Eight days...

So... The guild has been a little weird lately. We went 2-3 weeks without doing more than the daily heroic as a guild because of poor attendance. Raid night would come and we'd have 3-7 people on so we'd bag it. Two weeks ago, we decided to switch raid night to Thursdays because there were fewer conflicts. I also made the decision to fill out with PuGs once if we had at least 6 people on.

So the first Thursday of the new schedule, we had 8 people show up for Naxx. It was a couple of alts and some people who hadn't been out in a while. So at 8:30, I grabbed the first two people who responded to:

"LF2M DPS Naxx 10. Must need gear."

Funny how it only took me 2 minutes to fill the slots. It turns out that the people we got knew what they were doing and didn't _really_ need gear. We started plowing through the instance. Along the way, our idiot tank and our even dumber death knight showed up... Oh. Sorry. We're full. Raid time is at 8 and I even gave you 30 minutes on top of that... But I digress...

We had some people doing new things. We had some alts. Our only mage (who gets played) was on his priest and healing. We had a healer DPSing. A DPS/PvP death knight who has a decent tanking set was doing the off tanking. We had a hunter who had never seen any fights other than Sapphiron and KT... And the two PuGs.

But we rolled the spider wing. So we decided to do the construct wing. And we wiped on Patchwerk but that was two failures of communication. After that, we stomped him. And we had some people leave poison clouds in the middle of the room on Grobbulus but we got through it. Our first timer hunter (my brother... If that matters) was the best candidate for kiting on Gluth and he didn't really get what had to be done the first try. But he clearly "got" it on the second attempt. Mind you, he was one of the first to bite it on Thaddeus.

We lost a DPS after Thaddeus and it was hard to avoid picking up the idiot tank... And we couldn't stop because I'd warned them that if we picked up any PuGs, we would be clearing more than just two wings and that we would go until we started making mistakes. So... We pressed on to the Plague Wing. Rolled Noth (why is he even a boss? There's no danger of screwing that one up... ever. I've even considered doing it with one tank). We only had one death on Heigan (a new guild record) and that was the first time hunter. Then we lost our main healer. So we had a priest and a paladin go to their healing specs to cover for her. But the idiot tank wanted us to fill out with his idiot friend dk. But people were getting twitchy so we decided to run the gauntlet to Loatheb without him. Unfortunately, the mage turned priest dropped a heal about half way through and died in a spot where we couldn't rez him. So we had to run back. People died... We ran back in... The dk showed up... Blech. But we got through the gauntlet and dropped Loatheb.

People were getting punchy... I already had them about 45 minutes later than they like to raid. So we decided to pick it up on Monday.

Over the weekend, the dumb as... Well... I can't think of anything that would be a fair comparison... The idiot dk had his account hacked. Had his gear vendored and large chunks of the guild bank were cleaned out. When I heard we'd been hacked, I could have guessed who got hacked in two... If pressed, I would have gotten it in one. Fortunately, there wasn't anything that we couldn't replace easily in the guild bank and now he didn't have the gear to raid for a while. I decided to call it a win.

On Monday, one of the two warriors was available so we grabbed them and 9 guildies. We had some confusion on Raz. The idiot warrior tank's Understudy just "disappeared". Funny... I've done that fight 20 times and that's never happened to _me_. And he's on at least his 5th time tanking and he _still_ hasn't figured out that he has to dismiss the understudy. He just waits for the channel to end and picks it up again... Which means that he can only be the second tank... But I digress.... Again...

We wiped on Four horsemen because I forgot to mention the void zones in the back to our druid healer and she stood in one. She got it the second time though. We had a flawless attempt on Sapphiron. One shot. Boom. KT was a little more... Exciting.

And then the next day, we had 10 on so we did Vault. It was the first time some of them had ever downed Koralon. And we did it with a tank with just 30k health. No problems. So on Thursday, we decided to try our hands at Ulduar. And we rolled Flame Leviathan... And XT... And Razorscale. So in eight days, we went from taking 3 weeks to clear the entry level raid in WotLK to clearing it in one lockout period and starting on the next one. The next week, we got those three and Kologarn and Ignis... The Ignis fight being very interesting... Both tanks died at less than 1%. We were riding high.

