Don't You Know You are a Shooting Star?

Yep, that's Balth on his Headless Horseman's steed. And yes, that is him keeping up with a Violet Protodrake. No, I didn't pay 5k for the pleasure.




And, well, mounts and achievements have been a nice little distraction lately:





A wee bit grindy? Um, yeah. Especially the Wintersaber. Kattastrophe & I have been working on it since we found the trainer 16 months ago while levelling (16 months or there abouts)

Next up?

I'm 23/25 on my Exhalted achievement, with 3 different factions well into the Revered level. (Honor Hold, Shattered Sun and maybe lower City) I'm not sure which I'll finish. If I can get Honor Hold rep in regular Ramparts, that will likely be one.

Also, I've been helping Kattastrophe get her Rivendare mount (she now knows her way around there well enough, so I may not go much more). We have also been farming for the Zul Gurub Tiger (I got the lizard already) and we've also been working on the Ravenlord (so I may get Lower City Exalted in the process as well)

As far as RAIDING goes, I'm still a temp player on our main (only) raiding team, and we are now 3/12 in heroics (we gave Saurfang one attempt before calling it a night last night). There is talk about somehow helping other guildies (like me) get to see and hopefully kill the Lich King. Possibly an alt group or something. But we shall see. The last couple times a second raid group formed we ended up losing those players to new guilds. Also, since it would likely be alts of the main raiding group, I may STILL have problems getting in.

As far as the new ret stuff...

• I reforged about 100 Expertise points into Haste, and that seems to be helping a bit (I went from 580 or so, up to 680 or so) I'm still expertise capped, so it was "free" Haste.


• Rotation? I am getting better at it, but that's about the best I can say. I still dumb-thumb the hell out of it, and it is STILL super clunky.


• Output? On Test Dummies, I am get ~6,300 DPS. In ICC last night, I managed to be 1st overall in Damage (and waffled between 2nd & 4th in DPS) We have a Fury Warrior (wow-heroes GS of 3224, compared to my 3188) that is sligtly better than me single target, but KILLS me on the small groups, small single target, "target switching" stuff. Single target I can pull a solid 10-11k. Taqrget switching, small mobs gets me down to 3-4k range (remember, this is with the ICC buff!) My Ret survival abilities and some reasonably head's up playing is what enabled me to be top damage dealer, but my actual fight by fight throughput still has me bugged.


• Gear? I now have enough Justice points to buy my 4th piece of T-10(i251). The bummer is that I already HAVE an i251 chest with slightly better stats/etc: Blade-Scored Carapace Do I want to "waste" those justice points for a slight (and completely theoretical) DPS bump? Do I want to buy 2 new gems PLUS an enchant? I don't know. Especially with level 81 looming in 6 weeks or less.


• Tanking: I haven't even talented my Prots spec yet. I could use those Justice points here as well, but my tepid interest in tanking right now, as well as the "free" level 81/82,etc greens on the horizon make it a difficult choice as well. Though, if I ever intend to get back into tanking, getting in the swing of things sooner rather than later would be a good thing.

We shall see...

Time, Time Time... What has Become of Me?

We don't have the "real" hoverboards, but clothing HAS become rather sloppy and baggy.

Yes, today is the day the Doc Brown wanted to arrive in the future, via the movie "Back to the Future". (Marty ended upin 1955 instead, but still)

Twenty... Five... years... ago...

Yikes. I was in highschool at the time.


In WoW?

Lessee...

Balth got a nice DPS necklace off Lady Deathwhisper's corpse, and is now in completely PvE gear. Nary a drop of resilience on him.

w00t

I needed one more lousy pet for my 75 pet achievement, and I learned that there is a pet floating skull pet available from one of the vendors in the sewers (in the poison vendor room)

The weekly 10 man in ICC got cancelled, so me and 4 other guildies started working on our "Glory of the Hero" achievement. We ran 4 different heroics, and completed 6 achies. (I already had 4 of them, so I only got "Abuse the Ooze", and "Watch Him Die", both of which were rather tough.

A couple pointers to anyone trying these:

Watch Him Die - Defeat Krik'thir the Gatewatcher in Azjol-Nerub on Heroic Difficulty while Watcher Gashra, Watcher Narji, and Watcher Silthik are still alive.

First, we tried Zerging twice (came close, but not quite)

Our second tactic was to have me (as OT) pull everything, then have the main tank pull Krik, and then have me survive the rest. Ah, not so much. We tried it twice with slight variations, and either I couldn't maintain SELECTIVE aggro, or I simply couldn't survive long enough.

