How to make 1-4= something greater than zero..

Lately I've been getting Grimrpr steamrolling into as much content as possible.

I haven't gotten IN to see Ony yet, but I have been in 3 groups that just suddenly dissolved or lagged on forever and still didn't get in. So.. I'm hoping to get in there and get an upgrade or two for my dps/tanking sets to move myself up a little. I may give up on tanking altogether though..

I have found the yearning within my heart.. Arena.

With mcgoo it was terrible. My job was to dot everyone before they all killed me. Sometime in the 70 cap days, there was a bunch of super-uber locks that pwned everyone. It wasn't me, but I sure felt the backlash. Start a match, let the rogue hide and walk out alone away from the group. The WHOLE other team (healer, dps, cc) all ran right at.. ME. So I got to die VERY fast. My team did okay for the pure reason of me being such easy fodder, and my spellpower really sticking it to people even after I died.

Now.. With Grimrpr.. Its, um. Mostly the same. Only with plate. I am in a 2's team most frequently with my buddy.. a rogue. He outgears me by a lot, but I am competitive with survivability and dps output. I'm the bait. I'm the lure to pull people in. So I run out.. run in a circle and hide behind a pillar. Most people in 2's will divide to have 1 person on each side of the chicken, in this case me. What this does is give my roguish buddy a chance to pwn someone without their helper around to do squat. Well you get the idea.. we suck something awful, but we've improved a lot each week so far.

So.. what is the problem? I play wow about 14 hours in a 7 day period. That time sounds pretty steep, but consider.. WG is a every 2 hours kinda funtrip, and lfg takes TIME. I have a great desire to make grim a higher end raider.. I also have a desire to make him viable in arena matches.. The solution?

I don't have one.. I was really hoping you did. Right now I feel like I'm splitting my time and so everything suffers (gamewise). I just ditched my blood tanking spec for something more saucy for PVP and arena. So far I pwned a lot in WG, but haven't had a chance to partner up for some practicing. I am itching now to replace my weapon with a arena one, but with OUR rating? That'll never happen..

Tic ToC

I am in such a rush to get into the new heroic and normal dungeons Trial of the Crusader.

If you haven't heard of this... its the new Argent Tournament style dungeons (and a raid to boot!)

I'm not sure exactly how hard these new places are.. The reason for that is.. I can't get in a bloody group!

I think this is the new DK mecca so there are a million groups looking for healers/tanks.. but full on DPS. I have seen 2 groups with 3 DK's in it. The heroic version drops a axe (oooo yum!) that is the only REAL upgrade to titansteel destroyer (ahem.. my mace) until Late 25man Naxx. So its a big deal. My dps is holding pretty solid at the 2k mark, not shabby.. but I still can't find a group that needs my particular brand of mayhem and slaughter.

So in the mean time.. I'm running a ton of dailies on my 2 80's and piling up the gold for the eventuality that Grimrpr will be my only epic flying character.. on his nifty dragon.. So there..

OMG.. where am I?

Well with for frickin ever past since I posted (which was when Grimrpr was dinging 70), here are some updates...

1. Grimrpr is now 80!!
2. Grimrpr can now sustain 2k dps!
3. Grimrpr can now pwn everyone! (especially healing druids..)
4. Grimrpr.. can't um.. get in a raid to save his life.
5. Grimrpr won a dragon mount (woot, COS timed lootz)
6. Grimrpr can't ride it.. :( saving up though.. getting there soon
7. Bored with Grimrpr for now.. so started leveling Bigscrybear
8. The 'bear' hit 62.. and is dealing with life fine..

So basically I'm using mcgoo and grim to run tournament dailies and see if I can get grim into a heroic nexus or something.. Which is boring.. doing the same quests 2x's in a row. But oh well.. I seem to be looting over 70g a day.. and this is ONLY doing the super fast quests, solo.

Jeez.. when did I forget how awesome mcgoo is? I one-shotted a dragon in icecrown, and was literally cursing aloud at the power. Crit for 8k? srsly? dang. I am still bored with him though. Nothing is a challenge and I can't get into raids. Realistically, I should be guild shopping for one that raids during times I can.. But I'm not. There are a few I have looked into, but they are either not wanting warlocks, or full on DK's. At this point Grim is 'part of the package', and frankly more fun. Running TOWARDS ppl trying to kill me is a new thought for a guy who played a short warlock. I usually ran away.. (insta curses/diseases FTW!!). That is still proving to be fun (the plate wearing skull bashing).

