Thursday, July 31, 2008

The Not so Artful Dodger

The Not So Artful Dodger


My friend has decided to start enjoying the blogosphere even though he feels dirty about the word. I have been friends with him so long we managed to date the same girl. No, it is not my now wife or his lol. I really need to write that fiasco down sometime.

Back before WoW we used to get together for weekend games of HALO at a buddies house. Those were just truly awesome times and even though I am ecstatic about my life now I will always look back on those times with just a little bit of longing for great days gone by.

The Dodger started WoW life as a Pally. In fact, I am fairly certain that he was chosen as the token pally like Ironbelly was since they were just a tad late in picking WoW up and we still had a D&D mindset of got to have a balanced party. Warriors back then were hugely jealous of the Pally SoC damage output when we couldn’t get enough Rage to get a Battle Shout up at times and here this yahoo class can DPS and Heal and wear plate. Arghh!!

The Dodger got tired of Pally life and rolled a Human Rogue that he leveled with blazing speed until he got “hitched.” Hey, its his word. Now Dodger’s wife, much like my own, is truly an awesome lady and I completely understand the leaving the WoW crack pipe aside. I would have done the same thing had my wife not started playing with me. I have some of the best stories about Dodger playing his Paladin. You have to understand though; we were all new to the game and not students of everything gaming like Noobed over there. For the longest time, I wouldn’t even read the instruction manual because I thought I would learn enough just playing the game. Errr ya… I am still working on that.

I leave you to one of our most laughed about tales. I have to mention here that Dodger had been out of the raiding game for about 2-3 months and was just filling in as help for us when this happened.

Fankriss in AQ40, I think I have the right name there. He was the scorpion type with add spawn points? Someone please correct me if I am wrong. Anyways, we are setting up for Fankriss and we are paired off into spawn point groups. Dodger is in my group as my main healer. I really don’t have anything to worry about as Dodger gives leet heals and my gear is very nice for an OT at the time. I had on all Wrath except the chest plate (You go straight to hell Nefarion!) which never dropped for me. So the raid leader is on vent waiting to call everyone over to the tail to begin DPS.

MT engages, adds spawn and I start grouping them up. Then over vent you hear, “Everyone to the tail!” followed shortly by “Why is Kelmar dead?!” then "Dodger!! Why are you at the tail!?!!" It seems Dodger thought he was supposed to go to the tail and was wondering why I didn’t pull back for heals LOL. Dear god we still laugh about it.

Wednesday, July 30, 2008

The Wife Part Deux

My wife hit level 70 on her hunter a while ago (Yay!!) and she started the farming of various things. One of her farming places was the big crystal in Nagrand for Primal Shadows. Now the problem for new 70s on a PvP server is all of them farm spots are warzones on occasion and if not a warzone then probably a gankzone. Furthermore, the problem with Nagrand and the Primal Shadows is that raiding guilds need the Primals for Black Temple or some such.

We all know how cowardly alliance is by now do we not? kk just checking.

So you have a 70 belf hunter not even in rep gear (side note: my wife did not like Terrorkar and skipped the later half of the quest to go to her favorite zone which is Nagrand.) Now, given this delicious opportunity to prove your Black Temple epics are much better than my wife’s greens/blues I can see how she is irresistible for the ganking. However, did you look up at all?

So there is a t6 hunter that stops by my wife and /waves her and 2secs later is casting aimed shot at her… 4secs after that happens he gets hit with a starfire for 4k+ dmg and he gets dead shortly there after. The hunter’s warlock buddy who was spectating the ganking is also caught unawares but my wife’s hunter still dies from dots I think followed shortly by the Lock. What the?! Rogue too?!! Sigh… run run … run some more… outta combat /swift flight form and gone.

Head on back after healing up and the hunter has rezzed and is eating until he is placed back into the spirit world by me. The lock is up on a bird and I dot her while she flies up out of range. At this point my wife and I are still talking and while the hunter rezzes and the warlock is on me I tell her to rez and get in the fight.

“I can’t I didn’t run back to my body.”

(Sorry Ratshag gotta steal again)

Fuhgginmotherfuhgginfuhgall!!!

“I’m sorry, what’s that you say?”

“Don’t yell at me!”

Kill hunter… run from lock… /swift flight form

Drop back down and use the BR on the wife who may or may not have been back by that time because my memory is hazey on the incident now. We both have a good laugh and kill the duo again.