Third tactic was to have the MT pull each group one at a time, and then have me taunt the watchers off, one at a time, as the rest of the group killed the remaining adds. THEN have me hold (and survive) the three watchers while they burned Krik. I think this would have worked if we had tried it a second time. It was elegant, tactical and cool. We failed the one attempt, and didn't try it again.

The last tactic was just back to zerging. We just burned him down. I ended up getting eaten by the adds (my consecrate & divine storm pulled them all on to me, instead of the others, which was actually a good thing) and we dropped the bad boy.


Abuse the Ooze - Defeat Sjonnir the Ironshaper in the Halls of Stone on Heroic Difficulty and kill 5 Iron Sludges during the encounter. The "funny" thing is that I had never seen any oozes before we tried it (neither had anyone else) which caused our first wipe.

What we didn't know was that the oozes don't spawn until Sjonnir drops to <40% Once we knew that, we adjuested our tactics, and that was that. It took two more times to get the mechanics right, and we got this one. Not hard, per se, but not easy, either...

Experienced Drake Rider (defeat Malygos while riding each color drake) I have done amber & ruby, but not emerald. I have recently done some Coldarra quests, so that I can now do the "Aces High" daily quest (ride drake and kill 5 drakes) so I have a *slightly* better feel for the green drake, but that will be tough. I think the best bet for this would be for us to run a "Amber Void", with 3 tanks (Ruby) and 2 Emerald (one of which would be me) which would give me some leeway to learn how to actualy fight on the green.

Emerald & Ruby Void - Actually, if I can convince guildies to just run 5 ambers, this won't be *that* hard. It just takes a little cordination. We *almost* had it in a PuG a while back, but some weird stuff happened and we went "back to normal". Between this one run, and an amber void, we could get all three voids for guildies in only 2 runs.

Zombiefest - The only hard part is collecting enough zombies without killing them. Killing 500 in one minute would be easy, if you could find them. 100 is only difficult because of collecting them.

Better Off Dred - Not hard (I don't think) but we just need to take it slowly enough that 6 of those drakkari dudes have time to spawn.

Chaos Theory - I'm not sure. Could be easy. I think it's just a healer fight, but not sure.

Incredible Hulk - Kill a Scourge Hulk with Svala's dropping sword. Shouldn't be *too* hard, as long as you can position the Hulk in the correct place AND get him to 8-10% health before the sword drops.

Less-Rabi - Ugh. I've been in two groups that tried a few attempts to get this. Trying to interrupt that third transformation is basically blind luck, and we haven't been lucky.

Another alternative would be to delay the 1st two interrupts for as long as possible, POSSIBLY allowing the group to burn him down before the third one even has a chance to start. You need a LOT of DPS. If you can get a mage to spellsteal (8 second delay) then 20k DPS *could* do it.



In other news

Iggy went into Scarlet Monestary at level 31 (whichever one was first, graveyard?) and the group ran it twice, then wanted to run library for a third run. I dinged level 32 in Library, but let me tell ya, a level 32 mage (let alone level 31) has a hard time hitting level 34 mobs.

We made it, even though we had a flub in the next-to-last fight. Either a mob ran in fear and aggroed the final boss, or my casts were shooting 90* left and targetting the boss. (I noticed one of my casts went sideways, but didn't notice who I actually targeted *DOH*) Regardless, we had a massive scramble at the end, and I died.

The entire final area was a bit of a miscue. We over aggroed too many mobs, and the tank couldn't keep them all in check. I had to pop iceblock, went OOM twice (I used my mana pot, mana crystal and mana regen - whatever the name is) even before the boss got pulled. So, by the time he got pulled, I was about done (and he doesn't get trapped in Ice Nova, if you are curious)

Still, it was an interesting group. For the entire set of 3 runs, I was averaging 93 DPS or thereabouts. We had a warrior tank, elem shammy, rogue, me, and another shammy. I was fighting for 2nd place in total damage with the shammy, and the warrior was WAAY up there. All of us we 30, 31 or 32. (all of us had a fair amount of heirloom on as well) It was crazy that as a group, we were pulling >300 DPS.

Rested EXP is nice.

I also levelled his Jewelcrafting up a bunch. He's now at 155 or so, and his enchanting is at 200. The last couple hours of gaming last night were running Balth around Barrens farming tin so that Iggy could prospect out the needed gems. (it was strange last night on my server, even shadowgems were selling for >1 gold each, so just buying gems wasn't really viable)

I am still working on the Talent tree post, and I have another "short" post about a reasonable way to optimize RetPal rotation. I'm not sure which will be first, but they are planned.