Well.. I have begun my 2nd siege of the AH as well, and I am doing well. I am not necessarily pushing for MAXIMUM GOLD!!! but I am pushing for SOME gold. There is a margin, which is small, where you can undercut most competitors, while still making some decent gold. My time spent farming is being fruitful? Nah. I'm not farming. I am just doing H VH. Skinning all the dragons and OS10 skinning there too. Sometimes I get dragonscales (which oddly don't sell as fast) but I at least get leather. Now realize that for a long time I was hitting there (both) daily, and you see how I got so much leather. Managed to make a paultry 800g in selling it all. Could have probably pushed to the 1k's if I had spent the time on it and all, just didn't feel like it.

More to come, this time for sure!!

Ding 70...

Well I log on last night hoping to push my uber DK up to 70. He was just standing there looking bad as heck.. I had checked armory during the day and found out that he lost all his talents. So I go to re-talent the poor schmuck.. and wait a second.. wth?

Talents = 0
unspent talents = 0

How is that? So I ask around to other DK's.. maybe its a quirk or something.. Nope. Nobody is having any issues. Soooooooo I put in a ticket with a GM. And wait. And wait. And wait. And wait.

Then I got tired of waiting and just decided that I wanted to hit 70 anyway. So off I went. Did you know a 69 DK can hold off 12 pirates in borean tundra? No you didn't cuz I couldn't do it. I ended up killing 5 of them before they got me. Next time I managed to kill 8. Why am I killing pirates? was I on a quest? No. I was doing my new "brainiac" idea of using my DK's ability to run ON water to get me places faster (straight line, and all that). Just so happened the cove of pirates that you quest in later was in my way. So anyway, I rounded up the tuskar quests in the valley of crazy mages and demon dogs, and pounded them out. Then migrated to "amber ledge" to talk to dragons.. and kill/skin dragonkin. DING..

Wow, that really didn't take that long did it? (don't answer.. you weren't there anyway) So I look at my talents again to see if maybe another point might have un-screwed it up for me. HA HA! I have points to spend! So I put in a point on improved icy reach or whatever.. and boom.. all gone again.

RINGALING (not a quote, but close)
GM- Hi read your petition about not having talent points.. sucks to be you. I'll just hand that over to our technical staff to handle
Me- Is there an ETA or an average wait time?
(7 minutes pass)
GM- This is an automated message your GM is not listening to this. Deal with it.

Now given that GM's have typically been really cool for me, I don't understand this kinda thing. I was basically fed a canned answer and then disconnected so I couldn't talk to the guy/gal/robot. My hopes are that if I can sneak away from family time this weekend, Ole Grimrpr will have his talents restored or totally reset. Either way.. I just like seeing what I have so I can compare and contrast things I may/maynot want for the future.

So if you are the GM that ignored me.. in the future good customer service would dictate you say something like (do not reply to this) in the first message so I know I just got a update and not that there is someone wanting to speak to me about my issue. I'm not hard to please.. I thought talking to a GM would be neat, and it kinda was.. didn't really get any responses.. ever.. but as long as the problem gets fixed, why should I care.. Right?

To 70... and BEYOND!!

hiatus

Like the title says.. my blogging has been on hiatus.

Well new news... :)

I have been playing mcgoo well until 3.1 dropped. I actually swapped spec back to heavy affliction (yeah!! dots return!). I am sup'ed up and ready to go for some raiding right?... RIGHT?? Well not entirely. My gear doesn't suck per se, but it surely isn't good enough for the "woo hoo wipefest" that guilds are having in Ulduar. Although I think my guild has recently finished Ulduar 25.. I don't have the gear to really be a help there. I'd like to get some of my 200 level gear up to 213 or 225. So I plan on hitting EoE, and OS25 a few times and see if something happens that way. Aside from that all Mcgoo has been doing is pounding away at Sons of Hodir Rep.

So...

That got boring so I bought the herloom shoulders with the XP boost for ole Grimrpr.. And within 3 days.. he went from 65.. to 69. I burned all his rested, moved him to Northrend, and have already completed the first leg or so of the borean tundra quests. Which, by the way, are much easier with a DK that can handle taking on 5 mobs at once. The most substantial of all my upgrades is my new axe the "blubber clubber" and the sword from a noob quest in borean tundra. I measured at least 4-5 crits above 2600 which seems ungodly high for only 69.. I managed to completely exhaust my rested on Grim and nailed about 69 and a half or so. Then I parked him. I PLAN on leaving him there for a week or so to do that last big push to 70 and onward afterthat. (To me 70 is a milestone for abilities so its good to get to it and master them so that you can move ahead well). I spec'd my 69 talent point into.... Corpse Explosion! It just sounds fun, doesn't it? We'll soon see..