Next day or so…

My wife comes in with her ample bosom (Never thought I would be able to write that on this blog… BigRedKitty should be happy) and proudly shows her shirt that now says Ally Bait with the Horde symbol on the back. I’ll try and get her to post a pic of it. It stills cracks me up.

Tuesday, July 29, 2008

The wife

I don’t really write about my wife very often because a) she reads the blog b) I can put a foot in my mouth without ever realizing it is there. That being said I will try and given you some of her funny exploits.

I played WoW when I was single. When I started seeing my new girlfriend, now wife, I quit playing for a good couple of months. At the time I began playing again, I had had to take an overnight job to keep money coming in so she was left chilling at my place overnight. She would watch me play here and there while watching TV. One night as I am trying to level fishing she takes over and fishes a little. I leave for work at 10pm and leave her there fishing.

I call her about midnight to talk and ask her what’s going on. “Playing.” She says. “You’re still fishing?” I ask. “Nope, playing.” She says. “Playing what?! The priest I made to show you the NELF dance?”

“Yup”

Call her back at 2am to let her know I will be home for my lunch period if she is still awake. She says she is because she is still playing. So I get home at 3am and it is hot in the house which confuses me and I see this pizza that is slowly sliding off the stove because it has thawed out. I call out and she is back in the bedroom and I ask about the pizza.

“Oh noes!! I forgot!!!”

I go back to work. I don’t call her anymore because I think she will have passed out by the time I get home. I get home at 6:55 because we left early. I would normally get home at 7:15ish. I walk in to all the lights on and hear her shriek something to the tune of “Iwassupposedtohavefifteenmoreminutes!!”

Yup, she was still playing. We shared an account for a while after that. Eventually, we got 2 computers, 2 accounts and 2 WoW habits. She now plays on Horde side with me as a Belf Hunter. She likes the hunter way better than the priest.

Tomorrow, I will explain how she came to make her own shirt with the phrase “Ally Bait” written across the chest.

Monday, July 28, 2008

The weekend

Not too much going on for the WoW side. I got Aerthson’s season 2 staff and Herk his guardian pendant. I’ll need to get some arena in tonight to get points for Herk and my wife’s hunter. The pally that was really good decided to be really flakey. Noobed tells me he has a partner for this weekend but that must have fell through because he was also a no show.

Arena 5s

This was really an abysmal effort this week. No one focused fired my target. All 5 of us went different directions most of the time. Also, we played some very well put together and disciplined teams. The last match we lost, I was in awe of the teamwork for LOS they used. I’d explain it but it won’t do it justice to actually see them do it. They roughest teams we faced were:

Druid, Druid, Priest, Pally, Rogue
Priest, Warrior, Warrior, Lock, Pally


The above kept 2 members of our team permanently cycloned. The second team make up had 4 fear bombs and they knew… they used it masterfully. We did beat the Druid/Druid team once. We played them a total of 3 times though. The Fear Bombs away team we encountered 3 times as well with no wins against them.

Usually, I leave the Melviin bits up to Noobed over there but the “we shouldn’t play on Sat” irked me. It doesn’t matter when we play, it matters HOW we play Melvin and your squishy butt running into the other 5s team in hopes of getting a chain lightning off was quite silly. Quit dying!! Not once did I see you ghostwolf and haul ass. Quit waiting for heals >.<

He wasn’t only one playing not up to spec as we all had our issues. It was especially painful after having a good week before. Sigh

I played my pally a bit over the weekend. I enjoy tanking with him and the DPS is fine by me thanks to the guides I read on how to DPS as a pally.

Wednesday, July 23, 2008

When is it time to take a break?

No, I am not taking a break as I don’t need ont at the moment. However, I have certainly been in the spot. I was reading my blogroll when I ran across MarriedIRL’s sad post about raiding and burnout. I used to raid in a guild on Malygos named Arcanum (Shout out). They are doing quite well in the progression and I believe they are the number one progression guild on that server now.

I left them to go play with my RL friend on another server. This is where I met (SHOUT OUT) Doomilias, BigRedkitty, Ozma, Triggy iggy iggy, Wisp, Brigin and many more of the now bloggin community. After some time there, the guild kind of crumpled due to various issues. I in my less than infinite, quite a bit less, wisdom decided to help out and start my own guild to begin leading the raids I had already had on farm status such as MC, BWL and AQ20/40.

