My request of Heroic Puggers

So I dinged 85 on my mage on Wednesday of last week and since then I've grinded the gear that I needed to run heroics. Now as soon as I was able to run heroics I queued up and waited to get into a run. I have yet to down more then 2 bosses in a heroic and that was pure luck that I even got past one boss. In each heroic I have noticed the same things happening: tanks don't mark targets for CC and just rush in, people don't understand the fights clearly, CC'ed mobs are broken by non-tanks and the tank doesn't pick them up in time so someone dies, healer ignores the group and only focuses on healing the tank so dps dies, dps stands in bad stuff and die, healer doesn't heal himself then stands in bad stuff and then dies.

People don't understand that in heroics even though the boss looks the same, their abilities are stronger and not quite the same. My request is a simple request and it is that people realize that they are playing Cataclysm and not Wrath so you can't just steamroll through content like you previously could. Please mark for CC, please don't break said CC, please don't stand in bad stuff and expect healers to keep you alive, please don't go emo and leave a group after one wipe especially if you were the cause of said wipe. Also just remember that just because you didn't CC when you did the instance in regular and lived does not mean that you can do the same in heroic mode.

All I want for Christmas is to run a heroic at least once and down the final boss. I don't even care that I get loot from any bosses along the way. Yes that is how frustrated I am about this situation. WTB Guildees getting their item score up faster so that I can run in guild groups and not worry about fail pugs. So how is everyone else enjoying heroics?

Cataclysmed!

So it has been two days since we had our little digital world rocked. Two days of a brave new world to explore and reshape as we see fit. Two days and yet I've managed to play only a few hours on my mage :(. Why have I not been able to get past 81 you may wonder. Well Tuesday night I got the worst toothache that I have ever had in my entire life. I'm talking about a toothache that left me unable to do anything but close my eyes and try to shut the pain out. Thankfully my fiance managed to get me an appointment with a dentist early yesterday morning and I was able to get in and have a wisdom tooth taken out so that I could come back next week and get a root canal done. Yeah I was not a happy camper.

Well yesterday was mostly spent eating soft crackers, soup, and drinking lots of water. When I felt up to it I played a little and got my mage up to 81 in between sleep breaks, pill breaks, and random world spinning headache breaks. I have managed to replace a large chunk of the my icc10 gear with greens and a few blues. My spell power and mastery have gone up while most of my other stats have gone down. So far I am loving this expansion! I know that I have already seen it in the beta and all but it is still fun and being able to play with my guildees makes it even more fun. I should hopefully be 85 by the end of the weekend but if I'm not then I'm not. I am going to take my time and enjoy this expansion and all of the awesome wonderful things that it has brought us.

Bring out the gnomes

I am going to start out this post with a truth: Gnomes are awesome! This weekend was spent doing two things, eating and playing a lot of WoW. I leveled my gnome priest Wellesley to 49 and I also got suckered into rolling a feral druid with my fiance, which I got to 29. Questing in the old world was very fun and most quests are not as boring as they used to be. Punching Deathwing in the face is...epic. With under a week to go, Cataclysm can not get here fast enough! I know I wont be able to hit 80 on my priest in a week...at least not without taking some serious time off of work.

The Blizzard developers have done an amazing job with the old world changes and I honestly cant wait to get into the new zones on my mage. I've decided that I am going to level in Vash'jr, or however its spelled, instead of Hyjal. The reason for this? Two words. Sea Horse. Riding around on my seahorse in the beta was awesome! Also awesome was the underwater running animation. It was like I was on the moon and I took huge strides when I would run anywhere.

I have also decided that my little druid is going to be race changed to a Worgen as soon as it is enabled because a wolf that can turn into a cat is pretty hilarious to me. I also still plan on rolling a Worgen rogue so I can experience the Gilnean starting zone. I did enjoy it during the beta but it was still missing cinematics at the time so it felt incomplete. I'll probably make a goblin somewhere along the way to check out the goblin starting zone since I never got a chance to see it in the beta. Seriously though, Cataclysm can not come soon enough! Stupid work making me take time out of my WoW playing to do silly things like my job.Don't these people know that I have digital monsters to slay and gold to loot?!

I have been Shattered!

So the Shattering is among us! I thankfully was at work all day yesterday when 4.0.3a was pushed through the servers so I did not have to sit staring at my computer wondering why the servers hate me so much that they refuse to come back up. I instead sat at my computer at work and wondered how long it would be until I could go home and stare at my computer. Luckily for me servers started coming back to life about 45 minutes to quitting time for me so I could start playing in the new Azeroth as soon as I got home.

First thing I did was log into my mage and run around Stormwind and see some of the devastation. The city looks at nice as it did on the beta. After sight seeing I went and did the cooking daily so that when Cata hits I'll have a nice amount of cooking recipes ready. Then I took a gryphon to the Hinterlands and ran over to Hillsbrad so I could do the famous Plants vs Zombies game although in game its called Peacebloom vs Zombies. I gotta tell you that the last two levels of it are tricky as hell! I had a hard time on it and then I decided to finish it later and I made a Gnome Priest.

Now I spent all of yesterday trying to come up with a good name for both my Gnome Priest and my Dwarf Shaman. I finally came up with a name for both and... both of my picks for my shammy were unavailable! Well I spent a few more minutes coming up with a suitable replacement name and thankfully it was available! Welcome to Azeroth Wellesley the Gnome Priest and Moltke the Dwarf Shaman! For anyone who gets the two names...yes I am a huge history nerd for picking those two names but I don't care! I leveled my Gnome through the starting zone and it is pretty fun, especially compared to the old starter zone that Gnomes and Dwarves shared. I ended the night with my Gnome at level 14 and a half and spec'ed as Disc(Penance is OP). My goal is to get him as high a level as I can before Cata because I'll be really busy leveling to 85 then. So what did you do last night in the post shattered world?

The Shattering

I have a little bit of time this morning so I'm gonna post a quick blog. According to those in the know tomorrow the famous 4.0.3a patch, also known as "The Shattering" patch, is going to be launched. What does this mean for you? Well it means that you will be able to:
Play as new race/class combos like Dwarf shaman, Troll druid, Gnome Priest, Tauren Pally, etc.
Explore the newly shattered old world.
Do all of the new and awesome quests in the old world like the Plants vs. Zombies chain.
Experience the newly retuned 1-60 instances.
See the new Cataclysm log in cinematic/log in screen.

Now I don't know about you but I am REALLY looking forward to this patch because I got the opportunity to play a Gnome priest in the beta and I loved it. The coolest thing about this patch being released tomorrow is that I get a nice long weekend to play in the new world because of the Thanksgiving holiday. While I would LOVE to have the expansion already this patch will go a long way to keeping me occupied until then.