Wowee zowee

Well I rarely find good groups for heroics and whatnot.. but last night was definitely the exception to the rule. I had a big night, and that was even before I got in group with these guys..

1) COS - timed attempt - failed.
Despite not getting the timed event done and me getting a chance to loose another roll on the epic drake.. sigh. It was pretty good though. My dps was consistent, and I pushed the tempo on a lot of fights (which is what I like). I either led in dps or I was narrowly defeated. Either way the COS event went well and if we had another 2 minutes we'd have gotten a chance to let me fail at that dragon roll.. ROFL.

2) Utguarde Keep (2nd group)
We stormed through here very fast, we did well with 2 dk's and a pally healer me and a hunter doing dps. I was pwned a bit here, but not by very much. We ran through crazy crazy fast. I finally got a shoulder upgrade.. FINALLY.

At the end everyone was still kinda pumped up.. so we decided to do a UP run since we were all here. The hunter crapped out on us, but we ended up getting another DK (very well geared) to help out.

3) Utguarde Pinnacle (same group except the new DK)
The new DK pwned me in dps most of the time.. I managed to end the instance with like 400 more total damage (yeah, that close). I think I got an upgrade here but last night was such a whirlwind.. Ah yes.. I got my belt. I have it updated with the buckle and all since I may avoid the guzbah belt now since this seems to be good.

Ok now the group stayed the same right? Nope.. the new DK left to go tank some such nonsense. Good for her. I got my ole buddy wulven in on the instance that came next.. which worked out well for him.

4) Violet hold
We stomped through squidhead boss.. then the birdman boss.. then even cyanigosa. My dps was off the heezy for sheezy this time. I topped all the charts by a long shot and managed to get about 2200dps. Which is where I want to be at the current point.

Wulvy got a new cape and didn't roll on the staff of tricks or whatever cyanigosa drops. I smacked him since nobody would use it.. but he's new to this heroic stuff. His dps was where mine was when I started he was nailing down 1300dps.

Then I dropped a buttload of gold to upgrade all my new stuff (gems and whatnot, buckles..). Check me out on armory now and you'll see a even more improved Mcgoo.

Later and hopefully updates will come more frequently.

Put me in coach!

Well getting geared up for naxx and doing the more complicated things that are done in heroics (timed runs, etc..), as well as OS.. Well its been rough for me. I've made decent progress through the gear, and even managed to get some rep going with kirin tor.

So I log on, on Sunday..

I look at my spreadsheet of gear/location/time and see where I should go LFG for.. I make my normal comments about how all the cool kids are in Naxx.. (I think they are funny, but I'm probably alone on that). My guild leader throws me a bone..

GL: "wanna come?"
Me: "obviously, but I'm not much help.. gear is bad.. dps is about 1500 atm"
GL: "don't worry about it, should be fine"
Me: [giggles, and says outloud.. NO F'n WAY!
GL: [invite]
Me: [faint]... [quick hit accept]

Now my GL is very well geared. Very very well geared. Its sick really, but yeah he's just well geared. 3-4 others from my guild are in the raid.. oh wait.. this isn't naxx10, but heroic? Uh oh.. I wonder how long till I get shown the door for poor dps?

Well it didn't happen. I did what I had intended to do.. I did my best with my DOT's and trinkets and everything else and let the chips fall where they would. My DPS, btw, was stellar.. I pumped out a total (including trash/everything) 1500 dps.. on boss fights I ranged from 1200 (ew).. to 2100 (ROCK OUT). In looking at this I couldn't help to notice I was dead f'n last. by a margin of always about 1500 dps.

Knowing my margin of for dps now you will understand the following statements. I got a TON of gear. I won't bore you with what it all was cuz you can look at armory or wowheroes and see.. I've been to naxx 1x, so everything to date is from there. I didn't just GET everything, there was a ruling on who got what.. and really that was fine with me. When our guid's highest rated DPS'er (a lock) rolled on a trinket against me I immediately thought of passing.. luckily I rolled a 9.. so I got to still LOOK like I was a greedy SOB. I just kinda thought, while that would basically be my single greatest piece of gear.. if it would benefit her, then seriously.. she should have it as all her gear is stellar. Having greens/blues from 77's on you means everything is a upgrade, and getting ANY upgrades was a huge bonus for me.

