All I see is Disorder; Though not Always a Bad Thang...

Lotsa Nada happened this weekend...

I made another few hundred gold, grabbed a few more Champion Seals, a couple more Dalaran Cooking Awards, and got a few of the Valentine's Achievements.

Actually, I started the Valentine's day ordeal a day early. (I played a while on Saturday night on Aman'Thul - Oceanic - they are 19 hours ahead of me) Aussie-wannabe-Balthazario is less than 5 bars away from level 15 and beginning the low level LFG.

As a tank. Kattastrophe suggested I start a low level pallie and learn to tank from low levels, and my server sojourn seems an appropriate place. Katt & I are still sorta considering each loading up a "home" (Velen) toon with heirloom gear, bags and gold and then do a server transfer.

A Gold Farming Hint for the holiday averse:

Even if you have ZERO intention of actually completing the quest, speak to a local questgiver (one in each main city) and get a Lovely Charm Collector's Kit. Once you do, you will collect Lovely Charms from from many of the mobs that you kill in your daily Frost Runs. (unless you are a healer - you need to be killing stuff) Anyhow, collect 10 of thos charms (which are soulbound) and convert them into Lovely Charm Braclets. These are NOT soulbound, and can fetch 10-40 gold each from the Auction house. So, you run a few PuGs, and collect free gold.

In Other News

My pre-LFG routine seems to be helping. (this is where I unequip a bunch of gear to ensure I get into a low/easy dungeon) Every time I have done this prior to entering the LFG queue, I have gotten a low level (aka "easy") heroic.

Why don't I want to run PoS, HoR and FoS? Because it is not uncommon to wipe on them. I despise doing the LFG, and at this point I am ONLY doing them for the Frost emblems. The Frost Emblems I get from Violet Hold are the exact same as the emblems from Halls of Reflection. (In fact, I get more Triumph running VH, if I recall correctly) Not to mention that I have yet to wipe on VH, which means saving 5-10 gold for each wipe that doesn't happen.


I am kind of enjoying the Valentine's activities. Granted, as a Draenei Paladin, I keep getting showered with petals, but it's better than being turned into a turkey. lol (poor rogues) Also, I kind of like the idea of being able to get a freebie pet.

I *did* try to kill the holiday bosses with extreme wipeage resulting. Once was by having a small party (2), once was due to not really getting the fight, and the third was because all the adds swamped the healer. (and here's an odd thing; I looked up a video for it, and it showed maybe 3 or 4 adds all together. During our last wipe, I saw well over a dozen. - odd) And yes, I was trying to tank the last 2 attempts which did not help things. It also didn't help that I didn't realize there were THAT many adds in the first place. I pulled a couple at the start, along with Mister Pink.

Yes, we used the anti perfume potion thingie. *shrug* Oh, as a group, we did ~ 12,000 DPS before we died.

Later!

Mad, Mad World of Warcraft

I thought about linking the Gears of War video instead, but live seems to feel better...

Anyhow, as of late, my time in WoW has been a tad melancholy. I dread queueing for the Sanity Tap ® and have gone about my business on many days without even bothering. I'm barely raiding, and overall, any progression I've made has been really slow.

Looking for Dungeon

I'm not sure why, but going into here for my daily heroics stresses the crap out of me. I'm putting my tanking project on hold, so this really only relates to me playing DPS, which I seem to be pretty good at. I'm just terribly leary of people taking things the wrong way, me gaffing something up, or just general asshattedness of the randoms. A couple examples:

- I get put into a group starting Pit of Sauron. Nobody is near the entrance area, and the NPCs are already running. I start moving away when I see a flame hooved horse go running by. I run to follow and seem him/her jump a ravine and stand off to the side. Not knowing wtf is going on, I try to jump over and miss. And fall down into a group of mobs. Or, 3 groups.

Someone drops down to help, and we both die. Someone else yells "real pro". Another asks "WTF happened?"

As I am flying back, I try to explain, and I appologize. I can see from the health bars that some are still in combat and taking LOTS of damage. I applogize and upon entering the instance I appologize again and leave group.

- I'm with a guildie, and we get put into one of the appostrophe'd instances. (Zul 'drak, Gur'ub or whatever the fuck it's called. It's the one with the spiral staircase down in the beginning and lots of snakes) We fight a couple trash mobs, and I end up having to Lay on Hands. It's not that I'm taking a lot of damage fast, it's just that the healer is doing NOTHING. The tank isn't marking and is switching targets, so that I'm pretty much guaranteed to be getting some aggro and taking *some* damage.