Now...what am I going to name all the characters that I am going to create tomorrow???

Cataclysm Dungeons/Raids and You!

So...I'd like to start out by apologizing to all of my faithful blog readers for the long, long, long absence. Work has been beating me up so hard that by the time I get home I usually make it to my chair before falling asleep and when I do wake up I barely have the energy to even log on to WoW let alone to write a blog post. :( But anyway I am able to write something now so enjoy!

So by now everyone has heard how hard heroics are in the cataclysm beta and how cc will be king and all that. Well there are more changes to running heroics at 85 then just that so I figured I would write a little for you guys who aren't in the beta or aren't as in the know as others. In the current expansion you ding 80 and start running heroics right off the bat for badges and maybe a piece or two of gear so that you can start raiding. After you hit 80 you don't ever queue for a regular instance because the gear is not as great as anything that drops from heroics and you don't get any justice points/badges in them after doing the daily regular dungeon.

In cataclysm things are not like this at all. Yes the gear from heroics is still better then what you are going to be getting from regulars and it'll be tons better then what you are wearing at 85. So what's different you may ask? Well first off each instance has a minimum average gear level requirement and if you aren't at or above that number then you can't queue for those dungeons. The first two dungeons that you can actually queue for at 80 are going to be Throne of Tides and Blackrock Caverns. Neither of these has a minimum gear requirement so you can start queuing for them after you run to each instance entrance and "discover" the entrance area. Each instance in cata requires you to have run to the entrance and discover it before you can queue for it. I guess blizz got tired of people complaining about others who would die in an instance and release just to get lost trying to get back to the instance. Anyway back on topic, since these two dungeons have no gear level requirement you can run them over and over until you ding.

At 81 you can keep on queueing for these two instances and you unlock two new ones, the Vortex Pinnacle and the Stonecore. Now these two instances require you to have an average gear level. At 80 in full ICC10 gear you'll be sitting in the 251ish range and in full ICC25 gear you'll be around 270ish. You can check out what your gear level is now ingame since they added it on to your character screen in 4.0.1 so you don't need an addon to find out what your average gear ilevel is. If I remember correctly VP and Stonecore require a 272 score so you will have to start replacing at least a few pieces of gear with new cata gear to get in to these. Why the hell did they do this average ilevel crap? Well I guess it is because they don't want people to have grinded up to 85 and then attempt to run heroics in ICC gear that they started the expansion with.

When you unlock the next set of instances, Grim Batol, Halls of Origination, and Lost City of the Tol'vir, they require 305 ilevel score. There is no way that you can get to 305 with all of your level 80 gear so expect to either run a lot of instances before this or to do A LOT of quests for gear rewards. Now if you do nothing but run intances...you have a chance of getting your gear level score to where it needs to be but I recommend mixing in some questing for gear as well as money.

Now you hit 85 and you are ready to queue for heroics...well just wait a second there. Heroics also have a minimum gear level...329. Now to get your gear level to this number you will have to farm regular instances to up your score. When raids were first opened on the beta servers new premades were released as well. The gear level for those premades was 350. This means that after running heroics and full heroic gear you will have a 350 gear level. You can probably start running raids slightly before this I am sure so I would say that mid 340s would probably be passable for raids. Once Cata comes along we'll know for sure what we'll need to raid. I hope this post helps at least one person prepare for Cata instancing. I am pretty sure my math is right but if someone has correct information please feel free to post it. =D

It's about time

So today Blizzard has officially announced that The Cataclysm will launch on the 7th of December...WOOOOOOOOOTS! It's about time that we have heard something official from them about a date. I honestly figured that they would just let us know at Blizzcon as part of their show or something but hey this works too. I know that everyone and their mother had made a guess about when the game would launch and that there were several people who said that blizzard hid clues in the game about when it would launch so having a final date means no more crazies making guesses!

Now this does mean that the 4.0.1 patch will drop soon so everyone has less time to get their achievements done before Azeroth is changed. MMO-Champion is claiming next week, which if true will give me a week before I have to relearn how to play my classes. This means that I am going to be farming the living daylights out of ZG for rep and a chance at a mount that is sadly disappearing with the patch. Seems I will also need to farm up more badges so I can buy my gnome priest some boa gears as I already bought the rogue stuff for my worgen rogue and my dwarf shaman is already covered boa wise. So much to do and so little time!

So what are you going to be doing before the Cata patch goes live in a week or so?

A brief history of my guild or how I learned to stop worrying and love my guild

Not that long ago a guildee asked me "Is it worth it to lead a guild?" At the time it took me a few minutes to come up with some pros and cons to that question. Most of the cons were pretty obvious: lots of work, huge time sink, gotta be able to take a lot of flak from people and the pros were also equally obvious: chance of succeeding and seeing your hard work pay off, doing things your way, and you get to see things from a different perspective. Now this seemed to be enough for the guildee so they thanked me for answering their question and went off to do something else. I have been thinking about it for a while now and I have been asking myself...how the hell does a lazy, anti-social, unmotivated slacker such as myself end up in charge...and how has it not all unraveled at any time in the last 5 years?

Well...I think that I've lasted as long as I have because I like to do things my way. It also helps that I'm a stubborn bastard who doesn't like to back down. Both of which cause my fiance several headaches when it comes time to pick a movie to watch. ;-) But how have I managed to not only gather people to my banner but also to succeed and grow? Well that is a good question to which I still have no answer to. I have been in two guilds in two other MMO's Star Wars Galaxies and Final Fantasy 11. Due to the amount of text I will be breaking this post into two parts with the first one posted today and the second part later. So prepare yourself to step back into the wayback machine and read on if you dare! Lot of text incoming, you've been warned...

More thoughts on Cataclysm

Last night I managed to ding 81 on both my mage and my premade shaman. The funny thing is while my mage got most of his xp in Vashj'ir and just a little bit in Hyjal, my premade shaman got 80% from one quest chain...in Northrend. Even though he is a premade character and transferred with exalted Northrend factions...I had to do the Sons of Hodir chain to unlock them so I could get my shoulder enchants. I got one million xp from the sons of Hodir chain and that is only counting non daily quests. I stopped doing quests for the sons after I got Thorim his hammer and I decided to make my way to a new zone to explore a little bit.