But then the next week, we only had 8 people on and could only do Flame Leviathan. And then people stopped showing up altogether. That was at about the time when 3.2 came out and so now we could get Tier 8 and 9 gear by running heroics. So I ran the daily heroic at least once per day on my druid and if anyone in the guild wanted to go, I had a backup tank. And that was OK. At least people were getting gear. Onyxia came out about a few weeks later so I PuGged that for a while... And now the guild has done that about 3 times on 10 man.

I, on the other hand, decided to take a shot at TotC on the druid while the guild stagnated. I watched videos of all of the fights. I read the strats... And I got myself into a run as a tank in a PuG... And we cleared it. So the next week, I did it on 10 and 25. Last week I actually found myself in a Trial of the Grand Crusader run... That's.. Wow. A lot of fun. Stressful, but fun. We only cleared the first 4 bosses but I learned a lot more about the encounters. And I started gearing my mage. Got lucky in a 25 man Vault run and got two pieces. I parlayed that gear into an Ony 25 run... And I won an iLevel 245 caster dagger. And then I did an Ony 10 and got the helm... One that is identical to the one I wore for about a year on my Alliance mage back in the day... And now my horde mage has cleared TotC 25 as well.

And now that I've seen TotC several times, I figured we could run the guild through it. It seems perfect for us: No trash. Only five fights to learn and you're done in under two hours... But on raid night, we only had one tank. We tried the first fight with an offspec dk tanking... It didn't work out. So we ran Ony again. And then our other two tanks logged on. It was bed time for everyone else but now they were suddenly gung ho to run TotC. Too late... We were done for the night. Raid time is raid time.

I believe that patch 3.3 is coming on Tuesday and hopefully with the changes to the emblems, the entire guild will be able to get gear by running chain heroics... Maybe then we can do the current content. As for me, I have every intention of PuGging Icecrown Citadel as soon as it comes out. I appear to have the gear for it.

Time to move the laundry...

It's that time again...

It seems like the only time I update this blog is while I'm doing laundry. I started a few posts but never really thought they were going anywhere so I bagged it.

And there is news to report... The guild _finally_ cleared Naxxramas. I know, right!!! It took us a total of 6 nights across 3 raid lockout periods, but we got it done. The first two nights were pretty much clearing everything but four horsemen. We had the people to do 4 horsemen on the second night but three pulls from the boss(es) we had three people disconnect and they never came back. So it sat for another night. The next time in, we took down the 4 horsemen in one shot. Everyone did their jobs flawlessly.

So we moved on to Sapphiron... And wiped a good solid 4 times. So we called it... And came back another night... And we took him out in one shot. This was due in large part to a change in tactics... Namely, instead of letting our idiot warrior tank it, I tanked it on my dr00d. With 45k health (it's almost up to 50k with full raid buffs these days), it made things go a lot smoother. So we moved on to KT... And wiped a few times.

So we came back on a Monday and we had the "right" people and... Another one shot.

You'd think I'd be happy... And I am... Sort of. But the next night, we tried for OS 10 with one drake up... And we barely even got off the ground. We have people standing in void zones and getting tail swiped and hit by flame waves. After 3 or 4 attempts, I tried healing it... But our idiot warrior tank turned the boss the wrong way and basically the entire raid got tail swiped and stunned and killed by a flame wave. Ironically, when we finally threw in the towel because it was "too hard", he turned the boss the "right" way. I could scream.