Shortly after, we have to wait while the tank says brb and goes afk. (not that long, but a couple minutes)

Then the healer gets pissed off that RankWatch whisped him that one of his spells is low rank. I replied "ok, gimme a minute and I'll shut it off". To do this, I have to log off. Normally this isn't a problem, and I don't drop group. I pop back in and get teleported out f the instance. My guildie informs me that I got vote kicked. She drops group and we go elsewhere. My guildie mentions "That healer wasn't healing AT ALL."

So there are my sad, sad tales of woe and misery in the LFG. Honestly, it wasn't THAT bad... especially when compared to some of the crap other bloggers are dealing with. It's just getting to me. Hell, the very next run, my guildie & I got Oculus with a good group, and we ended up getting both the speed and the Amber Void achievements.

This less than ideal LFG/LFD thing just gets compounded when I think about raiding; which I'm not able to do. even though I have access to my guild and Kattastrophe's guild, the amount of 10 man raiding I've done is approaching an asymptote: Zero.

I can't really blame the guilds. After all, there's nothing forcing me to stay associated with them. That said, it's a tad frustrating that both of them only seem to do raiding at 4 pm server time. (weekdays) I guess my guild did some "real" 10 man content this last week, but I was out of town.

Now, I'm not only carping about it. I am trying to be pro-active and try to organize things my self; I've posted in our guild forums and had a whopping *2* views thus far. (and no replies - posted 3 days ago)

Now, since I'm not running any raids (not even the weekly easy one) and I'm not getting all my weekly 14 LFG frost emblems, this pretty much ensures I'm not able to buy any new gear. This in turn leads to:

I'm not progressing.

As I mentioned in my last post, I *did* get a new set of bracers. And yeah, going from i200 to i213 is an upgrade and all the stats ARE better. How much? According to the melee info, I am getting an extra 2.5 DPS. That's not a typo. That is: "two point five damage points per second". And I think I got an extra 50 health points.

*blink*

Heck, I still haven't even hit Honored with the Ashen Verdict yet.

The one upgrade that I know for certain that I *can* get are the Rings of Kirin Tor. The first purchase is the only really big one (6,400 gold) and I'm at nearly 5,000 right now. If I do a *little* bit of grinding, plus my dailies, I should have enough in another 4 days or so. Then it's just another 2-3 days for each upgrade over that.

Then if I'm still feeling badly undergeared, I can farm another 10k-15k gold to buy a couple Titansteel razorscale armor bits.

So what then?

I think uch of my time for the forseeable future may be just grinding out some achievements. Big Bear Butt mentioned a grindable pet that would get me a bit closer to the Salt Lick and would occupy my time.

I'm not sure, but I think I have about 60 Champion Seals, so I plan on getting more and using them to buy some Argent pets. (BTW, the Argent Crusader Tabard KICKS ASS! A free teleport for the win!)

I recently got my Eastern Kingdoms explorer achi, and will probably spend time running around Kalimdor to finish everything off.

I think I'll start gathering honor points and marks so I can put together a set of PvP gear. Not that I really care to PvP, but having the gear should certainly make it less painful to do it.

I have about 500 stone keeper shards, so I can also get a bit more Heirloom gear for my alts. I'm not sure I really feel like running them, but getting the gear should at least make things easier.

And, I hope that I get out of this funk, maybe get one or two raids in, and, if all goes south, maybe look for a new guild. Alas, my needs are pretty specific (casual, friendly, active mainly weekdays between 8pm and 11pm server time, familiar with EJ, and related sites enough to know what they're doing, but not so much that they suck the fun out of the game)

Oh, and I need to watch Donnie Darko one of these days.

Spamalot! and Lance-a-lot

I have an aversion to ToC (5 man heroic).

Part of this may be due to my getting kicked from a group on this instance, or it may be due to the need to joust at the start. Or it could be that it is one of the most godawful, boring and monotonous instances I've seen.

Most likely, it's a combination of all of those.

Last night, at my usual late log-in time (9:30 or so, server/local time) I start to collect my dailies and grudgingly include myself in the LFG queue.

A new guild memeber that had also started queueing asked me and another guilide to join, so we went in as 3 DPS. (me on Ret, him on an ele shammy and a third as Warlock)

When we got our notice, we all groaned when we saw ToC. The good thing is that it *is* relatively short and usually not too diffficult.

