Level 75

2 more until I get the flying mount back. I did most of Dragonblight last night. The area was ok but not as cohesive as Howling Fjord in my opinion. I am looking forward to the Grizzly Hills tonight. There are a smattering of quest that I have not finished yet but with doing the instances like I am and questing; I find myself still facing level 70-71 mobs at 75. I know it is supposed to be the faster way to level but it’s kind of boring.

I soloed every group quest in Dragonblight except the bird by Ysera. Speaking of! I’ve Malygos and Ysera so far. I know Alexstraza (Spelling) is in the expansion as well. Have we heard anything from Norzdormu? Also, other than the 72 leet dragon at Netherwing, we have not heard any rumblings from Deathwing. Anyone think he will be in this expansion? I hope not but since we are seeing most of the aspects you never know.

Herk made his other 2 pieces of tank gear for 75 and got the tanking ring from Azjol’ Nerub for a grand total of 18.5k health unbuffed which is higher than I have ever been. I am still pouring over WoWwiki and Tankspot for the tanking gear upgrades. There are several warriors who are 80 on Lightninghoof and I have been checking their gear on armory. There is a chestpiece and 2 tanking rings that are good enough to tank Heroics in and I’ll be going for those. There are 3 pieces of craftable for Heroic level tanking. Boots, Helm and Shield I believe they are.

All in all, I am looking forward to tanking again and am very excited about putting the gear together to hit all the caps. I promise a post of how/where I got the gear and how gemmed it and how to reach the caps. I will be doing it this weekend since I am closing in on 80. Anyone know where the quest line to kill Varimathras starts off the top of their head? I’d like to do that this weekend. The Wrathgate line maybe?

Happy BoE Tanking items, Drak’tharon Keep and BBBs facepalm moment

So anyone who’s been reading the blog lately knows I went Prot for Wrath. Grinding, questing and instancing are super fun. The wife is happy she gets to hit on the mobs some if we are questing together too.

My gear for tanking was some nice blues and half t4 with some crafted pieces when I started Wrath. However, I usually tanked in my arena/pvp gear for Utgarde when I went from 70-71. I was really hoping for upgrades to my tanking gear from the instances. Guess what!? There isn’t much from 70-75 in the instances. Every time I search for something off of the boss loot in wowwiki, I’d be kinda bummed at how little tanking gear there was.

Then I started leveling blacksmithing. Lo and behold, all the tanking gear is there! Did I drop BS off the dwarf to do double gathering?! I did! /facepalm! It’s ok tho! The items are BoE even the blue ones! Also, the blue ones you can make are THE tanking gear. I noticed this last night when I did Draktharon Keep. They have a pair of tanking pants in there that are not anywhere near as happy as my crafted tanking pants. I think, going off memory here, that there is at least a 22 stamina difference.

Also, with the blacksmithing, I can add gem slots to my gloves and bracers when I got the BS over 400. Slapped on some +12 sta gems… WHAT?! I was not an endgame raider last xpac. I don’t have gobs of the 15 ones chilling in the bank. Anyways, Herk is up to just under 18k for HP unbuffed. Replaced my Blazefury with the new 1h Blue Crafted tanking sword. (You really will have to excuse the lack of names as I am at work and have NO access to the item names.)

Overall I am very pleased with how accessible the tanking gear is. Tanks are still in demand since every single Deathknight I know is DPS. About 2/3 of the warriors I group with are Fury. Druids are, swear to all that is, all Balance and Pallys are all Ret. I did see a holy pally the other day though!

Drak’ Tharon keep was fun! Man am I loving all the new instances. Here’s a little trick for all you pugging tanks out there. There is a caster that looks like Kel’ Thuzad that shields himself when aggroed. His name escapes me. Surprised? Well, he summons mobs and you have to kill 4 crystal handlers before his shield goes down. This is an endurance fight. The problem comes in when you notice most of the mobs summoned are not elite. Not elite gives your party the impression that they can solo like they are questing. Don’t do it!

They absolute best place to tank the adds, since they come from both sides, is in the corner to you front left when you walk into the room. Plant your party there with your healer and you stand out front. All adds have to go through you before getting to them no matter if they come from the left or the right. It seemed really simply to me the next time I saw the layout and after some “gentle” rearrangement of pissing order for the group, they went and stood where I asked. It worked like a dream! We destroyed that boss.

