Classical beauty

*Opens rusted shut door with difficulty*

Hello folks, its me, your favorite mage Jed! Now I know that it's been a minute or two since I wrote a blog post but lately I've had that itch that only blogging can scratch. First off let me apologize for not having written anything since...2015?! Well crap that is a lifetime ago. Since then my adorable baby girl has grown into an adorable four year old who still demands a TON of my time. I've also been streaming a crap load more and have made it to twitch affiliate. I know that y'all are super impressed by the streamer part more than the baby part. Well anyway that's enough of me and my story, lets go on with the whole blogging thingy!

*Replaces burned out light bulbs and clears off cobwebs*

There's an old saying "everything old is new again" and as I get older, it does seem to be proving itself truer and truer every year. Blizzard announced at Blizzcon 2017 that they were going to be bringing us World of Warcraft Vanilla in the near future and I got to tell you that there was not a single person in that hall that wasn't cheering their mind out. Fast forward to today and we are counting down the global launch of Classic Warcraft. What is Classic Warcraft?

Keep on keeping on

Life moves pretty fast. If you don't stop and look around once in a while, you could miss it. I think this quote from Ferris Beuller's Day Off kind of sums up what I've been up to the last few weeks. The last time I blogged I wrote about Virtual Realms and Flex raiding and since then we have received more information about both. I am eagerly awaiting both and I wish I could speed up the patch so that it could be 5.4 already! When I started blogging I had so much free time that I could write a lot of posts in between classes but when I got a job I suddenly lost all that free time. Eventually I had the desire to blog but whenever I would sit down to write something I would get writers block. You (the few readers I still have) probably read the few words I write and think to yourselves "how the hell can it take such a long time to write such short, uninteresting, mindless drivel??" 

Well my response is..uhmm..yeah I got nothing. But since you do read my blog regularly, I can safely reason that you:
1) have bad taste since you read my ramblings
or 
2) enjoy punishing yourself by reading my blog 
or 
3)are either used long delays betwen my blog posts 
or 
4) have me on your feedreader by accident and are now wondering who the hell I am.

So like yeah!

I apologize for the above. I blame global warming or something.

Virtual Flexing

A little bit ago I wrote about my low population server and I listed out a few things that I felt that Blizzard could do to help out not just my server but all low pop servers. Included in that list were the suggestions to merge servers and to open the current tier for cross realm raidability. Two weeks ago Blizzard released not just one but TWO things that I feel will help out all low pop servers when they go live in the 5.4 patch. The two things: Virtual Realms and Flexible Raiding. Do Blizzard developers read my blog and think I have great ideas? Probably not but at the very least they are finally doing something to help low pop servers.

To all the lowbie groups

I am going to start this post by announcing that this is a rant. If you have no desire to read my angry rant, please feel free to browse through my other posts until you find something more to your liking. If you’re still with me, hold on to something because this is going to get angry and possibly violent. I’ve been leveling my panda and I LOVE it! They are a fun class to play regardless of spec and I highly recommend leveling one. Now because I am one of those weird people who like to play a class to level cap as the same spec that they are going to be at said level cap, I tend to level some characters as healers or tanks. For my panda I decided to level as a Brewmaster, which is the tank spec. 

This means that I’ve run a lot of dungeons so far. I usually quest for a bit and then queue for a bit so that I don’t end up running the same dungeon a million times in a row. Nothing like running RFD 5 times in a row to make you want to stop playing for the night. Anyway, since I’ve been leveling I end up in a lot of groups with everyone but me wearing all heirlooms. Why don’t I have heirlooms you ask? Well because until this expansion each account could only have 10 character slots per server. I had one of each class at level cap. I had no need to buy heirlooms because I didn’t have a character that could benefit from them and I would rather spend the JP on other stuff like mounts or crafting mats or gnomish hookers. Had I been smart, I would have bought them with the extra JP I had before it got turned into gold in 5.0.4 or whatever patch it was. But since I’m dumb and didn’t remember to do that, I have no heirlooms.