Now my mage has been questing with my fiancee, who was playing her shadow priest. We dominated every quest we had and I love my mage even more! We only played the last two nights on these alts and each session was around 2 hours or less. Now if you are questing by yourself you will of course get more xp and move quicker so if  xp rewards stay the same you should be able relatively quickly, at least to level 81/82. After that I don't know how much xp is required. So with it being relatively easy to level my mage should be 85 pretty quick, followed by my pally. After that I am am going to be forced to decide who I want to level! I haven't tried out healing on my shaman yet but I plan on it tonight and if it goes well maybe my shammy will be next up. I still plan on leveling a Gnome priest, Worgen rogue, AND a Dwarf shaman. Yes...I like to level. The new quests and areas are pretty cool so far so I don't think that I will have any issues leveling quickly. Gonna be fun times ahead that's for sure.

I'll probably post tomorrow how tonight's beta adventure went and hopefully I'll have some fun adventures to share. By the way, for you readers out there, is there anything you guys would like to know about the beta? I don't mind checking stuff out on the beta server. I don't plan on posting spoilers or anything but testing out game mechanics and so on is fine. Please post a comment with your questions.

Impressions of the Beta

*This is will not be a spoiler filled post! This will be about my experience on the beta so far! I will do my best to avoid spoilers!* 


So...I got in the Beta about two weeks ago...and only a few gnomes were lit on fire and launched at the Blizzard offices. I actually got in not through Blizzards random key handout but through a website contest that was giving out keys to the beta as the prize! Now I rarely win things and for me to win a beta key...I was so shocked. It sadly made for a LONG day at work on the day I won since I got the email with the key in the morning before I left for work. Being the huge geek that I am I left it downloading so that when I got home it would be ready to play.

These are a few of my favorite things

This week's shared topic over at Blog Azeroth asks what mementos you have kept and why? Well I thought long and hard about that and figured I would answer from my mage's viewpoint. My mage has a full bank with all bank slots purchased and open space in his bank is rare. Why you may ask? Well...he is my oldest character and therefore has the most mementos that I have picked up along the way and can't force myself to part with. From my collection of epicly sexy tabards to my favorite holiday items, even my collection of ZG coins that I am slowly turning in for rep, I tend to hold on to things that mean some thing to me.

The biggest collection that I have in my bank is my collection of epic gear. I still have every single piece of epic gear that I have won from a raid. This collection also includes gear from this expansion that I have ultimately replaced with upgrades from ToC and ICC. as well as gear from Vanilla and TBC. The set that is my favorite and that I think makes my mage looks awesome is my raiding set from Vanilla. My mage is decked out in 6/8 T1, T2 helm, PvP gloves, a sorcerous dagger, and therazanes grip. No matter what happens I will never give up these pieces because I seriously busted my butt in MC, Ony, and even AV to get each item. They will always hold a special spot in my heart.

So...what have you held on to that means a lot to you?

Signs that your instance run is going to fail

So I've been running a lot of randoms lately and I've come across a lot of bad instance groups. Most of the bad groups have very distinct characteristics that point to them being bad and that you should run for the hills if you end up in these groups:

1. If your healer has more health then your tank and both are in the proper spec/gear.

2. If your tank has more spell power then your healer...and your tank isn't a paladin.

3. If your healer disconnects after a pull, your tank pulls anyway and wipes but still insists on continuing without a healer.

4. If your tank insists that they know the instance and has run it countless times...yet they keep pulling unnecessary mobs and/or they get lost and lead the group into a dead end.

5. If your tank dies on the first pull and then states that they weren't in the right gear/spec which is why they died. They then proceed to switch into the right gear/spec...and die even faster on the exact same pull.

6. If your tank keeps needing on all the gear that drops and claims that it's an upgrade then upon inspecting them you realize that they are actually wearing the gear...even if the drops are cloth/leather.

7. If your tank/healer repeatedly rolls dench/pass on greens that are obvious upgrades and when you bring it up to them they get mad at you for "telling them how to play their class."

8. If your group is doing so bad that a hunter mentions that their pet can tank, your tank/healer agree wholeheartedly and want to try it out...even though the hunter isn't BM and they don't even have a tanking pet.

9. If your healer dies every trash pull and your tank yells at any cloth wearing class for not stepping up and healing when the healer died...even though the group consists of a lock and a mage.

10. If your healer is out dpsing everyone in the group without actually attempting to dps. For example: thorns, ret aura, or disc priests reflective damage.

If you've had one or more of the above...then I hope your repair bill was not too high. If anyone has some more signs that your group is doomed to fail please post them. The better prepared you are to recognize a fail group, the better your chances are of avoiding them.

Tidying up the place

As some of you may have noticed I added a few new things to the blog like the about me and faq sections under the banner. Well today I finally joined the millions of people on Twitter. That's right Jed can now be found on Twitter! My Twitter link can be found here as well as on the Twitter gadget on the sidebar. So if you are a blogger on Twitter and are looking to follow a really cool guy...then you should follow someone else BUT if you are bored enough to want to follow me clearly I am powerless to stop it. I am always looking to make my blog more interesting so if any of you awesome readers have any tips please feel free to send them my way.

Well now that the tidying up is done, let's move on to some WoW fun. I can now cross off another item from my bucket list. I am now officially Loremaster Jedem! That's right be in awe of my sheer awesomeness...or pity my sheer stubborness and refusal to give up on getting it done. All I have to say is that Icecrown sucks as a questing zone. Way too many group quests at the end for my tastes but I got lucky and found a guildee who also was trying to finish up the zone for his northrend loremaster so we 2 manned all the group quests. Who needs tanks and heals when you can use MAGE POWAH!? Between his arcane mage and my frost mage we killed things so fast that mobs were still standing after they died because their brains hadnt processed that they were dead already. Was good times and now I am on to the remaining things on the list. I wonder if I could talk the Lich King into just dropping dead at my feet so I can cross that one off? Guess only time will tell.

Drops in the Bucket

So for those of you who have been following my bucket list progress, I have good news to share! I can now cross off another item from the list. The other day my mage picked up his new and sexy tabard from the mailbox. That's right, after many long and boring hours farming for rep and honor I was finally able to get 25 tabards! This makes the second item from my bucket list that I have gotten, with the first being Hail to the Chef.

I am still working on the rest of my list and with any luck loremaster will be the next one I can cross off. I am currently 117/140 quests complete in icecrown and that is the last one that I need to finish. The only problem is that I am reaching the point in icecrown where the remaining quests are all group quests and worse yet, they are phased, which is a huge pain to get a group for. I am also working on getting exalted with 40 factions on my mage as well. I started getting a lot of rep while farming for tabards, mounts, and vanity pets. I am at 34/40 at the moment and it seems that all of my easy faction grinds are out of the way so I am left with some difficult grinds ahead of me. Fun times ahead.

To Beta or not To Beta?