And now that Naxx is clear, people are talking about moving on to Ulduar and they're getting pissy when I say "we're not ready". I say this because, we're not. No amount of gear is going to help if people do dumb things. On the Sapphiron wipes, the idiot warrior tank was told "turn the boss slightly to the right". He turned it about 100 degrees... At least he got "right" correct. So I showed him the line I wanted it tanked on... Same thing. We had one healer die three times on the successful Sapphiron kill - every time by not being close enough to an ice block. On KT, we have one paladin who Failbot saw as failing at Void Zones 6 times - 5 on the night of wipes and 1 on the successful kill. Just last night, we pulled 4 packs of mobs that we generally try to leave up. Someone (OK.. A death knight... One dk did it three times and another got the last group) wandered a little to close or backed into them. And, of course, the warrior tank couldn't figure out how to release his understudy on Rasuvious so we wiped on that a good solid 4-5 times before we got lucky and got him to 4% before he killed the other understudy and we were able to kite him around long enough to down him. Did I mention that the other tank has done this 3 or more times already. He spent most of his time not tanking staring at a wall while my bone shield was down. At one point, I took three rotations in a row. But I digress...

I could go on and on with specific examples of how we're not ready. Fortunately, less radical voices in the guild have been saying similar things. We're back to storming through Naxx. I'm back to cringing when they do something incomprehensible. I'm weaning them off the bear because... He just makes things too easy. It will force them to slow down and figure stuff out. I've started telling them that certain mobs have whirlwind abilities (I should mention that we can usually only field one or two ranged DPS out of 10 because the others are all rogues, warriors, dks or ret paladins) and suggesting that they try to interrupt the whirlwinds so they don't all get instagibbed. In Heroic TotC, I've been insisting that the warrior tank pick up ALL of the adds and not just the melee ones (that actually didn't go over well... He informed the party that he was the tank so we were going to do it _his_ way. I let him. It failed miserably. But we got it after about 6 tries. And then on the Black Knight, you're supposed to kite to _avoid_ the desecrations... Not kite for the sake of kiting and CERTAINLY not directly INTO them). I've been pointing out which mobs can be skipped and screaming into the ether when they pull them. I've been running failbot so they can see why they're dying. I've been actually paying attention to Recount and checking that against their specs. We have one death knight who put 66 points into the unholy tree but without a specific plan. He put 2/5 into important things, but 5/5 into something that is clearly a tanking talent. And when you compare that to the battle logs, he put a point into Scourge strike but only used it 48 times in two wings of Naxx... One third of his damage comes from melee and another 25% comes from Death and Decay (which led to a few early deaths when he popped it first... Still doesn't learn though... "causes a large amount of threat"... /sigh). Sometimes I think I may have to try to teach him a dps rotation of some kind... But other times I say "what's the point? He won't learn". I mean... The guy has 4 pieces of tanking gear, two rogue pieces and a spell power enchant on his melee DPS set.

But it's going to be a long road and I don't know that I'm patient enough to make them into better players. We've never been a guild who told people how to play... But if people want to progress, maybe I'll get some traction to let me set up a "raiding" spec for some of them. Take them to a target dummy and show them how their way isn't working... Like in Days of Thunder. Then again, I may just stop running with them and just PuG everything. It's actually a lot less stressful for me.

August Laundry Day Update

Whoa... Been a while... What's happened since I posted last? Let me think:

I finished leveling my shaman. Got a dual spec. Went resto. Let me tell you... If you're a loot whore, roll a caster shaman. I did a couple of heroics and got enough gear to heal Naxx 10. Got enough gear doing that to heal Naxx 25 and Vault 25 the next week. In two runs through Naxx 25, I came away with 4/5 tier 7.5 and the tier 8.5 gloves... And then I got bored with him. I'll do vault every now and then but I pretty much shelved him.

I picked up my first character: an Alliance mage called Gifteye. Man... I've missed playing him. I did a LOT of Wintergrasp and pretty much leveled from 76 to 80 doing Argent Crusade, Ebon Blade, Argent Tournament and Sons of Hodir daily quests. He'll be an exalted champion with all 5 factions in 8 more days, exalted with SoH and Ebon Blade tomorrow and Argent Crusade probably later in the week. He's starting to get to a point where he can two shot most level 80 mobs... But he's on a low pop server that uses the Trade channel to form groups... Which means I have to lurk in cities and do nothing to _maybe_ find a group for something. Not my style... So I don't do instances. I'm considering moving him to a higher population server... Maybe even my Horde server now that we can have toons of opposite factions on the same PvP server.