We finish the jousting with a *little* difficulty and then proceed on the the next fight, with the Shaman, rogue and one other.

We're going through, and half my bittons aren't working. *CRAP* I STILL HAVE MY LANCE EQUIPPED!. I open my bags and don't have any luck seeing my weapon, so I open up "C" (character screen, which is where my equipment manager "Outfitter" button is) and switched to my DPS items. *no change* AARGH! So I hit my tank gear, just to get SOMETHING with an actual weapon selected.

I did this in a hurry, without thinking all that much, or even remembering it much.

We finished this fight, and the next group, though I was staggered by how bad my DPS was.

We go into the last fight (Paleetess? the one with the summoned shadow thing) And things go bad. I'm not sure what happened, but from what I understand (from their own description)the tank & healer got out of sync, or lost aggro or something.

Anyhow, I noticed when the first of us dropped, another DPS, but I didn't worry too much. Next thing I know, it's me and one caster (the healer I believe) and the shadow dood is chewing on her face. I taunt and bubble and *sort of* help. The only problem is that with me bubbled, my DPS drops even further and my threat/aggro drops through the floor. (I hadn't thought to turn on Righteous Fury to increase my threat) So the baddie loses interest in me, and chews the face, neck and upper torso off the healer.

Eww.

I sit there clobbering away, well aware it's a lost cause. (the shadow dude still has ~30% health, and the other boss is STILL left after that)

I finally die and we all run back and start buffing. At this point, the HEALER said (right as I noticed something strange about the looks) "OMG, I still have my lance equipped. No WONDER I went oom!!"

I laughed. HARD. And then typed: "ROFL, no worries, I did that for the first part of the first fight too! lol".

We all laughed, buffed and got ready for the re-match.

So the Bear tank pulls, and away we go. And my DPS is STILL crappy. WTF?!?!?!?

We kill the boss pretty quickly this time and in comes the Black Knight. First phase is a breeze, but MAN my DPS is STILL sucking. And then I notice the shield on my back.

ARGH! Tanking gear. I had forgotten that I had done that earlier. /facepalm

So I switch over and the we all do our thing. My DPS is still crap, but this time it's beacuse I'm keeping the adds off the healer, which is slow & bursty. *shrug* Keeping healers safe during this phase is my self assigned task when I run this so that's cool by me.

The best part? I got these:

Vambraces of Unholy Command

It's only an i219 piece, but that's an upgrade (both numerically and "really") from my previous i200 bracers. w00t!

The only downside was "upgrading" them. I smithed on the gem socket with spare mats, so not a big deal. However, the cost of getting the enchant (greater assault) 350 gold, YIKES. I used honor points to buy an uncut gem, then paid 20g to get a strength gem made.

Ah well... Every little bit helps.

I'm a Travelling Man, and I Quest in a Lot of Spots

Now that I finally remembered to bring in my screen caps, I can continue with my rambling, all over the place post...


Yeah, I've been going back and doing some questing. Remember how I mentioned I was doing some stuff related to cooking? Well, there are a number of results of my doing so. First was getting the "Into the Basin" achievement. I got it by finishing all the Nessingwary quests. You know, the ones where you run all over the place, "hunting" 60+ game animals. (and if you were like me, and didn't get all the related quests at once, the number climbs to well over 100)

The good news is that Katt & I now have a good supply of Rhino Meat and Chilled Meat.

And I got another achievement in the process:

OK, so... WHAT am I trying to get?

Well, the one above is what you get for completing part 2 of the achievement: getting 30 of the listed. My *intent is to get the full achi for getting (and making) all 45 recipies.

After much running around, and spending a few more Dalaran Cooking awards (most of my running was to complete the quest chain for Kungaloosh) I now only need one more recipe:

Freaking Haunted Herring.

Ugh. It's a rare drop, mainly from various Northrend bosses. Yuck. It wasn't on the AH, and it may not even be BoE, so this will be a bot of a challenge...

Lastly, I went on a LFG Random with one of our guildies... we ended up in HoS. I actually like that instance, because there are these easy to kill crystal looking mobs that are certain to make my ePeen swell:

Yeah, that's me hitting 10k DPS. Sadly, I didn't hit screen cap fast enough, because when more of them were alive, it peaked at roughly 13k, then dropped rapidly. Still, w00t!