The Seven Year Itch

Once upon a time in WoW, there was a stubborn guy who was abandoned by all his friends on a brand new server. Instead of despairing and following them, this super stubborn fella decided to create a guild and show all his supposed friends that they were wrong for leaving him behind. From this stubbornness something was created that has continued to thrive to this day: the Avengers of Azeroth guild. I’m sure that some of you read that last sentence and probably thought to yourselves “wait all this over some dumb video game guild?” To those people I respond with: YES NOW SHUT UP AND LET ME CONTINUE!

Why am I rambling about my guild yet again? Well because it's the bee's knees duh! Also because we have officially turned 7 years old today July 24th. Our server was opened on July 23, 2005 and my guild came into existence the next day. We would have started that first day but I wasn't able to get enough people to sign my charter until the next day. As it stands now, my guild is the oldest active guild on the server. There is only one older guild on the server but they are not really active and so my guild > theirs.

To celebrate we are going to be holding one of our super awesome traditional events: a Gnomish Death Race! This year its going to be an Outland style race, from Shattrath to Honor Hold. The race will start at 5pm Central Standard Time and will probably go for about an hour or so. We will provide a Ventrilo server for all the racers to join us before the race to facilitate invites and such.

Sounds amazingly awesome right? Want to attend the race? Well all you have to do is roll a level 1 gnome on the Ursin-PvP server and send a whisper to Jedem or anyone online in Avengers of Azeroth. The race is always a fun time and some people go all out with their racers by sending themselves vanity pets and fashionable white gear. No heirlooms are allowed in the race as they provide an unfair advantage since not everyone has easy access to them.

For anyone who can't make the race but would like to watch it, I will be streaming it live: http://www.livestream.com/jedsstream

Its a race...of DEATH! I hope to see you all at the race!

SWTOR Advanced Classes and You

I created this quick explanation for my guild and posted it on our forum and I decided that I might as well make it a blog post since I'm sure at least one or two of you people out in the interwebs may benefit from this post. So enjoy this quick explanation of what Advanced Classes in SWTOR are and what you should know before picking yours.


First off, there are 4 basic classes: Jedi Knight/Sith Warrior, Jedi Consular/Sith Inquisitor, Smuggler/Imperial agent, Trooper/Bounty Hunter. Three of the four can tank(Warrior/Inquisitor/BH) and three of the four can heal(Inquisitor/BH/Agent), provided you select the right advanced class. Two of the four can use lightsabers(Knight/Warrior and Consular/Inquisitor) and the other two use blasters rifles/pistols.(Smuggler/Agent and Trooper/BH)

You start the game as one of these four basic classes and at level 10 you decide which advanced class you want to be. Now picking your advanced classes is not the same as picking your spec tree. What you are picking is whether you want to specialize in and once you do that, you can pick your talent spec. It sound confusing but it breaks down like this: lets say you roll a Sith Warrior and you want to be a tank for endgame.

Well when you finish your class quest on the starter world(usually around 9-10) you take a shuttle to the imperial fleet and get a quest to talk to a guy about advanced classes. The info the guy gives you about the two AC choices you have is kind of vague and not that helpful. But you are given two choices Sith Juggernaut or Sith Marauder.

The Sith Juggernaut can do one of two things: DPS or Tank. The Sith Marauder can do one thing: DPS. The choice for Marauders is how you dps with dots or with fast acrobatic dps.(think feral cat or a rogue) Once you pick your advanced class you put your talent point into the tree that corresponds to what you want to do; for our example of a tanking Warrior, you'd put your points into the Immortal talent tree. Now once you pick your advanced class and are feeling all bad ass about it, you should check your inventory because your trainer will give you a bag with items related to your AC. Juggernauts attack with a 1h lightsaber so you get two generators for your offhand, you can only use one at a time in your offhand but you get two because one is for dps and one is for tanking.