A Manic Monday, After a Long Weekend

Due to a change in vacation policy at work, I needed to use up some of my accrued vacation time, so I took this past Friday off. Katt joined me, so we got to play a little (ok, a lot) of WoW starting Thursday night.

Thursday night - started and finished the Summer Festival stuff. Painful and long, but made a LOT of gold doing it! (I think about 600 all together?)

Friday Night and early Saturday - Ran 10 man and 25 man ICC up *to* Fester. Couldn't get past him either time. (I became Exalted with Ashen Verdict though!)

Saturday evening - I went and ran "For the Alliance" and got my bear. I had done Thrall and Bloodhoof a few months ago, but got to finish it.

Sunday evening - Katt's guild was messing around and decided to run Karazhan. WoW. That was a VERY cool dungeon! I'd never been in before, and all I can say is WOW! Then, literally as I finished Kara, I got a guild invite to run Ony 25. I'd never done it before (10 or 25), so that was neat. I'd been in a fail group before, so seeing it done correctly was nice.

Lessee... other randomness... I saved up enough Frost to replace my PvP belt with a decent PvE one.

I am working on a basics of Ret-Pal talents, so I hope to have that up in a few days. It's a fair bit of work though.

The First Time... Ever I Slew Your (Rot) Face

I have probably wiped 20+ times on the S.O.B., and I finally got to be a part of dropping him in a puddle of his own ickiness.

Bastard.

The 10 of us then ran over to give Putricide a try. (lesson: it helps if you open the valves in Rot & Fester's rooms - doh -)

We then wiped a few times, but eh, since only 1 of us has ever fought him before (not me), it went well enough. For giggles, after we had given up on him for the night, we ran over and got the "free" badges (killing some Vyrkul, can never remember the name) and we wandered into say "hello" to Dreamwalker.

It was amusing, for the minute/minute & a half that we lasted. None of us (other than the RL) knew anything about the fight, so it was interesting to see. I am going to suggest that we actually give it a few tries WITHOUT knowing strats. Just to see if we can figure it out. (although, the RL has seen and defeated her, so has Kattastrophe, who sits only feet away and can watch/comment)

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In other news... we ran Magister's Terrace a few times... Kat went with a guildie and got the Phoenix pet, then we ran it a couple times, and I got the chicken mount: Swift White Hawkstrider.

If you want to see something hysterical, find a Draenei Pally, with Crusader Aura on, watch him run on teh hawstrider. After being hit with baby spice.

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Prior to yesterday, I had run Stratholme about 8 or 9 times. I was doing it for rep, and a couple times was to run one of Kattastrophe's alts through it.

And then yesterday, I found out he drops a rather rare mount: Deathcharger's Reigns.

Here's a possibly gut churning bit: because it is a BOP drop, and it has no vendor value, it is *possible* that the dang thing dropped, and I didn't bother looting it.

When I am running rampant through a low level istance, I will keep stuff of value (in gold) and will ignore other stuff. Balth isn't an enchanter, so I don't DE anything, and the few auctionable items are hard (for me) to tell from just gold-lewt stuff, so I just loot everything and vendor it. 25-50 gold per run, depending.

So, if the reigns had dropped, I doubt I would have bothered reading what it said. I would have noticed the lack of a vendor price. That *might* have given me pause, especially for something purple.

But no guarantees.

So I ran the instance in "speed" mode last night a couple times with no luck. I have run it only 11 times, so it's likely a long way to go before I will get it. That being said, I cleared about 75 gold for all the crap I vendored. (and maybe 30-40 minutes total, and not very efficiently - I should be able to run/clear once every 8-10 minutes or so) At 6 runs per hour, 25 gold per run, that's 150 gold per hour.

That just about matches the gold per hour rate I get doing the Argent dailies.

If you're interested in what/how to do a speed run, go here ya go:



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Oh, I got a nice drop of Saurfang (25) on Saturday: Polarbear Claw Bracers.

These now replace my Wrathful bracers (for PvE), and all together, I get an increase of 35 strength or so. Because:
- They have intrinsically 5 more strength
- They have a gem slot already (so as a blacksmith, I can put a second on)and the wrathful did not
- They have hit instead of resilience, so I can replace a +10 STR/+10 Hit gem with straight +20 STR gem.

They are identical in gearscore (big deal) but they are an actual good upgrade, so I'm jazzed!

w00t.

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Oh, and I think I need only 1 or 2 more pieces of primordial saronite and I can make my nifty boots.

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Things seem to be looking up with the guild. Again, I like the folks there a bunch, and I hope they are feeling more the same. We shall see.

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!