I've finished Naxx 25 on hiaHoTah... Still wearing a couple of blue pieces in my healing set. The changes to emblems from heroics should remedy that. I'm a couple of days of "doing a few heroics" away from a tier helm token.

Summer came and has pretty much stopped all guild activities. We're lucky if we can get 4 people for a heroic and PuG a fifth. The last two days, our _other_ druid tank and I did a heroic with three PuGs. It's nice to run with DPS that doesn't stand in fires but still... I'd rather run with our crew. Even the new 5 man instance isn't really bringing people back... And it drops epics like crazy - even on regular mode.

The last two times we've raided, we did OS-10 with 8 and we tried Vault 10. We got the Less is More achievement but... Oy. We had two death knights. One of them was _barely_ pulling 1k dps and each death knight got hit by the lava waves at least 14 times. If we go back in there, I'm setting failbot to announce to the guild. Maybe that will shame them into... Well... Being at least half awake. On the Vault run, we had to PuG two DPS and we wiped on Emalon for about an hour and a half. While I respect their grim determination... It was still frustrating. We were right on the edge with DPS so we couldn't bring in another healer but the healing couldn't quite keep up with the death knights getting hit by lightning nova. One slip would cause a wipe.

5 people moved at the end of June. Two of them still don't have internet access yet. One should get access Monday.

2 people have had children... In the last two weeks. This includes our second best healer. This means that I'll end up healing if we ever start raiding again... And our tanks will be someone who means well but... He plays a warrior... And we know how I feel about warriors... And the other can't see ground effects... Like fire. On the plus side, we'll be able to extend raid lockouts... Which means we may actually finish Naxx 10 now.

The 3 toons I play on the horde side now have healing specs and decent healing sets and I spend most of my time healing.

Say what you want... But I stand by my assertion that the horde are much bigger douchebags than the Alliance. I have been ganked (or at least had people try it... I'm pretty slippery) more times in the last week on my mage than happened on my horde druid, paladin and death knight from 70 to 80. There's one huntard who either camps the Sons of Hodir base or keeps the exact same hours I do. Total pussy about it to. Won't attack me if I target him first. Will only shoot me in the back... When I've engaged a mob... DESPITE the fact that I've never ONCE gotten him below half health. And that time I rezzed and mounted... He flew away.

But things are looking up. Summer is ending. My brother is making noise about starting up again. We're gettiong one of our leading voices back. He's excited to have new druid feral forms. The healer's new baby is "ez mode" compared to the twins he had two years ago. If that continues he might be back raiding in another 2-3 months. I'm hoping Patch 3.2 will be very good for us.

The Bear is Back!!!

One of the nice things about my life is that I have so much vacation time stored that if I don't take, on average, a half day a week off, I'll go over the limit of vacation days that you can accrue. So, I decided that rather than taking "on average" half a day off a week, I'd take exactly half a day off per week. I still have enough time of that if I decide I want to spend a month or two in Europe, I can but it also means that when it's 75 degrees outside and the first truly spectacular afternoon of the year, I'm sitting in the sun instead of sitting at work wishing I was outside.

Now mind you, the day star is so bright that I can really only make out black writing on a white background - meaning that I can't play WoW, but that's a cross I'm willing to bear.... So to speak...

But speaking of speaking about bears... I have REALLY enjoyed having Hiahotah as a bear again. I enjoy Wintergrasp more. I find the abilities far less constricting than death knight tanking. I've missed the feeling of nigh-invincibilty I used to have back in BC. But it's also nice to know that I have a powerhouse healer at the ready with just the click of a few buttons... And I won't have to reset all of my toolbars... That's the big perk for me.