The tank one will have Shield %/Absorbtion % on it and the DPS one will only have the necessary dps stats. Kind of obvious which you should be using for your desired spec. I mention this because most people dont realize that they now have this bag in their inventory so they miss out on things like the generators for the Jugger and a second lightsaber for the Marauder to Dual Wield.

Now a very important thing to remember is that ONCE YOU PICK YOUR ADVANCED CLASS YOU CAN'T CHANGE IT! You can choose to respec your talents in your Advanced Class but you can't change the Advanced Class itself. So if you decide that you don't want to be a tank, you can respec your points and go into the dps tree. You can't just go to a trainer and choose to be a Marauder instead. You are stuck with the Advanced Class you chose, so choose wisely!

There is a good breakdown over at Reddit of the AC/Specs that also tells you what WoW class each will feel like. It's a good summary so you should totally check it out if you are not sure what AC you want to go with.

Twanking with a Tink

Or what to do after going from level 1 to max level in 3 days, only it's not a paid account, it's a trial account, and there are many restrictions and so, many considerations.


While I'm on my honeymoon, you my lovely readers get to enjoy the following guest post with the ridiculously long post title by my blogging buddy Revoemag. - Jed

Ok, first thing’s first.  My name is Revoemag, or as most call me, Rev.  While Jed is away, he was kind enough to ask me to write a guest post in his corner. (on his corner?) Anyway, I’ve been an off and on WoW player for a few years. Right now, I’m really an off WoW player.  My main account has been down for nearly a year now. A month or two ago, I was craving to play again and happened to read that trial accounts were free to play up to level 20 indefinitely, or until blizz changes that.  I thought, why not, and created a rogue, a class I was familiar with.  I had known Jed for a while, hanging out in the Blog Azeroth chatroom, and decided I would roll my lowbie on the Ursin server, where Jed and his Avengers were located.  I had also never really played on Alliance side and so I made a frightening little gnome named Plazlo. (as a side note, I’m not really convinced gnomes can be non-frightening despite what Jed might claim) Plaz was a fun little experiment and if you’d like more information on him, you can find it here on my regular/irregular blog.
Now then, this post is not about my scary pedo-looking gnome who Stop and Jed think is better-suited to driving a white van and offering candy to children.  No, this post is about the second and third trial toons that I rolled, Revwyn and Revys.  Rev and.... well.... Rev are both Pallies, one Horde and one Alliance, Revys the prior, Revwyn the latter.  After rogue-ing for a while on my last toon, I was really wanting to learn to tank, and the trial account was a good opportunity to do this.  I also thought it might be fun to play each Rev and compare each faction, so here we are. Anyway, part way through the process Revwyn has become the main toon that I’ve been playing, possibly because she progressed quite a bit faster than Revys.

Plazlo and his big white van, er...ram

Revwyn made it to level 20 probably in about 3 days of playing her.  Really, if one so desired, a new toon could be taken to level 20 in probably 1 day.  She started running dungeons at level 15 and getting into some battlegrounds, some meaning Arathi Basin or Warsong Gulch, the two that are available at by level 20.  After she was maxed out level-wise, I thought I would gear her up, and twink her out as I had done with Plaz.  I really didn’t know what to make of twinks at that point.  I had heard of people paying gold to turn off xp-gain and maxing out their toon at a lower level, or making a twink.  Many people choose to do this at level 19 which puts them at the top of the 15-19, formerly 10-19, battleground bracket.  19 is very common, though there are other common twink levels.  For a trial account, you can turn your xp off any time, just like a regular account, though it does cost 10 gold I believe. You could roll a 19 twink; however, if you are going to do Battlegrounds, you will be placed in the xp off bracket with paid account 19 twinks, which have a huge advantage that I will speak of later.  What most trial twinks seem to do though, is go ahead and let their level cap out at 20.  This puts them in the 20-24 Battleground xp off bracket.  In theory, people could roll a 24 paid account twink and roflstomp level 20 trial account twinks.  In my limited time in Battlegrounds at this point, I’ve seen very few 24s.  By and large, I saw mainly level 20s, and I’m guessing by what I saw and what would make sense, that they were all trial accounts.  Anyway, I thought I would make a sort of trial twink at level 20 out of Revwyn and as I searched around the web, there is a whole community of people doing this.  I found guides and forums dedicated to trial twinking, so apparently I was far from alone.