First off I want to state that I still don't have a beta key. I know, it's a crime that I have not received one yet. But as I sit at my computer reading WoW.com and MMO-Champion, I can't help but lust over all the pictures of worgen running around, all the old world flying being done, and of course all the sexy new talents that I have not been able to allowed to interact with. I have to take a moment and seriously ask myself...do I really want to play in the Beta?

Do I really want to spoil all the awe inspiring newness that the Cataclysm is sure to bring? Do I really want my first hand impression of cataclysm to be a buggy and incomplete beta? Do I really want to deal with the frustration of the beta client crashing midway through stuff constantly? Do I really want to not experience the joy of downing instances with my guildees?

But...on the other hand all the information coming out of the beta makes it look really amazing and I really, really, really want to try it. Worgen look so awesome and flying in the old world looks so incredible. Seeing all of the new content before anyone else dos would definitely be so cool. Playing around with the new talent trees would also let me get used to them before they go live so I could totally have an advantage over everyone else.

Right now all of this has just been a silent argument in the back of my head but if I get a beta invite...expect some serious back and forth arguments about whether I should do it or not. What would you guys do? Would you beta it up or would you wait for the finished product?

How AoA celebrates!

So my last post was about how we were celebrating our 5th anniversary as a guild and what a long strange and fun journey its been for us. I decided that since it was a celebration that we would have a guild event where we could each express our happiness that our guild has done something that sadly most guilds on our server are never able to do...survive intact for so long. So looking back at the many events that we have done as a guild I picked the funnest event we've hosted which was...the Gnomish Death Race!

What is the Gnomish Death Race you might ask? Well its a Race of Death with Gnomes! Participants roll a level 1 gnome of whatever class and sex that they want and run to the gates of Ironforge. Once all the racers are there the race begins them running through the zone into Loch Modan then hitting the road south through the tunnel through the Searing Gorge and running through Blackrock Mountain and coming out into Burning Steppes and heading south through Redridge and cutting across Elwynn and finally ending up at the finishing line at the gates of Stormwind. Along the way they will of course have to deal with mobs killing them repeatedly as well as other racers kiting mobs into their path. It is a lot of fun and we had 8 or 9 racers I think so you can bet that there were a lot of small gnome skeletons along the race route. My lovely fiance was nice enough to donate 1000 gold as prize money for the top three winners who were Yellowmellow in first, Ninyeave in second, and Maros in third. The last place gnome, Praye, received one copper from me. Much fun was had.

If I can't get any screen shots sent to me from people who participated then I will post them when I get home later tonight. We will probably have more death races in the future maybe with new and interesting race tracks. In the past we've done from Theramore to Gadgetzan and Shattrath to Honor Hold so maybe we will run a track somewhere in Northrend. If I remember maybe I'll even post an announcement here so if people from other realms want to participate or watch the race they can.

Celebrating a milestone

Once upon a time, 5 years to be exact, a semi new WoW player rolled a new character on a brand new PvP server (Ursin) with friends from school in order to start fresh so we could all level together with no one having any advantage. Well suddenly after an hour or so of playing as alliance everyone, except for one person who was out to lunch, decides to delete their alliance characters and reroll as horde. Well the poor guy who was out eating lunch came back and found out that he had been abandoned on a new server and all the friends who were supposed to level with him were now his most hated enemies. Whatever was he to do? Well...he was a stubborn bastard and he decided to stay alliance and level to 60 to spite all his friends. 5 years later and all the friends have either stopped playing or moved to other servers and none of them are on Ursin...except for the lone alliance member.

In case my faithful readers have not figured it out by now (and if you didn't...I have a bridge to sell you) that lone alliance player was yours truly.  I had bought a guild charter the day we all started on Ursin so we could make a guild of RL friends from school but they all vanished so I lost their signatures when they went horde. I had to spend a night spamming for signatures in Goldshire along with Battman (trying to get Dark Knights of Gotham up and running) and someone from Red. Took me a day to get the guild together but on July 24th 2005 Avengers of Azeroth was finally born. Thats right we are turning 5 on Saturday and man has it been a long and fun journey to get here. I leave you readers with a fun story from our vanilla raiding days and maybe if you guys are lucky I'll post more fun experiences from the past 5 years.

Plans for the remaining time left in Wrath

As the clock slowly ticks away until the expansion finishes beta and is finally amongst us, people seem to be either checking out of the game until it launches or they are dong their darnest to keep busy. I happen to be in the second group. Like a presidential administration trying to get out as many eleventh hour pardons out as possible, I'm getting together a list of things that I want to get done before the expansion comes along and ties me down with new stuff to do. I've put together a bucket list that I plan on completing as fast as I possibly can.(whenever I remember)

What is in my bucket list you ask? Well it's elementary my dear Watson...

How bout that Blizz

So friday after all the uproar that Blizzard caused with it's proposed changes to the forum and RealID, the CEO Mike Morhaime announced that the whole real names on the forum shenanigans were not happening after all. My first thought upon hearing this was LAWLS! I mean it was a good idea but it was implemented so horribly. I don't know who thought up how to implement it but man are they lacking ideas. Then I thought...wow Blizzard must have taken a lot of crap for them to cancel their plans and on top of that to have their CEO announce it. Clearly there was some serious crow eating over at the Blizzard HQ. But on the bright side of things, people can no longer say that Blizzard does not listen to the masses. This is a prime example of them doing so. Funny how things worked out. Also I'm posting about it today and not on friday because I have some free time at work at the moment and I didn't on friday. So enjoy this post!

Silly Blizz

So...Blizzard has found itself in a shit storm due to the whole RealID situation. While I am one of those people who don’t care one way or another about it, I am shaking my head in disapproval at how such a neat and interesting concept was implemented so horribly. I honestly thought that the RealID concept could have been pretty awesome, I could chat with friends who are on different servers, factions, etc without having change servers to do so. I have several friends who play on different servers if nothing is happening on our server so that would be really helpful to me when putting together a raid, 5man, failed WG group, etc. Does it matter to me that they would all know my real name? Not really. I have several people in my facebook friends list who I only know through WoW and when they friended me, they got access to my real name.  

Remininscing about the last few years Part: Two

What is it about thinking back on days of old that makes people want to say "well back in my day...?" I suppose that times have changed and things have indeed gotten easier with time. I was sitting at work staring at the computer trying to keep busy and sadly failing at it when I started thinking about how vanilla WoW asked so much of players, at least in PvE situations. Well everyone should take a seat as Grandpa Jed goes on and on about how things are so easy mode now compared to when I started playing.

Still alive...barely!

I blame lack of new posts on that dang real life thing, with its lame graphics and even lamer loot drops. New job has been keeping me so busy that I am barely playing WoW. :( I have stuff I want to post but I just haven't gotten a chance to type it all up and give it that special Jed magic touch. I'll see if I can post something new before the weekend.

