Wednesday, March 19, 2008

Behold the Fist of Verigan!

Through some sheer luck, and a helpful guy I met in SW, I got ran through the WHOLE questline for verigan's fist last night. Dinged 21 and everything.. Was a neat little run, a buddy of mine (atikam) has a pally who needs the fist asap, so we're going to make that happen on tonight.

Note.. hitting lvl 20 made it apparent as to just how overpowered pallies are at low levels. I do damage on par with my rogue (19, but pretty good).. All this while wearing mail, and being able to heal myself. Sick..

Tonight I will be helping ati, and then he helping me with pushing through some red quests for my druid (pally's not in rested xp, so I prefer him to REST). If worse comes to worse I can get my mage/priest involved to really help out in their respective roles. Sadly, I find I have no more patience for low level questlines. I want a mount, NOW.. And I want to be able to do things.. NOW. Being 70 and having the world there for you is really a spoiling experience.. or it has been to me.

Monday, March 17, 2008

Workin on the night shift..

No my new job hasn't forced me to work night shift.. its more my candid approach to raiding. I miss most of the raids for being not online till 8:30-9 on most nights.. I've complained how I WISH OH I WISH someone would raid post 9 for something..

Guess what?

Well my guild leader told me that I can arrange a run, no problem, just don't compete with the "real" raids (by real I mean the ones where they are pushing towards BT/MH).

SO tonight is my first "late shift kara run". We start at.. 8:45!! If you're on Medivh and you have some game, and are kara keyed give Mcgoo a shout at 8:45ish and we'll see if we can fit you in.

My main excuse is that I want the dagger from prince, I want to SEE prince.. and I want to kill the shade. The wicked ring off of atumen would be nice but, I'm not delusional.. that'll never drop, and if it does I won't get it. My real hope is that I will have some wacked out ubers from the guild push through all this with me and since they all have better gear than me, I'll get all the good stuff I want. Greedy? Yes, a little.. But I want it, and I hope I get it sometime, even if it doesn't drop tonight.

Wish me luck guys!!

So much, so much..

Well a lot has been happening.. Firstly.. my alts

I have decided that burning through all my dailies, then doing 2bg a night with mcgoo is boring. I decided that I want to have more than 1 lvl 70. I went to my guildies for advice since I've never had anyone above 49 (ahh.. the dwarf) except for Mcgoo. The crowd mostly pushed for a 50/50 on whether I should push a pally up, or a feral druid (turning boomkin @70). My response.. Ok.

What? you expected something more complicated? I'm an easy going guy.. So I started with a lvl 16 druid. He's been pushed through and out of rested xp into 19. To be honest he's about 50% done with 19 also. I had decided to pass time fairly between my alts to burn rested xp, so once that rested was burned I started kicking other toons around. My pally, well I got him knocking on 20's door, he's less than 1 bar away, and I have 4 quests from VC to turn in, so I imagine its moments from happening. My rogue, I played for about 10 minutes (hey, I gotta sleep guys!) and totally fell in love with the dmg rogues can put out. I love the direct-ness of a combat rogue, but nothing beats a stealthed ambush followed by a stun/backstab for a quick death for a mob @ lvl. Much thanks to atikam my arena-mate for pushing my pally's tired behind through VC. Had a ball, and tried to help with some healing (well.. I said I TRIED). I suppose once I go through rested on the pally and the priest (sigh.. more priest grinding), I can maybe.. push my mage up a bit. Mages are fun too, like warlocks only with BIG hits. My mage is all fire tree so far so the dmg is really there, but I miss the flexibility frost gives.. Maybe I'll go elementalist if I ever get her to 70.. dunno.

My rogue is kinda my "last alt" to push up. I enjoy her almost as much as my druid, but the hard truth is, that its because I lucked out and got some good weapons. Rogues are like hunters only without the pet, if you have no good weapons, you die. Fast. I feel like I have a good feel for the class though, so pushing her up to 70 won't be too hard once I get to it. I think combat might be the spec best suited to solo play, while assassination seems better suited for grouping (if you get the bit from subtlety that allows better sap). Don't know how she'll turn out in the end, but she's wicked cool at this level.