People twink characters for various reasons, some for battleground competition, some for battleground pwnage (booooo), some for running dungeons, and other reasons.  I suppose I did this for various reasons.  I wanted to spend some time getting familiar with tanking and it worked very well for this.  At level 20, you can queue up for 6 dungeons, RFC, VC, SFK, WC, BFD, and Stocks.  WC and SFK are the fairly level appropriate options at level 20 and once you are geared pretty well, as a tank BFD and Stocks work just fine.  Bosses in the latter two are 5 levels higher than you, but as a tank if you have at least a mediocre amount of hit, have a good health pool, and generate decent threat, they are fine.  If you queue for a random, really you’re going to get put into WC or SFK.  It’s never put me in any of the others once I hit level 20.  I can’t tell you how many time I’ve run those two, but it’s been too many.  You might ask why would you run these over and over, and the main answer to this is rep.  Once I discovered that the Ambassador title/achievement (gaining exalted reputation with the 6 home cities of your faction) was possible, it’s been Donkey Kong on running dungeons.  

Really I think the most efficient way of gaining rep is probably doing the starting zone quests until you reach Honored with each city (city A will gain spillover reputation while you are gaining rep for City B until city A reaches Honored) and then throwing on a particular city’s tabard to gain rep for that city while killing things in dungeons.  Doing the quests in Dun Morogh is particularly rewarding as you get 250 rep for Gnomerregan and Ironforge each for each standard quest and then spillover rep for the other cities.  Once at Honored with the cities, then running 5s is a pretty speedy way of gaining rep.  SFK rewards a little under 3000 rep per run and takes a little less than a half an hour with a decent group.  WC yields a little over 3000 rep per run and takes a little more than a half an hour with a decent group.  Really good groups move a bit quicker. This works well so you don’t feel like getting put in one dungeon gimps your gain by a significant amount.  At least I didn’t feel that way, plus I think I’d go nuts only running WC or SFK.  The variety helps.  The longest stretch of running these dungeons is of course between Revered and Exalted.  It takes about 8 runs to get from one to the other.  As it stands now, Revwyn is exalted with 5 of the 6 cities, with Gilneas being the last city, currently at Honored for her. The downside is that she now hates SFK and WC.

Revwyn

Another bonus of gaining rep as a trial twink is for the bags.  Once you hit Revered rep with a city, you can then buy that city’s 16 slot bag from their quartermaster.  This is a very good idea, as bag space for your character and the bank become necessary.  Why is bag space necessary as a trial twink? The answer is simple, professions and only 3 bag slots in the bank.  Technically, you have the ability for the normal amount of bag slots in the bank, but your gold is capped at 10, so once you need to pay 25g for your fourth bank bag slot, you’re done.  Now, back to professions.  In twinking your little butt-kicker, you are going to eventually (most-likely) want to have some nice buffs for your toon.  These buffs include things like Tasty Lion Steak, Heavy Crocolisk Stew, Course Weightstones, various pots, maybe little stone statues, etc.  Keep in mind, with trial accounts, you cannot trade with other players, use the AH, or receive mail, so anything you want that comes from a profession, you have to make.  