Yah, I *do* pay attention to recount, but I do *not* base my tactics on it. Per esempio:

I ran Hall of Reflection last night in my LFG Frost run. During that first series of fights, I was 3rd in DPS (below the tank) because I was focusing no getting one of the ranged mobs CCed on each and every wave.

In a couple cases, it took me nearly 10 seconds of running out, casting and running back before I was actually able to start DPSing. Does the low DPS bother me? Not in the slightest.

But it doesn't mean I don't take a certain amount of pleasure topping the meters ;) I think, therefore I ego.

Toodles!

Ramble On, Cuz I do it Often

Sorry about this post being so "all over the place", but much of what's happened lately has been of that sort. Back to my monotone babbling later...

I don't mind GearScore (GS) or Elitist Group (EG) They have small use for me in that it helps me look back at a heroic and try to understand why things went the wasy they did. Or, it lets me stroke my ePeen (not because my number is so high) but because when I am lower geared than someone, and I *still* out DPS them. And they are a Mage or Warlock.

And honestly, I can never remember what mine is. And, given how little I raid and how slowly I am accumulating Frost & Triumph badges, it stays the same for pretty long periods. *shrug*

[EDIT] - and... and... and... yes I know, my grammer sucks as of late. [/EDIT]
~~~~~~~

I *did* buy a Triumph badge upgrade for my Tank spec. I think it was shoulders (I honestly suck at remembering some crap. LET ALONE try remembering the item name) The neat thing is that I can finally start gemming for stats other than Defense. I'm still sitting at exactly 540 (capped) but am slowly increasing my stamina.

A few guildies let me tank through Utgarde Keep. I didn't do very well. The healer is a sweetheart and was quite patient. The others were... less so, but not rude or anything. But when they re-grouped for another random, I wasn't asked to tank. (I really need to get Vuhdo set up and learn it)

~~~~~~~

Kattastrophe left our guild a couple weeks ago. The guild I'm still in has some *slightly* more hardcore players in it. They tend to perform a bit better than your average guys. (not uber-leet hardcore by ANY stretch, but some pretty knowledgable and skilled players)

If you aren't in the "in group" you will get left out and not really invited to much of anything. And that's if they are runnning anything in the first place. It's not a super cold guild, but if you aren't close to the core members, it's not always super friendly either. (There are some GREAT folks there, which is why I've stayed)

Anyhow... Katt had ended up runnning with another guild for a bit over a week. They were just doing rep runs into ICC 10 man. They appreciated Katt, and as a group, they hit it off. Since they could use another good healer (they only have 1 tree - he's good, but he's only 1 guy) they asked her to join.

She was on the fence until she got asked to come along & bring me in for DPS. We're sitting at the summoning stone, and up trots a couple of our current guildies sommoning folks for a guild run for OUR guild. Never a peep or anything from our own guild asking us if we were interested. The worst part? They Pugged 2-3 spots.

This was the last straw, and Katt g/quit. It was uncomfortable for a while, but things have settled down. She's in her guild, I'm still in mine. They keep asking me to join, but I'm still not willing to jump ship on the folks I am friends with over there.

As of now, kind of the best of both worlds. We both have access to folks in both guilds.

~~~~~~~

Last night I was finishing up some stuff for cooking (more on this in a later post) and I see one of my guild officers promoting some folks up from recruit to member.

I whisped the guy, asking when I would get promoted up from "Raider" to "Active Raider".

"Hold on, let me check your gear... you were really close last time I looked." (referring to my Gear Score)

Now, this has been my only negative run-in with GS. And yeah, it's made a bit more annoying, because I HAVE done a couple 5 mans with him and other officers, I can *do* my job as DPS prety well.

A couple minutes later I was promoted. What does this mean? As far as I can tell, it really only changes my bank/repair access. (I never use the guild bank, so I'm making an assumption about that, but I did notice I now have a guild allowance for repair)

~~~~~~~~

So with Katt's guild, I ran a number of Rep runs into ICC 10 man last week. I didn't make it to friendly, at least not that time. They were interesting, and it's neat to actually be a part (even a non-guilded part) of a team.

The only downside is that they are not obssessed with getting the most out of their gear & stuff as the top guys in my current guild. Don't get me wrong, they DO work on their gear and they DO try to learn. BUT, the majority of them are not spending hours a week reading EJ, tinkering and beating on test dummies for hours to optimize their rotation. (although a couple of them certainly do though) They play to spend time together and have fun.

