't remember name now for armory check) and a mage (guildie). The rest were a total mystery.. well the healer was also in the guild with me.. but the rest were complete idk's. We had no pally (which was horrible according to the group but I don't know wth they are talking about), but we did have a shaman (resto I think), and a boomkin.

Ok things I've learned: Most locks raiding have better +dmg than me, so I do CoShadows to help them out more. Good side: It increases their damage at the cost of my own.. Better side: Boomkins use an arcane spell all the time (spamming for big dmg) which also is buffed by curse of shadows.

I used my grinding macro which does a cycle on each target starting with: UA, Corr, CoShadows, Siphon Life. Most of the time I didn't put Siphon life up till we were on a boss fight, but the rest stayed the same. I kept my dots up.. Did my best damage I could spamming soulfire when I could, and shadowburn when I can too. So I had to drainsoul on some trash to get some shards.. big deal.. Personally, I think I did well. Draining soul seems to drop my DPS significantly.. but it helps for boss fights where I need to burn shards like there's no tomorrow.

**Sidenote, the other lock didn't have the super health stones.. So the party got 2 healthstones each.. and I was LOVING it.

We went past Atumen without an issue at all. I think the tank was just so good, cause I crit several times on that fight and NEVER pulled aggro (omen isn't reporting for me anymore and its bothering me, but apparently not enough to try to fix it). I was hoping to get the mount of his, but no such luck (it didn't drop).

Then we went to Moroes. This was a neat fight, as there were big mobs of non elites who enjoyed getting 2 Seed of Corruptions each. Needless to say those all died very fast. The Moroes fight itself was pretty weird. The guy has some buddies you gotta kill too. I, of course did my thing as instructed. I love it when people ask me if I've been here before.. if I haven't I still know what to do.. Depends on the tank and who's marking..but typically my job is "dot the crap out of the skull marked mob, then s-bolt it to death". As a lock I don't bring a lot to the table aside from DPS. I personally thought a hunter would have been good in here as I can't ever kill a hunter in PvP I just assume the pwn everything like they do me. Mages can poly, and de-curse.. healers can heal/cleanse.. Me, I just dot. Anyway that went well.. I think I got a epic belt there.. Anyway it was awesome.. and I cheered.

Then we did the Opera event, and it was "Oz". The instructions were good and to the point.. Kill dorothy, she's untankable. Then assist the MT on the Roar.. Then move on to the next guy. I am reasonably sure that the mage took out the scarecrow, as he's a fire mage.. but what do I know I was lifetapping, and dotting and bolting my gnomie butt off. I accidentally rolled on a healer wand, and was jokingly asked if I do much healing. I replied what I would always reply when I mess up and roll on something I don't want.. "reading- FTL" and everyone laughed. I hope so anyway cause it was really an accident. I think I had the low roll anyway, but knowing that I messed up bothered me.

Then, these guys are like.. hey lets do nightbane. I spewed my Pepsi One out on that one. From the articles I've read (and really I've read a few) this was one of the big deal fights of the whole instance. So I was pumped.. Plus he's a dragon.. And as a gnome I love the idea of killing a dragon. We wiped 1x here, and it wasnt' my fault (which is usually my main concern) but then we took him down no problem. He dropped some goodies but none that I could use, unfortunately.

Then to my surprise, they say they want to take out curator. Now if you read my last entry, curator was fubar before. So I was a little antsy about going there again, but this group seemed to know wth they were doing so why not. Anyway first time out we downed him no problem. Of course, the big difference to ME was that we had 2 locks doing curse of doom for like 24k dmg a pop during each evocation. I forgot to do the improved doom, but hey.. we downed him.

So, in kara I need to have experience getting down:
  • Maiden of Virtue
  • Shade of Aran (I really want to take him down)
  • Netherspite
  • Prince Malchezaar
  • Ilhoof