You will change your career path often, so having plenty of room to store various mats, enchants, and buffs is a good idea. Along with this, in choosing a profession, it is good to plan ahead.  Take that statement as far as you can go.  For maximum efficiency, think of what professions you will want to end with.  Mining, Skinning, and Herbalism have very nice benefits in Toughness, Master of Anatomy, and Lifeblood.  This all depends again on what you want to do.  Are you a tank wanting to pull multiple bosses at once in WC, (say for instance someone, somehow “accidentally” pulls Kresh the non-aggressive turtle mini-boss in WC and brings her up to your Lady Anacondra fight. Don’t ask, it hurts too much.)(or say in BFD you want to survive if someone lights all four candles to open the door to Aku’mai)(or when someone pulls Gelihast before clearing any of his room in BFD), are you wanting to pump out big numbers as dps, (OH! or someone pulls Baron Silverlaine and his entire room in SFK), are you wanting to carry the flag in Warsong Gulch? (Did I mention someone, somehow pulled Kresh from the stream in the middle of the instance up to Lady Anacondra?) All of these things factor in to where you want to end up with professions.  On a trial account, all profs are capped at 100, though as it stands, you can take secondary profs above 100 even though it says you have reached the cap.  

Another thing to consider, is racial bonuses to profs.  For instance, blood elves get a 10 skill point bonus to enchanting.  This allows you to get at least a couple more enchants.  For a tank, it would give you an extra stamina enchant to your shield, which Revys is currently flexing.  In Revwyn’s case, she gets a 10 skill point bonus to jewelcrafting, which is good because she likes shiny things and little stone men. *shrugs*  It would allow her some additional shinies and Heavy Stone Statues, which would come in handy for self heals.

Revwyn learning about shinies

There are some key things that most trial twinks, and full account twinks shoot for.  The Lucky Fishing Hat, the Arena Grand Master trinket, and PVP BoA gear.   Most are comfortable enough to state that the LFH is hands down the best headslot item for any twink at low levels.  It’s a little trickier for Alliance though.  The hat has +15 stamina and 84 armor, which in regards to health, makes it the best head slot item over anything.  The nearest Alliance piece is the Rifle Commander’s Eyepatch which has +11 stamina, +8 hit, +8 agility and 110 armor. Most would take the LFH over the RCE, but as with most gearing decisions of twinks, it’s situational. The RCE is a really great piece for a set of +hit gear for times when you’re taking on higher level mobs. Anyway, to get the LFH, one needs to fish up Keefer’s Angelfish, a rare fish, during the Sunday fishing derby.  Revys has tried this once and failed and I’ve yet to have Revwyn try it since she has the eyepatch.  She’ll get there though.  

Now the Arena Grand master trinket is considered by most to be the all around best trinket to get as a lowbie twinkleton.  It has +12 stamina and upon use gives you a bubble which absorbs 1000 damage over 20 seconds. First of all, 1000 damage is huge at level 20 for any purpose.  It’s a fantastic emergency button for any role and either PVP or PVE.  The health bonus alone is also very hefty.  Now for the crappy part.  To get one of these, you need to turn in 12 Arena Master trinkets to Short John Mithril in the Gurubashi Arena.  The Arena Master trinkets are looted from the chest that Short John leaves in the center of the Gurubashi Arena every 3 hours at 12:00, 3:00, 6:00, and 9:00 server time.  Looting the chest takes 8 seconds (I think) and the arena is a free-for-all PVP area.  This can and does suck depending on your server.  Sometimes multiple level 85s show up as getting the AGM is an achievement.  Sometimes other twinks show up.  Sometimes nobody shows up (\o/).  Ursin was very kind to Revwyn as she was able to get 2 Arena Grand Master trinkets in less than 2 weeks.  I would check most mornings before work, most evening slots, and day slots when possible.  She also hit up a couple of the 2:00AM slots. (my actual time is 2 hours ahead of server time)  Most of the time on Ursin, nobody would show up.  So, for any of you thinking of starting a twink either paid or free to play, Ursin is a great place to get going and you could always server transfer later.  PVP BoA gear is really something that I’m not all that familiar with yet, but if you’re on a server where competition for the Arena Grand Master trinket is fierce, then you might want to shoot for getting these first for the stat help, including resilience.