My initial gear ideas put me reasonably high on the hit cap and still had reasonable damage. With my upgrades I will be better than that now. I still need quite a lot though.. I plan on raiding vaults tonight and pray for a upgrade or 2 to drop (why not? everyone else does..).

Here is my grocery list, at the moment:
Head (H-COS)
Shoulders (H-COS)
Waist (H-HOL, or wormrest honored)
Trinket(40 badges, and VH)
Neck (H-Ahn'Kahet Old kingdom/ 25 badges)
Wrist (H-UP)

Strat is my money pot at the moment.. I could get my 2 big upgrades that I plan on from there.. Head/shoulders (lmao.. you'll get it in a minute). UP is 5 badges and VH is 3. So I plan on trying to hit those 3 places after tonight if I can get vaults raided for the week. I guess I COULD save up badges instead of getting a trinket or a necklace.. I could get some of my T7 stuff.. My problem is impatience. I feel like, if I can get a few upgrades I can get my dps to around 2k.. THEN I can go anywhere. Well anywhere people are pugging, anyway. So if I get into a naxx a week or a OS a week.. or even get in on Malygos (got a quest to get a necklace there.. so that'd be nice) I always win on any upgrade that drops. I'd really like to get the badge belt sash of.. somebody.. Anyway, most every lock I see raiding naxx 25 seems to have that belt. Even if all their other gear is in good shape they keep that belt. I hate buying things, ever.. but if I am buying something I want it to last. Plus with a belt I can add a socket thanks to my good buddy the smith, which means I basically get to add 14-19 spellpower to anything I get there. I'd just go ahead and do that now on my green belt (which would make it pretty competitive.. gearwise).. But its not FREE to do, so I'd like to minimize the harrassment I put my friends through and minimize my gold output.. I mean.. Someday.. I'd like to have an epic flier.

Hopefully tonight will yield me some gold and some upgrades!!

Fishing.. oh yeah.. and Cooking

Well I am a strict Heroes watcher. Heroes and Chuck. So I usually don't make it on to play WoW on Monday's, due to me being really old and not being able to stay awake long after Heroes. Last night, was... the exception.

I thought.. I'm not really tired yet.. why not just log on as Grimrpr and pound out the rest of my fishing/cooking. Good idea? No. GREAT idea. So off to Azshara. I fish my brains out in a "forever and a day" time period in the bay of storms. I get my fishing to 300 and my bags are totally full. No seriously they were totally full, I forgot to dump my inscription stuff in the bank so I've got 3 kinds of ink and 2 kinds of parchment and some herbs sitting in my bags.

Woo Hoo.. Dancing in the streets, I wander to shatt.. and fly to HH so I can cook all this fish and be done with fishing for a while. I cook and cook and cook.. (and cook.. but you get the idea). Boom. Look at armory and you'll see my pain. Made it within like 4-5 points of smacking 300 in cooking. They nerfed the heck out of spotted yellowtail or I'd have been 300 a long time ago*. For some reason its barely useful anymore and that is TRULY upsetting. Because I have 3 orange recipes and the rest are green or grey. Orange is lobster stew, mightfish steak and some kind of salmon (not sunscale). I'll be trolling around looking for a lifeline today but I'm hopeless in my persuit.

After a brief run on Wowhead, I've found my solution. Unfortunately the easiest way is to cough up gold and buy fish. The easiest way without gold is to fly to silithus and get desert dumpling recipe and kill worms. Sigh... Will Grim ever see WOTLK content? Not at this pace.. not at this pace.

I may just troll the ah a little and see if I can buy 4-5 mightfish for the steaks and be done with it. (I have so little patience)


*Spotted Yellowtail is one of the recipes dwarf and mcgoo used to cap out at 300 cooking in TBC expansion.

Orly... STFU!!

Well I have been piddling with my deathknight just leveling cooking/fishing at the same time kinda stuff.. but Sunday night I took some time to stop.. and play mcgoo. I wanted to run heroic Violet Hold (apparently 30% of my total upgrades I am after specifically are in there.. sigh).

So I log on to mcgoo and grab atikam, my goofball huntard buddy, and we scour the LFG. Boom, got a healer.. boom got another dps. Tank? Oh for crying out loud are all the tanks raiding tonight or what? I was exasperated, and grumpy (if this doesn't happen with the tank it happens with the healers when I am LFG). Then a guildy logged on who is super duper qualified for tanking a heroic.. as she had MT'ed all our raids in BC and before. Well she was rusty but not bad at all.