I've also been enjoying being able to take my druid out in public without worrying I'll be ganked by two lowbie rogues working together. I had a plan a few months ago to heal for tanking loot and, for the most part, that plan has worked out. I've gotten any number of instance drops that fell to me because I was the only one who could equip them. I also picked up a TON of emblems of heroism to augment my tanking set.

I've also been enjoying questing in cat form. That's something I've missed. And Wintergrasp is fun again. I can actually participate a little more actively than I could just standing and healing "whoever was close by". The other day, I solo'd a ret paladin when he caught me at 75% health. It felt good (incidentally, they're harder to tank than warriors and rogues. You can still sort of do it but you have to be smart about when you use your stuns and frenzied regeneration).

The one complaint I have is with the improved Mark of the Wild. Two ranks and they not only improve MotW, but they also increase all of your stats by 1% each. Which means, I pretty much _had_ to take it for tanking. No choice really. You really have to take it. More stamina. More dodge. More attack power. More mana. Faster regeneration (even though only nominally). Yes, please.

The problem is that I had to give up either two points in Furor or two points in the feral tree. I opted to give up two in furor in favor of "potentially lowering melee speeds". But now I'm sometimes caught without rage. It's fine if we're stringing together fights, but last night trying to do a timed CoS run, we had to wait a full 2 minutes for Arthas to show up (which ultimately cost us the drake) and all of my rage decayed. So when I couldn't generate threat on the first three mobs in the Town Hall, one of them wtfpwned a consecration happy paladin.

Druids really only have swipe and demoralizing roar for AoE threat generation and they require rage. It's fine once the fight had gotten going, but at the start, it can result in dead dps. I've had to resort to using Enrage... Something I've never really done.

It's not a real problem and the benefits outweigh the costs... It's just something new to adjust to. And maybe I'm not even the one who has to adjust... Maybe I'll just let the dps figure out my rage generation problem on their own.

Shaking off the rust...

It's Laundry day.. Again... So this is my first real chance to sit down with "nothing to do" since Patch 3.1 came out. Here are my early impressions:

1) I'm really disappointed with the Argent Tournament. It seems to be a combination of the worst parts of The Oculus (mounted combat) and "just making sure you have an epic flying mount". It really is just a lot of flying around. Fly to Crystalsong Forest. Fly back. Fly to Crystalsong. Fly back. Fly to Crystalsong Forest and then fly to Howling Fjord and then... Wait for it.. Fly back. The early dailies aren't interesting or even challenging. At least when they came out with the Shattered Sun dailies you had a chance at getting a badge of justice every now and then. If nothing else, you got a lot of BoE greens that you could vendor, AH or disenchant. And while the Netherwing dailies seemed... "Grindy", there was a kickass reward at the end of the table. I suppose you could grind for a very long time and get a new flying mount but... Eh. I've got as many flying mounts as I need. I'm hoping it picks up in the future but so far, I'm not optimistic.

2) Mana regen and the lifebloom changes - I'm not loving the mana regen in 3.1. While _some_ people may have had so much regeneration they had seemingly endless mana pools, I did not. I find I run OOM a lot faster... And so does our other resto druid. When we went to Naxx with two resto druid healers who hadn't really done an instance yet, it took us a while to figure things out. It was pretty sloppy to start... And... Well... I'll get into that later. The cost of lifebloom doubling hurts but the number you have stacked on a target affecting the bloom is nice. I saw more than one three stack crit for over 14k. Sadly, you can't really time that when you need it. I found out about halfway through the run that the way to manage mana is to just let the lifebloom stacks bloom and put them up again. It helps but it's not quite enough. I guess next time we'll have to make sure that we have replenishment and a paladin for blessing of wisdom.

3) Dual specs - This is the game changer for me. I play a druid, a paladin and a death knight. I had one healer, one DPS and one tank. Now I have two of each and I can swap them around a little without having to leave the instance. It's not like I oculdn't afford to respec one toon for whatever was needed, but... I hate setting up the buttons all the time. This was 3k gold well spent. Now the druid is a tank and healer. The paladin is primarily a DPSer but can heal if needed. And the death knight can tank or DPS... Sort of...