BBB’s facepalm moment

I am running Utgarde with the same priest for the 3rd time and he is looking for a blue dagger off the first guy. We have a shammy running with us who is healing. The priest is Shadow. Now the priest and I had a good thing going until the dagger dropped and the Shammy rolled and won it. The priest lost his mind. Screaming it wasn’t a Shammy dagger. Then he kept /w me. /w Herk That stupid shammy. He is in outland greens! I could have used that so much more. My gear is from Kara and ZA and that would have boosted me over 1200 spellpower. I hate that guy. Sidegrade for spirit Vs True Upgrade for the healer? /facepalm

State of the Warrior

Spec talk time.

Herk has about 120k to go before hitting 74. The first level was spent in Utgarde and Nexus. I managed to do a total of 4 quests completed by the time I hit 71 minus the 25 I had saved up. Tanking is and always has been FUN.

If you have a class capable of tanking and you have never tried it then you need to start gathering the tanking gear just to try it out. Controlling mobs and making sure no one in the party takes unnecessary damage is the most fun I’ve had in the game.

Doing a /charge death from above from LM in AB while taking no damage, stunning that healer and lighting up Bladestorm in the group that was headed for was a very close second.

At 72, Herk went Fury. He had some very nice blue axes that were the epitome of cool double strapped to his back. It looked SO awesome. He was doing DPS like no one’s business. I was well and above the 200k mark while the hunter was at the 70k mark. No, this is in general on mobs while questing and not a boss or instance so I am not trying to state it like any empirical fact here. After about 3 hours of leveling Fury, I was bored. Very very bored.

Maximizing DPS as Fury is a lackluster process. Start in Battle Charge>BT if you got left over Rage>Bersker Stance> BT>WW>HS depending on Rage and cooldowns. It’s not worth waiting for the Execute because you should use that Rage for a BT on the next mob. You can throw in some DeathWish and/or Berserker Rage fun to push the DPS while taking a bit extra damage. After 4-5 mobs though, you have to stop and eat, rinse and repeat.

Protection spec, on the other hand, is WoW fun and dynamic. First, you get to charge whenever the charge is off cooldown. This is so fun and useful I am surprised it hasn’t been nerfed. Also, your DPS rotation is much more dynamic as prot. Did Sword and Board proc? Is Revenge up? Can I chain stun that mob in oblivion? Multi mobs? Shockwave and TC time with a stance swap for an easy WW. Pull 8-9 mobs and switch to Arms while Retaliation goes off. There are just great options for maximizing DPS as Prot while staying alive with no downtime. Am I out DPSing a Fury? Hell no! But I am sure having a lot more fun than when I was Fury.

Then there is the fun pvp aspect with the mages. As a Tauren prot spec, mages hate me. If my CDs are up, you can forget casting anything other than blink and you best believe if my charge is not up than my macro for stance swapping/intercept is.

I’m going to cast Pyroblast!

You like that double reflect?

Why am I stunned?

Charged ya,

Why am I still stunned?

Aye, that’s my Warstomp.

Why can’t I cast? Gag Order, sorry.

Why am I stunned again?

Concussion blow.

WTF now?! You got hit by Shockwave.

Haha! Blink!! WTF! Why are you here?

Charge was up again.

Is that Warstomp coming?

No, but spell reflect is up. Did I mention that I haven’t even touched Last Stand or Shield Wall? That Rend takes a toll after a while since you can’t heal eh?

In conclusion, there is nothing more fun for me right now than Prot spec. There are tons of classes I cannot kill 1v1. There are NO classes that can take me out without have to fight me using cooldowns and getting some serious downtime after they manage to off me. Also, I can almost outlast 2v1 for help to arrive.

Did I mention that I get to answer the LF1M NEED TANK?

I’ll talk about those tomorrow. I will outline Nexus, the spider place.

*Edited to change MS to BT. /facepalm

LSU vs Wrath vs Twentyfifthnovember

My lovely wife bought me tickets to a LSU game for my birthday about a month ago now. She bought the tickets for Nov 15th and only realized later that she had scheduled it on Wrath weekend. I like to watch LSU games so it was not a concern. Saturday was cold. We planned on meeting Dodger at the game but either we got there late or he ditched us for some kind of “box” tickets. Something about alcohol was said. I think we were late though. Tailgating is an all day affair for the football crowd and we got there about 2 hours before the game started.