The shaman is way way overpowered. SICK gear and damage output. The healer seems to be ok. Tanking is good. DPS is really one sided.. the shaman is doing 60% of the damage. (I am accustomed to not winning a dps race at this point as I lack the gear for it, but this guy was unreal). In looking at him on armory, I can only assume it was his haste that did it for him. He has over 25% crit (elemental shaman) 1800 +spellpower, and 250 haste. All those together mean a beating for the mobs. ANYWAY.. Atikam is geared as always 100 steps below everyone (I have no idea where his questing gear goes.. he always is sitting at the level cap with weird gear on that doesn't help him), so he rolls on everything that he can use.. even if its not great. He ended up with some +spellpower gear that somehow was an improvement on his gear (I told you.. worst gear ever). and a spear with a crapload of stamina and a little strength. The shaman decided to be an ass and fuss about it (why? nobody else could even use it.. but whatever).. fussed about ati getting +strength, and +spellpower on his last 2 rolls. I can't account for atikam's dps, not even a little. I don't watch him, I watch ME.

My rotation was tight, I had reasonable dot uptime.. very little missed refreshes, and I was getting decent luck with everything. I wasn't at my top DPS, but its tough to do that for me as I seem to be much better at long fights and that is usually just bosses. So I just kinda limp along as well as I can, and then the bad thing happened.

Xevozz(spelling?)
He's the reason some people won't run Heroic VH. If you know the fight, he has to be moved so the orbs he spawns don't get to him or he gets massive damage buffs against your tank. Well our tank didn't know that. So we all died in try #1. Attempt 2, I screw up and the boss gets ahead of me so the orbs are coming TO me. I have to jump off the balcony to run around and get in front of the boss. (all this time missing damage, I know.. I hated that). I get there and go balls out on the guy and he dies in the beginning of his second lap on the balcony. Good... Great... awesome. Now for some unknown reason.. the stupid shaman is getting huffy about our damage output and the healer is crying too. My thought is.. I've run this 1 other time when I was the #2 dps with about 25% of total damage (tank was #1), and it was a walk. Why are you crying cuz you are WAY over the top in damage output? And why is the healer crying? Well in subsequent pulls the healer lets me die (mob of 3 and I somehow got attention). I look at that second, and see.. the tank is at full health. Why did I not get a heal? He has full mana almost... and I'm dead. I understand if you have a choice..dps or tank, dps dies.. but there was no choice. Ok so I was pissy but not too bad.. I released since I was getting no attention and the runback is super short. I get to almost the door and he gets pissy..

"Ok.. if you die.. let me rez you" - douchebag priest
"kk" - mcgoo with gritted teeth

So I am back into the fight before its even OVER. and the shaman dies.. and he rez's the guy or the guy self rez's. and is back.. In the SAME fight the shaman dies again. I am reasonably sure he was hating on my tank. Well I know this chicky as well as I can know someone that I've never seen and only rocked around with online on more than 40 occasions. She was rusty, sure.. she was boomkin for a while. but she didn't suck. The problem was he was putting out way too much threat and not holding off so the tank could get solid aggro. Period. Well he died like another 2 times and then got huffy and bailed when the dragon lady at the end of VH came out. Then our healer bolted. so now I have a tank and 2 dps against a heroic boss. So we all died.

Not before douchebag Shaman says...

"Guys the dps was terrible, you really need to pick it up a notch"
*recount report showing him doing a buttload of damage*
-

Had to put his 2 cents in about dps. Yes ati was way way low, but if you can raid Naxx you don't do heroics anymore ya dork. I know I wouldn't. Anyway apparently he's way too good to mess with me and my peoples again so forget him. Now I feel really crappy about subjecting my buddy the uber experienced raiding tank to a bad group. I feel really really bad. She took it to mean she was sucking, which I do not believe was the case. I feel like one of our dps (points to douchebag) was crazy, and our healer was retarded. Well that and the tank didn't know the fight against Xevozz. But c'mon from the comments on wowhead and such, wiping on Xevozz is almost commonplace to some folks.. We only wiped 1x. That's not bad for a group that "needed to pick it up a notch". I didn't /ignore the two folks I did add them as friends as I feel that grouping with douchebag would be great if we were in a raid so I could hear 20 people yell at him for causing a wipe.. The healer.. I think has ADD and was probably doing his taxes at the same time. Solid mana-pool, and good heals. Just not on me. He may have been overworked keeping the shaman alive since he was being a douche.