There, now you guys are caught up with my alts.

Monday, March 10, 2008

Jealousy..

It is always good, as a instructor/mentor, to have your student/cohort move up dramatically in ability..

Ok not only has my buddy Wulven (a veritable noob at PvP) moved up several notches in his PvP gameplay, but now I find myself being overtly jealous of him. Why? He's a "noob", mcgoo.. why be jealous?? Not jealous of his ability, not yet anyway, but REALLY jealous of his honor grind so far. Want a ballpark? He hit 11k honor in a day.. a WEEK day.. I've done that on AV weekend, sure.. who hasn't.. but DANG!! for a weekday? That's an insane amount of honor. He pounded out and in about a week he got his S1 xbow (huntard).

My old days of causing un-familiar folks to oggle my dmg in battlegrounds, are long gone. While my +dmg is WAY up.. I no longer have the PUSH to really get it there. Once my gear is totally retooled to all arena/bg gear, I'll be loosing a significant amount of damage (roughly 50 dmg), and that is factoring in enchants for spellpower (no soulfrost till next season when I get the new S3 spellblade at a reduced honor amt). So his damage was about 40k off mine last night, in the one AV we ran. Yara was with us, and of course his damage was off the charts. We 3 defended Belinda against, what seemed to be ALL, the horde. Successfully I might add. We defended SH bunker/IWbunker also. Yara and I know that the best way to wipe a group in pvp is the same as in a raid. Overwork the healers, while overdamaging the dps. He(yara) runs in with arc explosion, frost nova, CoC.. all kinds of frosty/arcane goodness. I typically try to see how many seeds of corruption I can get on the dps group. Nothing drives healers crazy more than having all the melee dps (including tank) get hit for 1500 dmg 8 times within a minute(on top of regular damage). I try to cast curse of tongues too on the healers.. Mages don't want to decurse in AV, it slows their damage.. all the while not realizing I'm killing their group by slowing their heals and increasing the dmg needed to heal. I WANTED my buddy (wulven, the huntard in question) to put a explosive trap by one of the wing entrances to belinda.. Either forcing the dps/healers closer to melee.. or onto the other side to escape the dmg. Either way meant bigger group to have a AoE go off on. Personally my seed spell is hotkey2. So I hit 2+tab, 2+tab.. until someone kills me. Remember, I don't mind getting killed.. what i mind is LOOSING. So after that death I come back in find the healers and pop tongues on them then I do a AoE fear standing next to them. The undead folks don't mind it as much as the others, and on occassion when I see 1 tauren warrior tanking belinda while rogues are viciously backstabbing her.. I deathcoil the warrior.. just for giggles.

In about 2 weeks wulven should have as much PVP gear as me and be 2x's as tough to beat. Now if I could just get him into some instances so he can get a decent trinket! In the end I want him/atikam/mcgoo on a 3's team. 3 DPS is a bit rediculous.. but why not. Its just for fun and points anyway.. Atikam is BM, Wulven is MM, and I'm SL/SL. I'm thinking I should just aim to put my dots on all 3 adversaries.. More "kill the lock" strategies seem to be rearing their ugly heads, bah!

Was thinking about my next upgrade equipment wise. I think I will aim for either getting both rings at once (cause its a biggy) or the S1 spellblade+offhand. Either way will up my resilience a good amount, and my damage (although the weap/off combo naturally boosts this damage a lot more).. guess we'll see..

-goo

Wednesday, March 5, 2008

2's are for fun!

Well last night my buddy and I pushed through 10 arena games. Took about 2.5 hours to do it too. Why all at once you ask? Well he's going on vacation and wanted to knock those arena's out so he could get some points (2's is his only team ATM). Well as a BMhunter/SL/SL lock, I think we do well.

Let me preface that by saying: I know we have no healer.. no one to gimp healing, and my DPS is painfully slow. I know that he will most likely outlive me 100% of the time (he does, by the way). I know that if I was "serious" about arena I'd have a resto druid as my partner. READ THE TITLE PUNK.. 2's are for fun (and points for ati {that's his name}).