I will not go into the guild leadership stuff. I don’t think I was particularly good at it so I will gloss over it.

I lead the guid into the Burning Crusade and leveled with everyone who decided to do the free server move with us. I leveled really hard and hit 70 in about month. I say really hard because it was for me at the time being a brad spanking new father. I had a couple of people hit 70 in the guild really quick (Hunters!! Imagine that >.<) and I think at one time we tried to do Shattered Halls with Warrior, 3 hunters and a shadow priest. Ya… that didn’t work out well but was fun none the less.

Then, the dark cloud began to form. This dark cloud really became ONE person. I am sure she knows who she is. /w after /w after /w about how no one liked her, how she was lonely (He husband was in the guild for god’s sake!!) how she wanted more responsibility, how no one wanted to play with her. It started to really stress me. I couldn’t log on without 2 hours of playing counselor. My wife started getting angry that I stressed over playing the game due to this person who was not by any means my wife.

I went through this for about 2 weeks when I realized I was playing the game from 6pm to 1am with at least 2-3 hours of BS thrown in. It got too much. I saw my son do something that I had never seen before. When I commented on it, my wife informed me that he had been doing it for quite a while now. I knew right then it was time to play less… way less. I posted on our guild site that I was taking some time off and that it would probably be extended. I left the guild in very capable hands and he really did not want the job but understood my reasons (Thanks BRK).

After about 4 months of great family time and many a lbs dropped later, I began wanting to play again without having the responsibility to play. I created a new warrior on a PvP server that I had some toons on and played very casually and the game is just as much fun. I have done Kara once, did Mags and Gruuls and have seen the inside of some cool places. Do I miss raiding? I sure do. I like the epic fights and all that goes into getting to them, but it is not something I can do right now.

If you need a break… take a break. If the game isn’t fun anymore… play something else.

Monday, July 21, 2008

Working on it post instead of Dark Knight review

I am writing the below post because a good many of my friends did not go see The Dark Knight and have threatened me with giving anything away. However, I can say that the movie lived up to the hype and to the promise which is hard to do for both things. 10/10 for me on the first veiwing.

So like everyone else in the world of warcraft I will want to play a Deathknight. I will not be leveling another toon until after I get Herk and Aerthson up to 80 and the other toon will be the Deathknight if I have the time. That being said, with the time I have left before WOTLK hits I need to set myself some goals I tell ya. What can I get Herk and Aerthson to do before Wrath hits? I have been working on several things.


Herk

375 BS
375 Mining
275 Cooking
0 Fishing
375 First Aid

I crafted my happy little Blazefury this past week for my tanking sword which should last a few level into WOTLK. I do need to get it enchanted with Executioner tho. Herk also needs badges so in between week I will be hitting the prot spec for some Heroics and a Kara or two. Herk needs to hit Exalted with Scryer too. Need to get his Guardian gear.

Aerthson

375 LW
375 Skinning
375 Cooking
340 Fishing (You only need this on one toon as far as I know.)
30 First Aid (Need to work on this)

Aerthson needs his s2 Staff for boomkin happiness and he should be good on DPS side for PvP. I have no plans of raiding with him as Boomkin or Resto although I may go get him some badges for happy loots. Also, when my wife starts her Netherwing grind I will help her on Aerthson for giggles only because Swift Flight Form >>> Netherdrake.

Not sure what else I can be working on at the moment. Will have to think up more stuff to do…

Tuesday, July 15, 2008

Pally through Dark Clouds?

Well then!! First off, we have a rocking Pally for 3s!!! But I have to hit you with the Melvin team first.

So last night was arena night for pretty much everyone I know on the game. We all let it drag out until Monday and had to get our games in. I really do not care to do arena on Monday nights. It seems rushed. If we happened to be doing very well with the team there isn’t really anytime to run the rating up on Monday night.

