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.