Guildmates and You!

So if you're playing WoW(and I assume you either are currently playing or have played it at some point since you're reading this blog) then you have probably been in a guild at some point. It doesn't matter the type of guild, whether it be a leveling, a social, a raiding, a PvP, or even a guild that does all of it. I believe that being in a guild of some kind is a huge part of experiencing the game and those that have never been in one are missing out on a huge part of the game. My guild is a mainly PvE guild as we are focused on PvE content but we're not a bunch of care bears, the horde we camped until they cried politely explained the errors of being a horde on a PvP server the other night can testify. Why am I listing my guild credentials you may ask? Well because today's topic is going to be about Guilds and what they can mean for their members.

Remininscing about the last few years Part: One

Recently it was announced that the friends and family alpha has finally begun which means that soon enough the beta will start and we will be inundated with tons of information about the new expansion and all of its smexy goodness. I was thinking of that and drooling over soon to be released beta info (which probably wont start for a month or so...I think) when I realized that suddenly everything is going to change!

I know, I know...welcome to months ago when they first announced the expansion which was going to change Azeroth. It's one thing to say that a year and some change from now something is going to happen but when you say in a few weeks something is really going to happen that people like me start taking notice. I've been playing WoW for 5 years so I've spent a lot of time in Azeroth either leveling, pvping, farming, or just running around the continents. For anyone who doesn't know (and if you're reading this I am going to assume that you either play WoW or have some knowledge about the game) the new expansion that is being released this year, Cataclysm, is going to revolve around a huge world event that will cause the landscape of the game to change. Volcanoes will erupt, lands will flood, plague filled lands will be cleansed, new zones will be opened, lore characters will change, factions will grow more factious.

So why the blog topic you may ask. Well...when you've played as long as I have, Azeroth is like a kid brother or sister and the cataclysm is like watching said sibling go to their first dance or start driving. It's watching a caterpillar that you've been following turn into a butterfly before your eyes. It's like a generic metaphor for something changing. So I've decided to post about some of my experiences in the old world as Azeroth is known as now. With so many changes to Azeroth, I'll go ahead and split this into two posts so people don't have to sit through a wall of text.

Cataclysm is making me pee my pants in excitement

Seriously though...I am looking through the screenshots that MMO-Champion posted and I am having to keep from screaming out loud in excitement!!!!! The redone zones look awesome! WPL...made my jaw drop when I saw it. The bulwark looks like more then just a bunch of sticks dug into the ground, dalson's tear and felstone field look so different without the plague, and then there is Andorhal...just WOW! Uther's tomb looks so dignified and stately, just like the tomb of a great alliance hero should look. Man I can't wait to see what else is posted! I seriously wish I wasn't in school at the moment so I could squeal like a school girl at all the amazing stuff being posted!!!!

For whom the totem tolls

So...Rhommel is finally 80!!!! ZOMG! I know it's about time that I finally posted something about my shaman since I've been so busy with school, wow, job seeking, considering selling stuff on ebay, planning landscaping stuff for our backyard, proving that .9999 does in fact equal 1, solving crime part-time, coming up with excuses for not posting sooner, etc. I believe it took me about a month or so to level from 1 to 80 and looking back on it, there was never any period where I was bored or lost interest in my shaman. He has been fun since day one. Well it has been a rough few weeks while I was grinding out the levels on my little enhancement shaman and I am glad that now I can grind out gear on him to get him to be the ultimate killing machine that I know he can be.

So now I have to figure out:
1. What stats I should aim for first. What I mean by this is what finding out what hit rating I need, what expertise I need, what is my stat priority once these two stats are reached.
2. What should my spec be for maximized damage and what glyphs should I be using for that spec.
3. What is my rotation at 80.
4. What gear do I need and where can I get it.

I should hopefully be done with that list and post it sometime this weekend once I'm sure of the information out there so keep an eye out for it.

On other but just as awesome news...MMO-Champion has started releasing info about the beta including a talent calculator! So far only a few classes have been updated with new and awesome talents but resto shaman and druids have a few sexy goodies waiting for them, spriests and boomkins also have some awesome talents listed. Sadly mages and paladins don't have anything updated yet but I am sure that will be corrected soon enough!

Jed Still Wants You!

Finally got around to making this so I'm gonna post it and link to the previous post regarding recruitment:

Now make with the applying peoples!!

Jed wants YOU!

As the title says...I want you! By which what I mean is that my Guild Avengers of Azeroth (US-Ursin PVP Alliance side) is looking for new members! I know, I know. How dare I use my blog to pimp out my guild, blah blah blah ethics blah blah immoral blah blah roleplaying crap. My answer to that is...I am not forcing anyone to join my guild, I am not forcing anyone to read my blog, and I am not doing anything other then letting anyone interested in joining a guild that mine is looking for more peoples. If anyone is interested they can read on after the break for more information and if you're not interested then don't click to read more.

Let's do the Totem Warp again!

So...my darling shaman Rhommel is finally in Northrend! I know I haven't been posting much but it's because I've been busy with writing papers for school, looking for a job, and leveling Rhommel. Leveling in Outlands was fun and pretty easy but the LFD tool kind of sucked. I say this because it kept placing me in lower level instances like Ramps and Slave Pens, even though I was 67 and was eligible for higher level instances. I suppose there are more lowbie groups running ramps and sp then there are groups running the other instances.

The truth about Totems!

So I haven't been able to really post too much about my sexy shaman Rhommel lately because I've been so busy leveling him and also because of RL getting in the way. But I'm a mere 3 levels from being able to enjoy the wondrous, amazing, spectacular zones of Outland, with its amazing quest rewards that put anything I am wearing to shame! GO GO GRIND FASTER!!!!

Well in between the last shaman post and this one I've run...a lot of random dungeons...A LOT! I've been in some pretty fun groups with people who made the runs fun and I've been in groups with complete morons pulling everything by accident and wiping us for no reason other then the fact that they claimed to be bored.

More class previews

So...how bout those class previews...that I didn't get around to reviewing...at least I have a good excuse! I was busy dinging 53 on my shaman Rhommel! Clearly that should buy me a little slack! Anyway back to the previews:

Warriors:
Heroic Leap = jumping charge + thunderclap + warstomp = content Jed on his warrior!! MOAR PLXX!
Heroic Strike no longer on next swing = yays! Heroic strike doing more damage the more rage you have is even better.
Dual wielding one handers as fury = interesting, its a nice throwback to burning crusade days and it will help arms warriors actually get a 2h over a fury warrior.