Well we won 3/10. A poor showing? I dunno.. we were 0-5 the first week we played.. So I consider this a monumental improvement. We lost 3 we should have won though, but due to poor coordination (no vent!). That and my damage is too slow, and his damage isn't on point yet (we're still collecting s1's for him to beef him up).

For instance, mage/priest combo ( I know, but we suck.. so we get no good combos).. Priest is just running around a pillar and the mage is going nuts on ati . By nuts I mean he was all over him like a cheap suit, and ati was having trouble getting done what he wanted. Thus.. ati died. Then I have a mage at 40% and a priest at 70% running to me. Now, 1:1 I can smoke any mage. ANY mage. Warlocks are just bad like that.. but what I had to essentially do is eat the heals off him with felpup.. then put felpup on the priest to block heals while I feared the mage. Ok.. so I'm busy. Priest got a way too frickin lucky psychic scream off, which made the felpup run. Worry? No I pooped on the floor. SO the mage is down to like 2% and the priest is coming into range so he can heal his team mate. I get control of felpup and go nuts on the mage. Kill him.. Only then to get killed by the priest (remember all my ducks are on the mage). To my credit, I feel like I basically solo'd a 2 man team and got 1 down (poor ati.. frost mage ate him for lunch).

I'm new to arena, and ati is even new-er than me. So we're basically noobs trying to mess up some faces.

One we won. Warlock/priest. This.. was... yucky. I ran in.. dotted lock and feared him.. then had felpuppy/ati going batshit nuts on the priest. Killed him fast (can't do much against a felpup), then went for the lock. He was good. Standard sl/sl playstyle. Dot dot dot.. drain.. So I took the spell lock off of the felpup so I could control when it happened. We were basically in a drain race cause ati had been dotted pre dead priest.. and he croaked on me pretty fast. So its lock v lock. SL/SL vs SL/SL. My advantage... I had more +dmg. His advantage.. more resilience. We went down to the VERY last second. We both died.. I just did it after him. I got spell locked at a bad time and just threw out 2 searing pains who 1 crit on him the other didn't hit for much at all. Then I popped corruption on him and hit drain. Wait 3 seconds and then realize I said CRAP did I get him? and looked at scorecard.. We WON! I was pumped.. ati was pumped.. it was all good things.

Then we lost a bunch, close ones mostly. Except a druid/priest combo. They pwned us. More correctly they took out the lock. The druid must've been on point with dmg, cause he didn't hit me a whole lot but killed me sickeningly fast. Which left ati to take a 2 man team.. He's good, but not THAT good. So we lost. The druid was sneaky.. and the priest shadowmelded so I couldn't see him either. So we appeared to be alone in the arena for a while there.. I did what I do to get attention.. I ran around and swapped directions a lot (rogues like to get behind clothies for backstab crits). I just KNEW we were doing this against 2 rogues and I was pissy about not finding them (remember.. we both had "see invisible" buff I have, and paranoia from felpuppy). Had we not have lost me in 3 seconds.. we'd have won that fight. 1) because druids suck (sorry guys.. but you guys do many things good... nothing great) 2) because the healer was a priest. Pallies we have trouble shutting down, but priests.. we can kill those VERY fast.

We did 2 against a couple lock/shaman, hunter/shaman teams. We won one of them. Took out the resto sham before he could do much. BIG key in my new playstyle is knowing only a pally and a mage can decurse. So if there is neither on a team, the healer gets curse of tongues.. period. A few seconds on a holy spell means someone dies for us. So that's not an issue any more.

While our record was poopy.. I can say that we did well for a mishapen team. Hopefully more fun in 5's will keep me more optimistic (and the points ROLLING in..)

Tuesday, March 4, 2008

Arena fun

Well its been a while since an update, and the reason for that is the BT:DT kind of things I've been doing. Nothing exciting.. nothing cool

But...