4) I'm pretty sure they nerfed death knight DPS. Before the patch, I was doing about 1.7 dps with a tanking spec and dps gear. Post patch, I'm only getting up to 1.5k on the training dummies. Maybe that will go up on mobs but I'm not holding my breath.

5) I'm not a big fan of Savage Defense. That combined with the overall druid tanking nerfs has really hurt one of our main tanks. He used to run at about 29k health unbuffed but on Thursday it was around 26k. And he was a lot more fragile. He just didn't have the mitigation he used to. He would take huge spikes in damage... Not good when you have two druids rolling HoTs and not really watching for spikes. We will now...

With #5 in mind, I took Hiahotah out in his new bear spec (it's nice to be able to go out in public without worrying about being ganked by level 72 and 75 rogues working together while you're out fishing... Don't worry... The paladin made them pay for their transgressions...). Cat DPS is low but then again, nothing lssted long enough to really build up to anything. As for tanking, I use the level 81-82 elite Pustulent Horrors (I'll check the spelling later... Maybe) just inside Icecrown (there are 5 on the dam) to check migitation and damage. I went in and killed the first one witout taking more damage than Improved Leader of the Pack could return (so no more than 4% health every 4 second). I was pleased to find that I was on the quest to kill those guys so I did some more. The second and the third were the same story. So I pulled two at once. I took a little damage before the first one was down. But after I got down to just one, I got back to full health... OK... Time for something harder.

I'd planned to pull a pack of 8-10 melee, but I stumbled across the elites in the Bombardment. I pulled 3 level 80 elites. I got down to 15k health (from 29k to start) before the first two were down. I didn't use Berserk or Frenzied regeneration or anything, really. Just made sure I remembered where the swipe button was. So now I'm thinking that our other druids problems are gear related. Time will tell, I guess.

That was last night. This morning I tanked a heroic Violet Hold with a dk I know (from a previous PuG) who could sustain 3k dps. He was a challenge threat-wise because he has no patience and there's one spawn location where the mobs go different directions that is still problematic - particularly when I have no rage. But it worked out. Cleared the instance, nobody died. I'm calling it a win.

And it would seem that I have another 17 minutes before the first load comes out of the dryer... So...

On Thursday, we had 8 level 80's on, but only 1 person who had a tank and one person who had a healer who wouldn't be tanking. So we gathered up some of the newbies to do heroic Gundrak. About halfway there, two of our tanks logged on. OK... Impromptu Naxx... Which was fine because we hadn't gotten a chance to raid on Tuesday because the servers were down and then unstable. But I hadn't healed on my paladin yet, so I stuck with my druid. It was a little sloppy at first while people got used to new specs and subtle changes to old spells but we got rolling eventually. We one shot Razuvious, Anub'Rekhan, Faerline and Noth. Not bad with two first timers, a nerfed bear tank, no paladins, no voice chat (not sure what was wrong there... But we typed what we needed to. We did Karazhan that way towards the end... No biggie), and two nerfed resto druids. I didn't think we had the co-ordination for Maexxna so we opted for Patchwerk.

Patchwerk is both a gear check (even with that crew, we had the gear, thank you very much) and nightmare for resto druids. It goes against everything we're used to. We wiped twice because we couldn't keep the tanks up using "commone sense"... So we assigned tanks. That worked better but it was really, really tough and drained out mana. I think the other druid went OOM at the end because her tank dropped like a stone at 1% during the soft enrage. After the melee went down, our druid tank was eating the hateful strikes too so it was tough to keep him up. He hovered at 0% for what seemed like an eternity. But we downed him finally and had to call it a night. After Patchwerk, a lot of what's left is getting people to move at the right times. I think we can clear all of Naxx if we can just find the time. At least people are getting excited about it again.

Oh. Laundry's done. Gotta run.

Just Because You're Wearing a Shield...

... That doesn't mean you're a tank.

There. I said it. Somebody had to. We were _all_ thinking it but why is it always me who has to be the one who actually says it. No wonder everyone hates me.