So first up we have a Melvin team. Now, Noobed told me no more Melvin. Then he goes and sets up a 5s team. We had a SL/SL Lock, Elemental Shaman, Discipline Priest, Boomkin (me) and Frost Mage (Noobed). This should really be a sick team. We have Focus fire, Mana Drains, CC. However, it seems that we couldn’t get our teamwork quite down. As always, shenanigans were afoot. Noobed told them no alts and we were going to go for ratings this week and to take it seriously. The problems were pretty much the same. We went 5 and 5. We should be doing much better than that. Aerthson did get caught by a rogue once when I was creeping out in cat form. I was pretty much done after he stunlocked me. This was ridiculous! I have a priest, a lock and a mage. For god’s sake Heal, Fear, Sheep… can I get some D please? Kk Thanks!

It was my wife’s first time in arena!! It was just points run as she still has greens and what not. It was pretty brutal. We ran 3s with Noobed’s Shammy and Herk and my wife’s Hunter. After game 5, the pally Noobed had been talking up came online for some points.

I really have nothing else to say but Holy $h!t! The first match he calls out lead target and we go to work. We win and take a look and that Pally out DPS’d Herk by 10k. WTF?! Seriously, I have never seen a pally play this well. The next 4 matches were wins as well. I was particular proud that I no longer had to worry about my other teammates. The last match was 2 hunters and a lock. I was able to dispatch (with extreme prejudice) the lock without ever feeling the need to pan around cuz my teammates could handle their own. I ran and jumped up and off the bridge to kill the hunter that was following Noobed and we all took down the last hunter.

I am so stoked for next arena. The other great thing is that the guy has 3 warriors like I do and we can talk shop. He has 5 70s and is on all day everyday tho. That worries me lol.

Anyways, Noobed really did find some gold in that pally.

/salute

Monday, July 7, 2008

These are the days

So there I am in Netherwing Fields doing the dailies so I can finally have a dragon. Yes, it’s my first one. I’ll let everyone know when I got her with a picture. Anyways, I am mining nethercite ore when Vishra (Lightninghoof) stops by and waves at me. Now Vishra is a gnome rogue see… and I hate gnomes, hence, she got no wave in reply. I mount and move on to the next ore.

Here’s where it gets interesting. For anyone who as farmed netherwing rep, I am sure you know the landing point for the transports guarded by two hulking elites. There is an ore spawn point there which is close to the guards but you don’t aggro them if you land on the backside of the ore. Now with adamantite going for 28g a stack on my server… I BRAKE for adamantite may as well be plastered on my tabard.

Hrmm, that gnome rogue Vishra followed me over here and is waving again. That gnome can’t possibly be that stupid… what am I thinking!! It’s a gnome!! Sure enough, stabbity stabbity. Trinket out and turn around… with all that nice built up second wind rage and hit that gnome so hard the gnomes in Ironforge wince. I’m not kidding… the first crit was for over 2k. I added the nifty little /goodbye to my Execute so you can imagine what he saw spammed. Gnome on my hoof tho!! Sigh… what the?

Dorf hunter from same guild smacking me in the back I realize. Turn and Intercept his dorf but and proceed to layeth it down again. The Dwarf must really have been undergeared cuz I only had to pot in order for him not to kill me when I was already at half from that silly gnome. /Goodbye Dorf.

Stun

What now?! Pally from the same guild >.< The pally is gonna be death of me. That really stings. Sigh… lets go get my licks in at least! Why is he running from me?! Is he undergeared too? Does he see those two elites he is back into? I back off and let him go and bam. Dead Pally storage. I mount up and ride off chuckling so hard to myself I feel the need to tell everyone what happened.

Moments like this make all the crap gankings at Isle o Cash worth it.

Wednesday, July 2, 2008

Herk's targets

Druid/Mage/Warrior

This is pretty straight forward for Herk. Charge the mage and make him Iceblock. BOF from pally would help here as 20 sec would pass before it would even be needed again. After the Iceblock, I hit the Druid and wait on the 70 Rage at which time Tazzy and I rock the Resto Druid. Must make sure to stun or hamstring druid right before burst. Warrior should be beating on Noobed.

Druid/Rogue/Warlock

Tag the Lock’s pet on charge and kill it. Possible fear bomb if the others are close to me. Now then if the pets dead the lock can be killed easier but we should wait until I hit the 70rage mark before Burst because the druids have a harder time healing through Burst. Alternately, I kill the lock pet and switch to Druid and burst him. The problem with doing this is relying on stun for that god awful fearing that will happen to Tazzy in the interim. Lock should really be first imo as Tazzy is rendered useless from Deathcoil and fears. No extra DPS, no extra heals = no win.