Currently, Revwyn is at a good point of relaxation.  She’s got pretty good pieces in every slot, at least for most situations.  Since her activities are varied, she’s got a few different gear sets she’ll go between.  It depends if she’s carrying a flag, tanking big pulls, taking on high level mobs, it just depends.  That’s one I wish I would have been better at, gear selection.  There were many times where quest rewards wouldn’t really give me a decent mail item with appropriate stats for say tanking.  In retrospect though, there were several times I just randomly picked a quest reward when nothing notable was there and later learned I could’ve picked up say a leather piece with huge stamina.  Now ideally, Revwyn wouldn’t ever wear something like that, but being a twink isn’t always ideal for what gear is available and so wardrobe issues are common.  There might be situations where I would forsake the armor and strength loss and really need to push stamina.  

So, if I started a new twinker, I’d try to be better at thinking about situational circumstances.  Another thing I might try to do is to plan my race better.  The racial abilities that certain races have can really make a difference with your gameplay and gearing.  The big one that comes to mind is the human racial Every Man for Himself. With that, humans can forsake the Insignia of the Alliance and pretty much equip 2 Arena Grand Master trinkets all the time.  With Revwyn, she has a nice HoT racial, but for PvP, she has to equip the Insignia.  Though, once she uses her Insignia, she can then quickly equip her second AGM and have the extra 120 health.  For dungeons at her level though, she just runs with 2 AGMs all the time.  She can still get locked up, but as a pally, she’s got enough ranged abilities that I’ve never had it be a problem.

Well, that’s the long of it.  Is playing on a trial account as fun as a normal paying account? No. Is it fun? Sure.  It really works well for filling in the gaps when you really don’t feel like you’re going to play enough to pay for an account.  Also, it’s free and for free, it’s pretty fun.  The nice thing is, if I feel like not playing for a few weeks, I don’t even have to think about the money side.  It will be there waiting when I do feel like playing.  It wouldn’t be for everybody though, I understand.  Also, when comparing trial twinks to normal twinks at the same level range, normal paying account twinks statwise kick the crap out of trial twinks every time.  With BoA gear and much heftier enchants, paid twinks hit harder and are much healthier.  

Anyway, for the immediate future Revwyn will be running 5s with her Gilneas tabard, fishing for Keefer’s Angelfish on Sundays, queue-ing up for some BGs (not Bee Gees, though Jive Talkin is pretty sweet), enjoying holidays, and finishing up some gear.  Not looking forward to farming for the Diamond Hammer as a world drop or the Foreman’s Leggings from Foreman Thistlenettle.  BTW, Revwyn’s killed that bastard a terrible amount of times, and he will not drop his pants.  One nice thing about horde, they have pretty good pants. (in the form of Kalecgos Pants from a quest chain) The next long term project for her could be getting enough honor points to buy some PvP BoA gear, but I haven’t decided if I wanna take the time.  This was not intended to be a guide, but I know it got a little preachy.  Anyhow, It’s what I’ve been doin.  For more information on twinking and trial twinking, just snoop around on the web.  I particularly like Cynwise’s Green Tinted Goggles, Psynister’s Notebook, and Twinkinfo.com.  Any thoughts or suggestions, just send ‘em my way.  Oh, and if anyone has a lowbie they’re leveling or otherwise and need a twank to run them through some of these instances, feel free to give me a shout.

Blogaversary!

My blog is a year old now. Wow. I honestly didn't think that when I started writing this blog that I would stick with it for a year or that I would even have any non guild readers. My very first post was on January 25, 2010 and I meant to write a huge year in review post but work kept interrupting me every time I wrote more then two sentences. So for the moment I will just post this while I try to finish the other post. Woots for a year of ramblings!

Oh and here are a few screen shots from the Gnomish Death Race that I held on sunday to celebrate my blogaversary. We had nine racers participate and everyone had a great time.
 A shot of the racers lining up at the start of the race:

 The race has begun:

 The pack enters the tunnel to Searing Gorge:

 The first racers into Burning Steppes:

 The winners crossing the finish line:

 Here are the three winners and my mage:

Thanks to everyone who participated in helping me celebrate. /cheers

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?

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!

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.

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.