So tanky-lady.. I'm sorry we had such a butt-weed group since you did me a favor in tanking..

ps- douchebag Shaman.. (had to say it 1 more time)

fail... folowed by epic fail

Last night I was all ready to rock out in the vaults of arch.. vaults of.. whatever the vaults place in wintergrasp.

Anyway... so I get logged on and manage to find a group (woot for 25 man!!) and we run it.. cake. Easily done sir, easily.

Fail 1: I got bupkis as far as drops.. I was hopeful (naively so) that I'd get something.. ANYTHING. but alas not meant to be.

So I'm down due to the lack of epic goodness, therefore I throw it up to go into the 10 man flavor. I notice that there's 2 groups of 24 in the LFG channel for the 10 man vault (yes you did read that right.. I don't get it either). Not promising, I know.. So anyway i decide to go LFG for Violet Hold (VH) and see if I can get in a heroic for that. There is precisely 2 people LFG for heroic VH. Myself and a REALLY poorly geared dps warrior. So my thought is I'm going to be stuck and not get a chance to do anything more tonight.. oh well chit chat is fine.. maybe I'll queue up for some PvP **(see below). Before I can I get a note from a nice fella wanting to know about my gear (my first gearcheck EVER.. woot!). I throw my stats at him, crit/hp/spellpower/hit. I get an invite fast. WOOT. So now I'm summoning folks into the wintergrasp area just in front of the 10 man vault portal. YEAH!! I get DC'd. DOH!!! I quickly reconnect as fast as I can. I get logged in and thankfully nobody noticed (I got raid buffed while I was not seeing anything).. Poof again DC'd.

Epic Fail: I try to log on again and see the bad news.. my modem is flashing red lights (red=bad, mmkay). So I unplug the modem, and wait 10 seconds for a reset. BOOM back to the modem. Ok now its doign its thing booting back up.. I'm getting antsy as my group was clearing trash to the mob (if you don't know there's like 4 guys there and thats it.. 4 guys and a boss, so its hardly like clearing naxx). I get a connection eventually (took another 2 minutes), and log in.. WOOT!! and then.... I notice my group stomped right on through to the boss and booted me from the raid. I expected this, and regretted this. Now there's nobody in LFG for the 10 man vault.. None.. nobody in LFG for VH or anything I need. So I get all pissy and log off of mcgoo and switch to my DK.

So Grim is at the point where he needs to do the cooking quest in Tanaris, and do the fishing quest to further both skills. So I go to tanaris.. no quest.. read online that i need to go to ironforge and see a trainer that gives me the quest to go to dirge in tanaris. So.... I go to ironforge, I go to the trainer.. no quest. No nothing. So everything was a wash.. everything was terrible.. and I got nothing.. I got no new gear.. no new badges from the 10 man.. no quest to work on in cooking.. and flew all over azeroth to get there. So, in a huff.. I log off and curse loudly at the PC.

I'll try tomorrow night to get something done.. I'd try tonight but there's just no way unless the horrible storms and wind (yes wind.. some friggin crazy wind in this area). My current PC is a joke, but I can't get it blown up from a surge... sigh.. this may prove to be a terrible night weather wise, I still have a friggin branch on my roof (kinda hanging on/around some power lines) so I'm hoping that THAT turns out to be a headache for the power company and not me. Well... I'll find out soon enough..

Mcgoo in the hiz-ouse

Mcgoo.. what can I say.. He's the best toon I've got. I can play him better than any of my other toons and I typically can perform higher on all accounts when I am playing him. I am crafty with him and use all his tricks to devastate opponents.

Needless to say Mcgoo is boring.

I had stopped playing mcgoo actively so that I could get dwarf moving up towards the cap, but that stopped when i saw that my good ole buddy Yara was sporting more epics than I could shake a stick at. do what?!? So I look into it. Ole yara stopped his PvP ways (almost) and his focussing on doing heroics and such. With the same intensity he had with PvP. Instead of logging on and doing 4-5 bg's in a night, now he's doing 4-5 heroics in a night. So his gear is stellar (compared to mine). So I get whiney.. I mean inquisitive and ask him about where I should be (since he's told me about being booted from groups for lackluster dps and gear).. he tells me "you're better off than I was when I started".