I ran heroic Nexus on my secret death knight alt last night and I should have seen the warning signs right away. The warrior tank couldn't hold aggro to save his life. Lost aggro twice on the first pull... Which consists of one mob. The second pull was... Peculiar. I took a lot of damage from "somewhere". I'm guessing the two dogs that were flanking the humanoid.

The first three pull, however, was the really telling on. He locked onto a mob and never looked at the others. So when they healer did his job, they went straight for him. I was trying to lock down a healing mob when I saw that there was a mob on the healer. When I taunted him, I had _two_ mobs on me. In DPS gear and in blood presence, I dropped pretty quickly. It was enough for us to get through that fight but we wiped on the first boss because of the same issues.

It was shortly after that when I said "screw it" and put on my tanking gear and frost presence. I'm not a tanking spec on that toon but my gear is good enough that I can fake it on trash. I can at least make sure that the healer is OK... But here's the thing:

I ended up tanking everything... ALL of the trash. Even the mob the warrior "tank" was on. I mean... Maybe, you lose a mob here or there. But to not notice that your target isn't attacking _you_? That's too much.

I died on the mage boss during the second split because I was in my DPS gear and had two of the three copies on me... At least two. We wiped on Anomalus because the warrior lost aggro (and I was in my DPS gear/blood presence) and mashed the squishies... Tanking gear back on for attempt two. I ended up tanking him about 40% of the time. But I couldn't do the damage to the rifts so... It was dicey. The rock boss was about the same as the second attempt on Anomalus: Dicey, I tanked about 40% of the fight, but we got through it... Come to think of it... That's how the last fight went... But with a twist. The shaman (who was geared and a good player) had started putting earth shield on me instead of the warrior. He knew what was what.

I was so frustrated that I actually remembered the warrior's name and looked him up this morning. He's fully Fury and Arms. Not a single point in prot. While it is irresponsible to tank a heroic in his gear without a tanking spec... There's more to tanking than just a spec and a shield.

Tanking is an indelicate balance between keeping aggro on all of the mobs while maintaining a lot more threat on the target mob. While a proper spec helps with this, so does reading your tooltips and looking for abilities that "generate additional threat" as opposed to your normal DPS rotation. Yes, damage does generate threat, but Sunder generates more. You should know where your defensive cooldowns are and which to use when. You should know which talents are good for mitigation and which are good for threat generation and you should choose those over talents that generate more damage. Which is to say, you should be familiar with your class.

Tanking means knowing the fights... And I'm not saying "all the fights"... But you should have played enough to know what mobs look like healers and which are ranged because most tanks are made the de facto party leaders for marking purposes. And you should pay attention because most trash mobs are repeated through an instance. Which is to say, you should know the game.

Tanking also requires situational awareness. This is a trap I've seen too many tanks fall into. They lock down one mob while 3 others are allowed to do whatever they want. Not only does this cause wipes, it fosters frustration within the group. You need to be aware of when CC breaks and doesn't get applied. You need to keep an eye out for mobs moving in odd ways. And you should also tab through the targets to make sure that every one of the mobs is looking at you. Which is to say, you should be familiar with your role.

No matter how good your gear is... No matter how cookie cutter your tanking spec is... If you fail in any of those areas, you're going to be a bad tank. And that may be fine if the people you're running with _know_ you're a bad tank because you told them. But if you sign up to tank a heroic with people you don't know, the expectation is that you'll have at least a passing familarity with the instance, with your abilities, with the role of a tank and that you've got at least _some_ points in tanking talents.

This guy from last night... Had none. But he did, however, have a shield.

Stop and smell the roses

I was doing the Argent Crusade quest lines on my new Alliance death knight the other day. Now that I'm on my fourth trip through these quest lines and know where everything is and basically what the story line is, I have more time to look around at the stuff that's going on around me... Well that and my last go round is on a PvE server so I don't have to worry about that social misfit... I mean rogue that's lurking around because they can't find a party for anything... Last night, I got to the one where you get ported to moonglade from Icecrown to collect three acorns and then get ported back. With time to smell the roses, I had time to appreciate the portal...