Last night held 2 good things for me
  1. winning a few in arena
  2. got enough honor for my pvp bracers

Well arena is rough.. I don't have to tell you that if you go there. Seriously its one of those "barrier to entry" things. You can't outperform a team in season 3 goodies, in zero pvp gear. And you can't perform really at all without pvp gear (bg or arena). So to do well in arena.. you must first do well in bg's to get your gear up enough so that you aren't just there for eye-candy in arena. By the time I get some S3 points racked up, S4 will be upon us. So I'm not so much doing arena for S3, as I am stockpiling points for S4.. since my rating is poop, on both teams, I'll not be grabbing tons of points anytime soon. So its a gradual system..

Anyway though, arena has daunted me with perpetual losses for a while now, but this has started to fade. I think we've sunk low enough that the ppl we fight might suck more than us. Of course none in my group is in great gear.. I think all of us are in "good" gear. Personally, I like doing damage. My armory page will highlight that, as I am stacked higher (by about 200 dmg) than most locks in arena/pvp. I do this cause I like to hurt people, plain and simple. Although, analytically.. in arena "kill the lock" is a common strategy. Usually trumping "kill the healer". So being able to do damage even after death, to me, is important. I don't want to die though, and the majority of the battle's we've won were when I lived. I'm half joking, half not when I say notice we win more when I'm alive? I'm an SL/SL lock. We are known to LAST, not to do damage. I can put out some serious damage if I need to. Nothing like my old affy days, but this isn't pve. I'd be willing to stack up mcgoo to almost any lock out there and I think I stand as good a chance to beat any of them. Reasoning, is expectation. You expect a lock with 700+dmg (standard sl/sl makeup).. what you GET is a lock with >1k dmg (not uncommon, but also kinda freakish for sl/sl.. only me and the real bad-boy locks have this). Now granted, I don't know specifically the breakdown of dmg vs benefit to dots.. What I DO know is in a 5's match, 5 ppl with corruption means I WILL proc a nightfall at some point. At that point you WILL get blasted with it. With any luck it will drop you enough that my ensuing drain life will finish you.

Mostly its nothing more than us going against casters that allows us to win more than other times. I mean, considering we have typically a Shadow Priest, Lock, hunter/mage doing DPS.. With counterspell, felhunter, mana burn/viper sting.. We can handle a caster or 2. Our losses seem to spiral around Melee dps. Good locks are hard to kill also, while I don't find their damage all that impressive, they do put a lot of damage out there, but its cumulative. I typically try to wait when I get dotted.. at least 3 seconds. Reason for this? most locks, like me, lead with corruption 1, SL1, and max agony curse. My spellstone (which all locks should have for a lock battle) will remove all but agony. This reduces mana waste, and also forces a less experienced lock to burn spellstone. I wait a few seconds.. This can send a false positive to the lock saying "I have no spellstone cause I'm a noob". He then drops his big dots on you. Only then to have them dispelled by the spellstone. What has happened? Now he must RE-apply dots to hurt you. AND he's wasted a lot of mana getting 4 dots up on you that went bye-bye. I do this a fair amount of times cause I don't really mind hitting OOM, as its rare I live that long (remember, kil the lock?) At the same time all this is going on my dots are on him, so is my felhunter.

2) Finally getting my bracers tonight. They really aren't that huge you say? true.. but I'm pumping a good gem in them, and getting the +15 spellpower dropped on them. The only other equipment piece that i'll have a high price ench for is my weapon. That will get soulfrost(depending on how soon I can get it) or +40 spellpower. I personally LIKE my shoulder/head/chest armor pack that dumps 30 stamina on me. My shoulder ench from scryers is lame still so why waste the tomes? and I have almost NO rep to get the good head enchant. Shoulders are a bonus with this 10 stamina armor kit.. so rocking out is key. Probably will get a resilience enchant on my cloak (if there is such a thing) as I don't care for armor (I have like.. none now anyway.. so whats 100 armor?)

Alas once this is all said and done... I'll have to decide whether its more feasible to get the s1 gear (shoulder/robe/feet) or keep FSW for the dmg. I would want another FSW set for PvE though cause I would stack resilience on the gems hoping for a good enough showing in the end. I see NO locks running in FSW in the top tiers.. but.. I'm still pretty new to it all and running in the S3's before S4 seems highly unlikely.

Stay tuned to find out how my bracer enchant rocked my financial world!

-goo