Rogues:
Redirect = Woots for not losing combo points on a mob about to die! Nothing worse then losing a 4 or 5 combo stack because a mob dies before you can do something with those points.
Smoke bomb = Nice and sexy new tool to help tanks pull casters without having to run up to them and manually interrupt them. Should be interesting to see how this is balanced in arenas too.
No more weapon specialization talents = bold move by blizzard.

Death Knights:
Outbreak = Awesome for getting agro on a mob that is beating on a healer or dps who are too quick to generate threat/dps, especially when your taunts are on CD.
Dark Simulacrum = DK's are now blue mages? Being able to copy and steal a casters next spell sounds pretty cool but it'll be interesting to see it actually work.
Only having blood tanks = sad Jed. I love my frost DK and wouldn't trade him for anything and this move seriously makes me sad. Guess blizzard is tired of trying to make all three trees tank viable.

Hunters:
Cobra shot = yays for BM getting a new ability to spam instead of steady shot!
Trap launcher = kind of lazy there blizzard, taking an ability hunters already have(freezing arrow) and making it usable with all traps.
Camouflage = A new FD/shadowmeld type of ability. Could be cool or could only be useful for pvp, gonna have to wait and see on this one.
Pet management changes = WOOTS for not having to go back to town to change out a pet if your Call Stabled Pet ability is on cd. Even better because now my hunter can actually get some more spirit beasts to show off in dal!

Druids:
New abilities are kind of blah so far but at least they aren't as bad as the new lock abilities. The change to Tree of Life make me sad face. I LOVE my tree form in raids and only being able to use it when I pop a cd doesn't make me happy.

Mages:
Flame Orbs = Can't wait to see this move in use! It sounds pretty cool.
Time Warp = HEROISM or BLOODLUST if you're horde. WOOTS! Not every raid has a shaman but most will have one or more mages so giving them a heroism type ability is awesome! I plan to make a Rocky Horror Picture Show macro for when I use my Heroism!
Wall of Fog = Who needs a knockback when you can slow down anything agroing onto you so the tank can get it back before it kills anyone. This will seriously piss off people in BG's.
The changes to food at lower levels is kind of dumb to me but at least mages will be able to make an all in one food/drink to save on bag space.


Well that's about it for the class previews until tomorrow when Paladins get their review. So far I am looking forward to my shaman and mage the most with my warrior and rogue coming up after them. I really hope they don't screw up my paladin or I'll be a sad panda.

Oh and after the paladin preview I'll probably have another lowbie instance rant to post so all my blog readers(all 3 of you) can have something to look forward to!

- Jed

First class previews

So now that the priest preview was finally posted, we have had the first three of ten class changes previewed. Priests, shaman, and warlocks each had their post explaining what players can look forward to if they play these classes in the next expansion. I read each preview and cheered for some talents and boo'ed for others. So far of the three classes posted, Shaman looks to have made out like a bandit with priest coming up second and warlock being last. I suppose that is probably because shamans and priests have two class roles, dps and healer, so they need slightly more work then the single role warlock.

I am looking forward to Shaman's new abilities:
Unleash weapon - having weapon buffs like windfury, earthliving, and flametongue have an extra effect when you use this ability seems pretty cool.
Healing Rain - YES! FINALLY AN AOE HEAL!! Nuff said.
Spiritwalker's grace - being able to move and still cast a huge heal? yes plxx! Before people start claiming that this move is OP please keep in mind that it only lasts 10 seconds and has a 2 minute cd so you can't just spam it and then run around the room spam healing.

Priest's new cool moves:
Mind Spike - Yay something we can use when a mob is going to get killed before we can get a full rotation done on it. Nothing worse then having low dps because your dots didnt tick fast enough on the mob before it died.
Leap of faith - Hello deathgripping a party member who is too focused on killing a boss to realize he is standing in fire! I can see this being really popular in arenas. It has a 45 second cd so people cant just stand in fire while dpsing and expect a priest to pull them out of it.
Power word barrier - Group wide shield? Can you say awesome?! Toss it up on aoe damage heavy fights and it'll make healing just a little bit less hectic. Can't wait to see it in use.

Warlock's new awesomeness:
No more soul shards!!! Their new use is interesting but I am just happy that I wont have to spend my time farming for shards before a raid or make bag space for said shards.

Well...those are the things I'm looking forward to for the three classes. Yes I am aware that warlocks had more stuff posted for them but honestly most of it sounds kind of weak to me. I just couldn't get excited over green fire : /

Warriors, rogues, and  death knight class previews are scheduled for today and I know warriors were posted as I was writing this post. I'll probably post either tonight or tomorrow on the previews. Cataclysm is looking to be pretty fun so far and I can't wait to start seeing info from the beta!

Totally Totems

So...thirty...the big three oh. Obviously Rhommel hit 30 tonight...and picked up the awesomeness that is WINDFURY! Oh how I missed thee windfury for you are the epic enhancement ability. Oh I do love you so windfury. Have I mentioned that I <3 windfury?

Well onto the nitty gritty, leveling to 30 was interesting. I say it was interesting because I did it with very little random LFD rewards. Why did I do this you may ask? Well...it's because I HATE gnomer. It is the bane of my existence and has been since my mage first went into it way back in vanilla WoW. I hate it so much I have never gone back into the instance since then...ever. Until the other day when it randomed me into a group that was on the last boss. After a wipe and a run back we killed it...and I decided to just avoid the random LFD for a few levels. I just manually queued for specific instances which worked well.

Now the fun part is getting the remaining rep that I need to get exalted with SW so I can pick up an epic horsey at level 40. Fun times indeed!

Talking Totems

Hmmm still working on that title but I'll get it eventually. For the moment: Rhommel is now 20! I've been questing AND using the LFD tool to get the xp I need. The LFD tool has produced some...odd group compositions. From tanks who chain pull like it's a heroic to hunters who melee and don't have a pet. It has definitely been interesting but I've gotten to 20 without any serious issues. I am gonna complain about the free satchel you get for running a random, it's supposed to give you a random blue piece of gear but it seems that all I got from it was belts for the 5 levels I've been randoming instances.

Oh well, such is life. I am really looking forward to 30 because that's when I get my air totem...and soon after I GET WINDFURY!!!!! <3 Windfury! Bag space is still an issue as I haven't had the luck to get another bag to drop off random mobs so I've had to juggle items in my inventory. I am also putting off getting a mount because I am not a fan of the elekk mounts draenei have access to. Since I am doing quests in human territory I am also accumulating SW rep so I'll end up getting a human eventually. Until then I can go go ghost wolf form! Well back to the grind I go!

Totems, Totems, Totems!

Hmm still working on a good title for blogs about my little shaman. I suppose I'll eventually stumble across a title I like. Well on to the meat of the matter: my shaman is the awesome. That is correct ladies and gentleman, my shaman has run his very first dungeon using the LFD tool. Honestly...it was a very interesting experience.