Druid/Rogue/Warrior

Argh!! This one Noobed is right on. We should be owning this team. Druid goes down first thanks to burst. I will have to wait for the burst because more likely than not Tazzy will be blinded while Noobed is getting beat on by the Rogue/Warrior combo. Run little wolf run. Most likely we will kill the other’s healer and it will be 2v2 with some heals coming from Tazzy at which time I think killing the Rogue makes more sense.

Druid/Lock/Warrior

Fear bombs!! Gotta remember to stay in Zerk most of the time. Also, Lock pet first, then Lock>Druid>Warrior. I don’t like the fact that lock puts Tazzy out of the game so much so he gotta go. Remember to wait for 70 rage mark and then call out burst. When Burst is called out should be a Q for Noobed to try and Earthshock the druid. After the lock is the druid and then warrior.

Hunter/Mage/Priest

Yikes!! Erm so this is a drain team that will most likely focus on Noobed when they see he is the healer. Mage has to iceblock so he is first up on the charge list. Then I get kinda sketchy… Hunter then Priest? Priest then Hunter? Wouldn’t it depend on what the priest was? Are the typically shadow for this setup? If so, I think kick the hunter’s ass and make the not so talented Priest try his hand at healing.

Mage/Priest/Rogue

Mage has to Iceblock then am on the priest. Rogue will be kited by Noobed.

Paladin/Shaman/Rogue

Shaman gotta die. For this to happen means the Pally is ret or stunned and burst goes off on shaman. Ignore rogue. If Pally is the healer, I will try and fear bomb close to the Shaman and wait on the 70rage for Burst.

That’s it for now. Feel free to throw me any comments.

Burn list

Warriors – PvP warriors will most likely be Arms. If they are not, they are not much of a concern. In any event, Herk should not beat on them when there is a better target. Better read more easily killed.

Druid – This one has to have subsets

Restoration – I am in their face, no slack given.

Balance – In their face if not in Moonkin form. With Moonkin going I need to skip because of the damage mitigation.

Feral – If they are in cat I can wack on them but again there are better targets as they can switch to Bear form with mondo AC.

Mages – This one needs a subset

Frost – In his face, he’s gotta burn that Iceblock.

Fire – In his face, he’s gotta burn that Iceblock and will mostly be meat anyways.

Arcane – Only fought one, wasn’t impressed but he’s still gotta burn that Iceblock too.

Warlocks – Kill the pet, kill the lock.

Shaman – Kill the shaman and kill him first. They seem to be easily killed by melee whether they resto or not. However, the do have a bit higher AC so they may not be first all of the time. Especially if I have Tazzy backing me up.

Paladin – Really one of the last I should be wacking on. High AC, bubbles, can heal themselves full when they bubble. I should make them waste the healing on the mob I am hitting that had the Mortal Strike debuff on it.

Priest – Sharpen points on Mace. Hit them and hit them hard. Yes, the can bubble but only for so long. They all need to die and interrupted and what not.


Rogue – I can eat Rogues. It’s harder if they are getting heals so I should have taken out the healer first. They aren’t going to be focusing on Herk because of his high AC but the may try and lock him up.

Next up will be the most common team make ups and my target for first kill on those teams.

To make my point

It's like this internet peoples. Noobed can not give constructive criticism. He gives FLAT criticism and makes you feel like a moron when doing it. See below the below comment from Noobed.

"He goes druid. And gets mowed down in arena. And I get SUPER PISSED. Cuz every goddamn dps in the game has been in a battleground and run into the near unkillable resto druid. And here I am thinking... I know for damn sure you've seen a resto druid played properly first hand... and you didn't learn shit from it. Even asa boomkin, you can pick up stuff"

This is typical Noobed when he decides to talk about what went wrong with Arena. Anyone else see the Gordon Ramsey reference?

He even baits me to quit the team and then covers his tracks by telling me I'm a quitter. Renoobed we gonna go through this once more... I'm your friend. What I am not is a sycophant, snivler, shut up and take it or even your GODDAMN idea of the perfect player or thinker. What I don't do is turn into an asshole over a GODDAMN game. This is exactly what happens to you when I make a mistake or don't pick up as fast as you think I should.

You don't like playing with me... don't play with me. But this comes to an end. If you can not /w me with doing silly crap like /wrists everytime I play with you, then don't bother.