(Also, one mage there isn't a fan of Omen -or any- aggro meter)

Then on Saturday, they decided to make a run for Marrowgar. We went in semi-cold. A few of us knew his abilities, but there was no pre-arranged strategy. we went in, cleared the trash Then?

Multi-wipe.

We all watched the tankspot vid and prepped for a Sunday attempt. After clearing the trash (and got my ring for being friendly with Ashen Verdict), we stood around outside Marrow's room discussing strat. We did a dry run there, using a DK's Death & Decay (D&D) to simulate Marrow's hitbox and try to get our placements. We then went in.

Multi-wipe.

We understood the fight a LOT better, but still didn't do a whole lot better. The fire was just kicking our asses. Especially when it gets dropped right on top of someone that is spiked, and you're trying to rescue. Nasty, and it happened several times.

One note about tankspot's video: I think that staying underneath Marrow while he's doing his spinning thing is not the best idea. He's moving around pretty quickly, and dropping a TON of his fire. Often multiple "shots" (each shot goes in 4 directions) right next to each other. With him focussed on everyone in the center of the room, the fire becomes so dense you can't avoid it, and "head for the hills" seems like it may be a better tactic. This also gives the tanks time to regain aggro after the phase re-starts.

~~~~~~~

When I am doing random PuGs for my emblems (as opposed to guild/friend runs) I have started removing gear prior to selecting "join queue". Every time I have done so I have gotten low level/fast/easy runs. (barring one Malygos/Oculus fiasco) I'm not 100% convinced that it isn't simple RNG giving me these runs, and not my reduced "visible gear score", but I'll take fast, easy runs for my badges, athankuverymuch!

I want to run Forge of Souls (FoS), Pit of Saron (PoS) and Halls of Reflection(HoR) but I don't care to run them in randoms (PoS & HoR in particular) They are just tough enough that they will likely cost you more in repair bills than you will get out of them. The "Follow Arthas" trick in HoR has made it much more manageable, but it still requires some really good DPS and tanking to make it, and PuGs seem to fail too much (no badges, BUT a hefty repair bill)

~~~~~~

Later!

Who Can it Be, Now?

It was late at night, and things weren't going normally. I don't know, the whole place looked normal, but was just different.

OK, I was on Azuremist Isle. There's the crashed ship, all the half dead refugees, there's the dude tha tlets me fly with totems and whatnot.

Yeah, there's some idiot Nelf with Mohawk Grenades, but... that's "normal.

"G'day..."

Whu?

I wander around... and other little things... like the sun moving the wrong way across the sky.... toilets flushing backwards, and the clock being 19 hours off...

WAIT A MINUTE!!!!!!!!

WHAT DO YOU MEAN I"M LEVEL 8?!?!?

WHERE'S MY COOL PHAT LEWTZ?!?!

Then it dawns on me... I'm not in Kansas anymore (or California for that matter, but hey...)

This is some strange world of "Aman'Thul"... and WHAT is that little Gnome doing dancing over there?

Then it hits me; "Aman'Thul Oceanic" is some weird Azerothian dialect for the word "Australia"

Who'd a thunk it?

Gnomeaggedon, thanks for the hospitalilty, the kickass Tabard and everything else... (great company, btw) and I'll pester you every now & again, so long as your willing.

I don't plan to level "Down Under Balth", since that would take months, but I *did* roll a Gnome DK, just to skip the first 50-odd levels. (and since I've never played/rolled a DK, the lore should be interesting)

Cheer!

(and no Gnome or Drae panties were left asunder by this post or any of the fiddling around done prior to posting this)

HELP! Internet Inetptitude Ensues

OK, I think I mentioned this in a comment or post a bit ago, but this is frusternating (yes, that word is intentional) I am writing this from my home gaming PC.

I can browse.

I can play WoW.

I can do MS office type stuff.

I can play other games (well, not world of goo, it won't work)

I think you get my drift...

But I can't frikkin' post a comment on my own frikkin blog.

As I type this, I'm on IE8.

I have tried with Firefox (whatever the latest versionis, as of 3 days ago)

I have tried with Google Chrome (new version)

And yet none will let me comment. (I can at work, on Kattastrophe's PC, on my ASUS EEEPC and others, just not this one) This would lead me to believe there's some setting on my PC that is being uppity. Not the browser or the network.


I am using XP Pro, latest service pack (3 if I recall correctly)

I have Kasperski internet protection

... and that's about it.

Thoughts?

Ideas?

Ridicule?

HELP!

kthxbye :)