After waiting for like 15 minutes(I know, 15 whole minutes ew!) I finally got placed into a group. I zone in and find that I am in Ragefire Chasm with 4 other lowbies. The tank a paladin...could not for the life of him hold agro, the hunter ended up tanking more often then not, the healer ditched the group after a few pulls. We then requeued for another healer...who then joined the group for 10 seconds before ditching the party. After another healer did the same thing, we ended up with a shaman healer who apparently had taken a graveyard rez and therefore had rez sickness. Since his mana was reduced due to the sickness, he was constantly oom and bailed on the group after a few pulls...even after his sickness had gone away.

Finally we got a priest healer who was able to not only heal the pally "tank" but he was keeping up the hunter and his pet, who were doing the real tanking. We downed the demon boss and got the achievement for completing the instance but we were going to go kill the other boss for a chance at some more loot. The pally left the group and we 4 manned our way to the boss who went down faster then Toyota stock. I got a nifty belt from the lfd random reward bag and some xp. I had a good time honestly, even with the bad tank and constant stream of pugged healers.

And so concludes my first instance. It was definitely a good time and I will continue to use the LFD tool along my way to 80.

Totemic Recall

Hmm still working on the name for the posts about my new shaman...not sure what it will end up being. Anyway, back to the matter at hand: MY SHAMAN! Rhommel dinged lvl 10 last night! Woots! I decided that I hate the draenei starter zone so I ran to the human starting area which is a lot easier to do now since there is a boat from Auberdine to SW harbor. As someone who had to do the long death run from Menethil Harbor to IF/SW back in the day, I really appreciate this shortcut.

So far the biggest concern I have for my shaman is bag space. I only have a 4 slot bag that I got from a quest reward, I suppose I'll have to start selling herbs on the ah for moneys to buy some more bags. So far playing my shaman is fun because of the limitations I set for myself. I think it makes the game a little bit more challenging and closer to what my experience was the first time I leveled a character. Oh and by the way murlocs are the bane of my existence once again! Especially the murlocs that decide to use a potion when they are nearly dead, I mean who does that anyway? How dare you use a pot when I've nearly killed you...and then you kill me! The outrage! The horror! The exclamation point! 

I think I got a little side tracked there, anyway I put my talent point into enhancement and picked up a sexy gray two handed axe which cost me all my hard earned silver to train in!(well technically it was also training 2h maces and then 2h axes) I can't wait for level 15 when I get to start using the LFD tool. I think it will be interesting actually running lowbie instances with fellow lowbies instead of run through. Oh VC boat wheel, how I have missed jumping on you to avoid a group wipe! My shaman's future is looking bright!

A new look at enhancement shaman

So I've decided to level a new shaman character and to level him as enhancement. Not only that, but I am going to level him with no BoA gear, no run throughs from higher level friends, no special help from anyone. This alt will be played just like someone who has just started playing the game. The only thing that I will do that a new player cant do is that I will put the new shaman in my guild. I think I would lose interest real quick if I didn't have access to my guilds chat lol.

I have decided on a name already(after a few hours of trying to come up with a good one): Rhommel. This name is the closest I could get to the original Rommel's name. What can I say, I'm a history nerd as well as a WoW nerd. I'll be doing my best to document how my progress is and how different it is to level again with no outside help. One thing is sure, it's going to be interesting.

Hello world, meet Rhommel:

Jed's Top 10 tips for Guild Leaders

Well the other day I mentioned that I had been both raid and guild leader since I created my guild the second day that the Ursin server was launched. (Stupid people not signing my charter keeping me from being open for business the first day!) Ursin was opened for character creation on July 22, 2005, which means that my guild has been around for almost 5 years now.(woo hoo) In that time we've been raiding, we have raided in Molten Core, Onyxia, Karazhan, Gruul, Naxxramas, and finally Icecrown Citadel, with a few other random raids in between. We've had our ups and downs and have held together, in part because I am too stubborn to give up as well as the fact that I strive to create a fun atmosphere for people to play the game in.

Would I consider myself an expert in leading a guild? I would loudly answer NO! But I think I could offer a few tips for anyone looking to start a guild or even someone who is currently leading a guild. So without further ado, here are 10 tips that all guild leaders should know, I'll list them out and after the break I'll go into more depth for each tip:

1. Have a clear goal
2. Be confident
3. Don't be afraid to be picky
4. Be fair
5. Be patient
6. Delegation is your friend
7. Know your limits
8. Study up
9. Be willing to change
10. Relax

Pugs and Not Healing them

So a guildee brought this blog post to my attention and after reading it and giggling a little bit I started thinking about all the pugs I've had to heal since the LFD tool was introduced. As a healer or tank you hold all the power in the group and sometimes...that power can corrupt! I think all tanks and healers that have had to pug runs have a list of people they either don't heal or intentionally let pull agro so they will die. Now please don't read this as I'm bad and let everyone die because I hate people and puppies and all that is good including pie. I LOVE PIE! And rightfully so, it is a wonder food after all.

On the subject of alts...

So when you have 11 80s on the same server...can you really have a main or alt character? I constantly have people ask me how many alts I have and they are amazed/disgusted/shocked when I respond that I have 11 80s. Yes...I am serious I have that many 80s, and no I didn't bot them to 80. People instantly respond that I have no life and spend all day on WoW farming something or other because there is no way a normal player could have that many high level characters. My typical response is that leveling has been nerfed so much since the original game came out that you cant help but level fast. I remember the horrible grind to 60 and even worse the horrible grind to get gear from 5mans back then. The game has also been out since 2008 and that is plenty of time to level more then one alt.

But which alt is my main ?

ICC Raiding Tips

So ICC has been out a while now and people have been finding out all sorts of little tips and tricks to get it cleared. From all the reading I've done and my own personal experience I've decided to share some of these fun little tips for ICC! Some are known already and some may be new but for anyone who is just now getting into the raid, they will hopefully all be helpful.

Oh and a quick note, I am trying out a new thing in my blogs: breaking them up a little so readers don't have to scroll through a wall of text to read past blogs. I will also be trying to mess with the graphic part of the blog but that might take me a little bit longer lol. If anyone has any feed back please be sure to leave some.

ICC zone buff

So last night we went into ICC for our weekly raid and we got to enjoy the new fancy pantsy zone buff that was introduced with tuesday's patch. After reading through many other blog sites it seems that this zone buff is very controversial. One side claims it makes clearing the zone too easy and further dumbs down the game while the other side claims that it allows more people to get into the zone and get past certain bosses. Personally...I'm for the buff. The biggest reason for this is that the hardcore progression guilds have the option to not use the buff if they don't want it on. Blizzard was smart enough to allow us this option.