DING

I was apparently laboring under the idea that I was somehow inferiorly geared for these things and I needed to (as in BC) make my crafted set (which I may NEVER get done cuz ZOMG forstweave, but I digress) to be able to step up into things. His insight opens many doors for me. So I log on to Mcgoo last night and start trolling around looking for the "need dps for (random heroic) PST" tells in LFG. Instead I remember that some of yara's better gear has PVP stats (do what?) and he said it was a drop (drop? PvP epics? do what?). Now behold my new favorite place

Wintergrasp- vault of archavon.
Ok this little place is a RAID like encounter with almost no work/prep involved. Basically there is 4 guys in side.. Then a raid boss. Same for 10/25 man. Its a "beat the clock" kinda thing, so you have 5 mins from start of the boss to kill him before he "enrages" and stomps you into the ground. SWEET!!! Lets check what I need to be in there (woot, wowwiki!!). I am CLOSE to the minimum req's so I decide I'll throw my hat in the ring. boom.. 10 man. We get there and I come in 5th in DPS.. So not stellar, but really.. if they are geared like yara I will never outperform them in my rags I wear. And loe and behold.. look what drops..Deadly Gladiator's Felweave Handguards. yes.. yes indeed sirs/madams. So I freak out with excitement (my first WOTLK epic.. woot).. take it and graciously thank everyone (I won the roll out of "ew he has only THAT to wear?" excitement from the group). Raidleader says.. "we're goign to try a 25 man if anyone wants to stick around!!".. Sure. Why not? So we get in there** and do our thing again and the priest apparently loves life as everything that dropped was awesome and for PRIEST only (only 1 in raid). So I run off to dalaran to get my enchant and then portal to IF to get my gem for it.. I spent more gold than I will admit to on the gem, and still owe a buddy some dust for the enchant but needless to say ole mcgoo now isn't as scrubby as before.. with a few more pieces of gear here/there he might be up to his old level of bad-ass-ery. Suddenly I am excited to play mcgoo again. So tonight barring good TV I'll be pounding away at some heroics to try to get some badges (sadly it takes a bigillion to get anything). Perhaps a few drops will make things a bit better for me, who knows.

What I do know is that ole Mcgoo is on the road again and without reason to stop..

**sidenote: If you are in a group with multiple locks, and someone is summoning, let the other lock know who you are summoning so he's not wasting time. I had an issue with a fellow lock summoning inside the instance without letting me know and so I'm standing there with 2 people trying to summon folks that are either in the process of being summoned or are waiting to accept HIS summoning. Manners are not big online, but seriously.. I wasted time and could've been helping clear trash.. The "LOL we're summoning the last 3 at the boss now" is not a good way to let a guy know who's been saying "I need 1 more for summoning" in raidchat that he's been screwing his time up..sigh.. I digress.

State of the dwarf...

From my /yawn.. /stretch posting.. I am updating my status on my active toons.

Dwarfenstuff.

He is a bad mama-jamma. I really feel that he is more interesting to level than Mcgoo was. I was having no trouble at all as a BM spec guy, so I heard rumblings of "SV spec is WAY OP they should nerf it.." which in translated to my ears is "you should be SV.. cuz it is teh awesome". So now I'm a survival spec hunter. and here is my favorite 3 words..

EXPLOSIVE SHOT CRIT!!

It shows up in my text when I get one. I don't know what a mage hits for in northrend but I know that mcgoo never hit that hard on crits at this level. I can on an easy day hit a single mob for 5k crit on explosive shot. Its happened several times and I usually almost die cuz its the niftiest thing in the world for a guy who has been a SLOW drain on mob's HP to suddenly see things disappear... like over 50% of their life. There are problems with survival though..

Aggro. I can't seem to get people to leave me alone when I hit them for 5k. Any ideas? LMAO. I continue to toy with the idea of getting a "tank" pet instead of my trusty wasp "mosquito". However, this hasn't really been something that I've PUSHED for. I figure I'll get one eventually just to try it out and ditch my cat pet (sniff.. bye bye king B from STV). I am intending on getting a gorrilla or a worm. I have heard nothing about worms as tank pets but the fact that they reduce armor means they provide me with some of the utility my wasp already does only with less damage and more threat(which I would gladly allow him to have). No ETA on this but as I am in dragonblight now and have rode past the jormungar out there, I figure it may be soon.