We found our seats and watched the first quarter of the game fairly startled by how bad LSU was playing. At the end of the first quarter, there was a small accident that ended up with my wife’s drinking soaking her pants. Yes, it was horrible and quite funny as it was a good 30 degrees outside. We left about at the end of the 2nd quarter. The walk back to the car (2miles) was cold. We headed home and started Wrath up again.

I had not planned on leveling to 80 on day one and defeating Naxxramas shortly after that. You think I joined Twentyfifthnovember? Not my play style by any means.

If speed leveling floats your boat by all means speed level your little heart out. See, it’s all relative/subjective in the end. Sugars swears I speed level and don’t read any of the quests. I do read the quests by the way. I don’t use questhelper so I kind of have to. Twentyfifthnovember (GET A SHORTER NAME!) beat the PvE content in 64 hours. Hurray for you! You’re bored and wondering if blizzard miscalculated or were simply catering to casual players?

See there… I was all about relative until you put that last statement in on your website. 25 people finished the xpac in 64 hours! Now, they want more, better and harder content. Tap tap… the game has 11 million subscribers. You 25 people can go suck my balls with your worries and complaining now. Seriously, this game is beautiful, fun and intriguing. You can speed through it if that is your choice and by all means play how you want. But don’t for one second eat what someone has served, chow through all of it without any savoring and have the nerve to ask for seconds or complain that it wasn’t nuanced enough when you swallowed it whole.

Apologize for this…

Or is this Blizzard folding under the weight of a large casual player base that demands to be on equal footing with end-game raiders?

and we might be square. Folding under the weight indeed! Does your 25x52=1300 justify them catering to you? I think not.

Of course, my opinion means about as much to you as yours does to me. My two cents tho? Play your alts and enjoy the parts you blew through. Your unnerfed Muru encounter will come soon enough.

Wrath and Utgarde Keep

Dear Blizzard,

You have knocked this one out of the park. Thank you.

Herk/Brewhammer

Seriously, it is THAT good. Everything has an EPIC feel and scale. Utgarde is HUGE and impressive with a lot of detail. Howling Fjord is huge as well.

Herk, as thought, switched to prot after completing Utgarde keep the first time. As prot, I have NO downtime and kill the mobs 2-3 secs later than if I was Arms/Fury.

Let’s talk Utgarde.

Every pull almost is a multimob pull. I am writing this at work so I don’t have the names of things but I will explain the instance.

Runecasters: One would think, “CASTER burn em down! They are squishy!” Ya well, these guys have Rune protection which apparently is really spiffy. CC em and leave em til last.

Then you have your heavy hitters, your dragons and your distance types. Do not get the druid to root the distance type but the melee type.

First boss (whatever his name is)

Tank em, he summons skeletons 4 or 5 not really sure. CC em and burn em. Also, he has some kind of ice coffin or some such. He tagged our healer twice with it. You can actually attack the trap and get it off your guy. You need get off quick to because it will do some major damage.

Second boss (Whatever their names are)

Romeo and Juliet redux. Burnt the melee to 10% then kill caster and kill melee within 10sec. This was not a hard fight except that our healer had 8k life >.< and the caster randomly shadowbolts the party. Lots o death for that 8k health Druid in this instance which made me think about poor little undergeared Brewhammer. Going to make sure I have enough Cobalt on him when I start playing him to make that set so I can tank properly.

End guy (What’s his name?)

Tank and spank with giggles and resurrection. He has several abilities. One called “Smash” that dropped Herk for about half his life (He was full at about 16k) so be careful for that one. He has an AoE that hits the entire party too.

You kill him and Arthas resurrects his butt and turn him nastier. Same fight sorta only he hits harder and has a random blade that appears and smacks people around by itself.

We wipe once each on the bossed which I thought was pretty good for not knowing the fights.

I am stuck at work for a half a day then I will be back tanking. I am halfway to 71 and there is already a 73 on the server by 10am this morning.

More updates to come!

STOLEN!

I stole this from Herc's blog. It made me laugh sooo much tho. Regardless of who you voted for... it is funny!

Orgrimmar sacked!!

I have a few happy screenshots that I will post when I get home.

Was anyone else confused by Garrosh beating Thrall?!

Stormwind was fun as well.

Thanks to everyone who voted on the new name. Kelmar will be Brewhammer when I get home. Brewhammer pugged MrT last night with 3 warriors, mage and a priest. It was interesting. By “interesting” I mean tons of wipeage.

I am excited for Wed night.

Final tally for Herk’s preparedness is…

25 quests completed
71k honor
100 AV tokens
69 AB
74 EotS
67 WSG
With 5k gold for giggles.