I had wanted to experience the zone buff before I wrote on it because I wanted to see if it helped my guild a ton or if it was an over hyped buff. We managed to clear the first wing of ICC faster than we had ever done it before which was pretty amazing. Part of it was we had great dps/heals/tanks and part of it was that everyone was pushing out just a little bit more of everything that made the raid work due to the buff. I feel that while the buff will help you move faster in the zone, until it is increased(which it will until it reaches a 30% in increase) it wont help you down the Lich King unless you were already getting close to down him. Right now its just a little push to your stats but once it increases further, more people will be clearing the entire zone.

Will a fresh 80 with blues be able to run ICC and clear it with the maxed 30% buff? No. Will a guild who was struggling with a certain boss be able to down it and move on further in the zone with the maxed buff? Yes. Ultimately this is what the developers want to happen. Whats the point of having an end game raid that only 10% of the wow population can clear on regular 10 man mode? This buff will allow struggling guilds to get further and see more of the content before the next expansion. No guild will go from struggling on Deathbringer Saurfang previously to downing the Lich King with the buff.

To summarize, I like Pie. Oh and the zone buff is helpful and full of smexyness. The end.
- Jed

Tanking Tips and You!

Pretty soon I will have a full deck. What I mean by this is that my hunter is currently 79 and once I ding 80 on him I will have an 80 of every class (and a second pally.) Because of this I've had the pleasure of tanking on three out of four tanking classes, sorry druids but feral just never interested me. Now some of these tanking alts started out life as dps only and were moved to a tanking offspec(warrior) and some were always meant to be tanks(paladin/death knight) with a dps or healing offspec. Now I've tanked every instance/raid possible between my three tanks and I'd like to think that I picked up a few helpful hints for other tanks looking for some help with threat management, tps, or even abilities.

Shaman healing is more then just chain healing.

Flashback to the night The Burning Crusade was released, I had just gotten home from Walmart and installed the expansion while taunting my guild mates in vent who hadn't gotten the game yet. I decided to make a shaman and run him around Stormwind instead of leveling him just because I could and because everyone else who had a shaman was busy actually leveling in the starting zone for the Draenei. Clearly being the first shaman in SW, Westfall, Redridge, and Darkshire was more important then actually leveling. I leveled as enhancement until 60 when I switched him to resto and raided for the rest of the expansion as a chain healing shaman. With this new expansion and dual specializations I decided to level my shammy to 80 as elemental and switch to resto for raiding. Now with the introduction of the Icecrown Citadel raid, I've had the luck of being able to get into several ICC pugs and been even luckier to get gear from these instances. Now as a resto shaman player, I see so many other shaman doing things that just make me shake my head and wonder why they are doing it wrong.

So I think this entry will be half rant about nub shamans and half helpful tips to reduce these bad habits people form. Will it work??? Don't know, but I suppose we'll see.

Affliction Warlocks and You! Part 3

And after two weeks it’s all finally almost over! The long awaited part 3 of my guide to affliction warlocks! In case anyone missed the previous two parts, you should read part one and part two and hopefully you'll enjoy this last part.

6. Farming like it’s going out of style

So after dinging 80 I was faced with the fun challenge of trying to decide what gear I needed to replace first and once that was figured out, what instances I was going to hit up first. With introduction of the Icecrown Citadel instances, farming for gear has become seriously easy. You can get armor, weapon/offhand, and even trinkets from these instances alone. Running them in regular mode also still rewards emblems of triumph so I would seriously recommend doing so.

When I dinged 80 I needed badges badly, so many badge rewards that were giant upgrades from my instance blues. Since this is just a quick guide I am only going to list some upgrades for weapons and trinkets since to me they are the hardest pieces to upgrade. I would say that priority should be upgrading your weapon since chances are you're either going to be wielding the boa one or one with under 300 spell power. Your options are going to be the following:
Non Heroic
1. Flameheart Spell Scalpel Revered with Kirin Tor - Highly recommend this weapon.
2. Jeweled Coronation Sword - King Ymiron Utgarde Pinnacle
3. Sempiternal Staff - Chrono Lord Epoch Culling of Stratholme

Heroic:
1. Seethe - Devourer of Souls Heroic Forge Of Souls - Best Weapon Pre-raid
2. Surgeon's Needle - Forgemaster Garfrost - Heroic Pit of Saron
3. Spectral Kris - The Black Knight Heroic Trial of the Champion

Affliction Warlocks and You! Part 2

Well that was a fun little break but now to get down to business...finishing this guide! I attribute lack of posting to dinging 80 on my warrior and gearing him up from heroic badge farming.

Incase you somehow missed the first part of this guide you can read it here.

On today’s agenda we have glyphs and gear upgrades.

Affliction Warlocks and You! Part One

Today’s blog is going to be about warlocks and how to play them as affliction. So having recently dinged my sexy gnome lock 80, I went about the fun task of both gearing him and fine-tuning his spec for optimal dps. I have been affliction on him since vanilla WoW and throughout BC, I decided to keep him as affliction with some points in destro.

After reading through a few blogs and forum posts about warlock dps I came up with a list of things I needed to do to make my lock the ultimate lock badass. This is the list:

1. Get hit capped
2. Up my spell power
3. Get a good dot timer
4. Check which glyphs are better at 80 then what I currently have for leveling.
5. Replace my mix of crappy quest greens and sub 80 instance gear with the new sexy triumph gear.
6. Prioritize the list of instances I need to farm for non badge gear(weapons, trinkets, etc)
7. Work out a good spell rotation

It's begun!

So I was talking to one of my officers about something and it got brought up that I should start a blog about WoW since I have both been playing for over four years and have led our guild that whole time. Now in that time I've both done and seen a lot of things. Some of these fun times have been seeing the ZG plague wreck havoc in IF, kiting Doom Lord Kazzak into SW, surviving the lag of the AQ opening event, replacing all my hard won tier gear with greens from trash mobs in hellfire penninsula, discovering how easy having a flying mount made questing, clearing kara for the first time, zerging Sarth10+3 for the nightfall title, and getting almost 100 vanity pets on my mage.(yes I am totally proud of that one)

And those are just a few of the memories off the top of my head that I think of when I look back on how long I've been playing WoW. I think I will write on random stuff that pops into my head i.e. opinions on new changes to the game, how to play as a class guides, random rants about loot, etc. It will be fun times...hopefully. At the very least it'll give me something to do while I'm busy not paying attention in class.

Not sure how many people will even read this blog but honestly...I have that much downtime inbetween classes somedays.