Money. I have found that I am a bit of a priss-pot when it comes to some things. Like ammo. I only use mammoth cutters. Only. When I get below 1k and no backstorage.. I start looking for someone to make me some. I should probably check the AH as it is a wonderous place for goodies like that and engineers are used to not getting any gold for their time (sorry guys, I know it sucks), but I never do. It takes a reasonable amount of mats to get a bullet machine or whatever its called that makes 2k bullets. I don't think its unreasonable to say that this means I am forking out a LOT of gold. I dislike repairing gear because I do not like to loose money. I like to MAKE money. I typically get very cranky when I have a huge repair bill and have no junk in my inventory to sell off to cover this loss.. I usually do not repair (regardless of questing status) until my bags are full of crap to sell off. So yes, occassionally I am fighting 2 elites at a time in mostly red gear cuz I can't get my bags full to go repair. Is it smart? no. It's me though.. go figure.

Mcgoo is coming next... stay tuned!

\yawn-\stretch

Well its been a lifetime since I posted, and there is a lot I COULD say, and a little that I WILL say.

Lets start with status..

Mcgoo - lvl 80 (woot)
Dwarf - lvl 73 (semi woot..)
Grimrpr (my DK) - woot.. (So much fun to play his level never matters to me)

Ok lets start from the bottom shall we?

Grim.. Grim levels like a man possessed with undead powe... hm. Ok so he is a man possessed with undead power. Leveling him is a JOY. It is more of a challenge to level him (as he is my only Melee only class) than anyone else. Lately the challenge is what makes him so attractive to play, but I digress.

My most recent leveling attempts with Grim had nothing to do with XP and more to do with professions. I have gotten my first aid almost topped out (thanks to mcgoo for having a storage vault of netherweave.. woot!), and I have my skinning doing fine. Skinning really is the easiest profession, you just kill stuff and skin it. There is no "hard" part to it. This is good as THAT profession is Grim's money maker. His other profession is Inscription. Stop gasping at a guy without a mammoth vault full of gold leveling inscription! Its possible! Not really QUICKLY.. but it is possible. I have gotten it up a good deal and find that I am now looking at inscription as a serioius money maker in his arsenal. On my realm (medivh, duh) some of the silliest glyphs seem to be in short supply. I don't know if it is due to inscription folks not caring and not needing money, or if it is just my dumb luck. I had a glyph for something or other for pallies.. Pallies.. I plugged into my auctioneer addon to see what it goes for.. 20-30g.. each. Good eh? Great.. So I search to see what the market looks like.. 1 on there priced for 50g. Are you seeing why I made a lot of money last week yet? True I burned through most of my mats and all my stock of inscriptions to make it (initially I would only make one if it gave me a skill point). I priced mine at 35g and watched the gold just FALL in. I'd love to say I sold 500 of those but it was more like 10.. and keeping in mind the mats that I had used to purchase the herbs to mill.. I didn't end up with the dumptruck load of gold I wanted, but it certainly made leveling easier for a time, and made it NOT a money sink for me at this point also.

So that was working for me fine.. what else? Oh I decided my cooking skill was an abomination and I needed it maxed out for outlands so I could cook the boar meat and various other things that drop for me there. What was my cooking level? 1. Stop laughing. Seriously... stop. So I looked at my notes for Powerleveling cooking as I had in the past on mcgoo. The PROBLEM is mcgoo could dot up a group of animals with corruption and run around while they died around him and just autoloot and cook when my bags got full. Grim cannot AOE farm with this level of ease. So... I decided fishing would be good. I grabbed my rod/reel and went to a lake in goldshire and fished up my level until I was almost full in my bags.. ran to get some recipes (thanks to old buddy ati for hooking me up with some I couldn't find).. and then cooked. If you check Grim you'll see his cooking/fishing are right on pace with where they would be if I was lvl 30. So that puts me about halfway to where I want to be. I figure I'll probably not see a reason to fish after I get into outland territory as I kill SO MANY things that drop meat that cooking mats are so much easier to get in just regular activity. For now though, fishing is paying huge dividends and I'm relatively happy with it. I have considered pushing it all the way up to max.. but it just seems silly to do that as all the stuff that I would cook (in keeping with spellpower since mcgoo is my main consumer of meats) are all MEAT and not FISH. Sure there are neat things that happen there, sure. As time is my major hinderence in WoW though, and as time is the ONLY factor in fishing I don't see this being very effective. I mean unless I have all my guys where I want them in levels and gear.

sheesh this rambled on quite a bit.. stay tuned for dwarf/mcgoo's story..