Brewhammer is less prepared. He didn’t have any quest left undone and since he will be second, he will be soaking the rested anyways. It may very well turn out that one is destined for PvP and the other for PvE.

Let the leveling begin.

First run and run again will be Nexus for the new shoulders they have in there. I am very tired of the batwings.

Let me run something past you guys. I was thinking about doing a first person blog kind of like Ratters on here. I would use Brewhammer’s perspective with Herk’s and create a little story between the two. Any interest in such a concept?

What are you guys going to be doing first in WOTLK?

Picture show

Hey Megs,

How is my AV participation looking?


You may have heard of a little blog called BigRedKitty. He needs to change it BigRedApe apparently. I suggested a macro /em of Grape Ape Grape Ape but he said his ape is white. Ah well.
Group em up and tap Barkskin and layeth the AoE smackdown. Starfall is a nice grinding spell.

I'm dead. You're 5 capped. I win.

Fear the Herk.
Again... I ain't playing around AB. I will kill joo!

Levitate gives some nice pic moments!

Back to this guy... I think we should break code and turn that thing from white to a purple? Anyone know how to do this?

[[[-----]]] < this is what 315 looks like!

As those who read the blog know, I have been going to the gym regularly for about 6 months now. I have lost 2 pant sizes going from a tight 42 to a snug 38/39 depending on cut of pant and what not. Also, my weight has dropped from the dreaded 285 to a better 245-250 depending. The 245-250 throws me because I thought it was fat but ended up being muscle gain.

My goal for the end of the year was to bench 300lbs. Well, last Friday, I did bench 300lbs and did it after several heavy sets. Yesterday, I achieved a new 1 rep max of 325lbs. I was ecstatic! Really, if I went to fit into a pair of 38s that weren’t the right cut and didn’t fit, I would tell them to F off because I bench over 300. Now, I know this isn’t the right attitude and I can and will do better, but for right now I love it.

I started in on 2 workouts a day with the noon being cardio and the evening being weightlifting. I did this all last week. This week I have the opportunity to work out with a guy from work is in “alpha” shape. He presses 350, weighs 215 and looks like a comic book character. He told me after we worked out on lunch that I wouldn’t be doing the cardio that night… he was right.

I’ll outline some…

Warmup

Flat Bench

325x1
10 crunches on workout ball thingy
315x2
10 crunches on workout ball thingy
295x4
10 crunches on workout ball thingy
275x5
10 crunches on workout ball thingy
255x6
10 crunches on workout ball thingy
225 to failure
10 crunches on workout ball thingy

Then we went to incline and repeated it. (Less weight tho)

We did chest ups and butterflies back to back with crunches in between. We topped it all off with decline bench and no crunches. Decline bench was 225lbs of “I have never done that much on decline before!” I managed but the reps were NOT high.

All in all, it was a crazy mega workout and I kept up so I was happy.

So I guess with the 8 weeks I have left in 2008 that I will try and get up to bench pressing 350. Next year’s goals should be interesting.

For Shaminja on Drenden

Occasionally, I will get the /w “You write ArmsandFury right?” This is actually much cooler than I would have thought. I started getting more lately when I really started talking more about the warrior class changes and talents. Well, I intend to do that a lot more come Wrath. I have several drafts of posts with (looks around nervously) math involved. I am no mathematician by any means but the math seems straight forward and I will rely on the flamers to keep it correct.

Shaminja wants a post on the early levels of warriorness. I have done several posts about talents specs and abilities before. What I SHOULD have done is what BRK suggested a year ago and give the grouping on the sidebar entitled warrior 101 like he used to have. I will be doing this tonight when I get home. This won’t be all though. I intend to play a new warrior with the new talents and give my impressions of the overall changes made since Vanilla.

Of course, being the lovable moron that I am. The changes will be STEEP. I am sure that for level 1-30 on the dwarf back in 2004 he was talent in all 3 trees and I played like a moron who doesn’t read anything on the game he is playing. I have changed that since.

So with that in mind and to give you and Shaminja the new hotness on warriors it only makes sense for me to play one again from at least 1-30. Now, I have an Orc, Tauren and Dwarf. I leave it to you guys to let me know which race for the next one. Undead? Human? Dear god, don’t let them make me play a spacegoat. Let me know which in the comments and a name for the new one and you guys will get the daily updates until he hits 30 or wrath comes out.