That's exactly the kind of portal a druid would make. All green with ivy creeping up the sides. Then I started thinking (and yes... I know... This is where most of my trouble starts)... Druids have Teleport: Moonglade spell. And I've always been OK with it - until I really examined the portals that were part of that quest line. Now I want Teleport: Moonglade to leave one of those. It's like the first time I learned that you could deep fry a grilled cheese sammich. I'd never thought of it before... But now that I know it can be done... I want it. I want it like a rogue wants a girlfriend and to move out of his parents' basement.

Death Knights get the totally awful Death Gate spell that _they_ can use to port to their base of operations and they leave them EVERYWHERE. I'll be walking around Dalaran, turn a corner and... Blech. Death Gate. But imagine if you were out strolling around the wastes of Icecrown and you came across a portal to Moonglade... Maybe with some flowers around the base for flair. It would brighten your day...

Unless you were on a PvP server. That could just be a precautionary measure put in place by the druid who is about to thrash you. If it goes poorly... He's Moonglade-bound. Yesssss.... We wantss it. Gives it to us. Nasty little Hobbitses.

Naxxramas... At last!!! (Sort of)

I've been watching a lot of college basketball lately and haven't felt motivated (read: I've been at my

computer but I've been playing and watching TV) to post. But today is Laundry Day so I'm... Bored.

The guild has finally crept up to 13 people at level 80 or higher. While this increases the likelyhood

that we'll have 10 people playing on raid night, it also means that they're not as geared as some of

the people who have been 80 for 4 months. But we've also been running the daily heroic almost every day

so people have been getting badges and gear and can reasonably expect that if they log on, we'll do

something. This has lead to a significant increase in the total number of people who are playing on any

given night which has lead to an increase in the amount of stuff we can do... It's a good cycle.

I've been tanking on my death knight frequently so she's gotten pretty well geared. With her gear and

my increasing familiarity with the class, she's become an effective tank. I still miss a few cooldowns,

get caught without runes up (and forget about the 5 minute reset) or caught without an AoE ability

available when there are adds but I'm getting better and I feel like I could tank every heroic and most

of Naxx on her.

Two weeks ago, we had 8 people on so we PuGged two people for Vault. A PuG rogue quit after 3 pulls. So

we 9 manned it. And given that there were two people who disconnected during the fight, we essentially

8 manned it. We thanked the PuG for joining us and he moved on. But that left us with 8. Too few to do

a raid and too many to do a heroic...

So we decided to "take a look" at one of the bosses in Naxxramas. We chose Anub'Rekhan because, well...

It's the first boss Crucify downed in Naxx40 back in the day. We wiped on it for about 12 hours before

we downed it... So I know the fight pretty well. Plus, since we weren't expecting to down anything, it

was a good one to look at the mechanics for next time.

Frankly, I didn't think we'd get past the trash. But with a poison cleansing totem, those trash pulls

are a lot easier than I remember - particularly because it's raid wide now. We tried the boss 4 or 5

times and we never made it past the first transition. We even tried bringing in a couple of different

alts for raid composition but we just didn't have the timing down... And by we, I mean me.

So we called it and talked about it during the week. People watched videos and had a better idea what

was going on in them because they'd seen it for themselves... So it wasn't a complete waste of time.

However, during that week... One of the guys who just pushes my buttons started popping off in the

forums. Normally it just pisses me off, but he's recently switched from his completely geared out prot

warrior to a rogue. He's offered to tank "anything" for us but hasn't tanked squat. And this rogue

doesn't have anywhere near the gear, doesn't bring any buffs, etc... So when he plays it, I can't bring

my paladin who does way more damage and has way more buffs to bring to the table.

The short version is, he started stroking his epeen in the forums about how he's the top DPSer in the

guild. Now... This guy wears on me and I hate... Hate hate hate hate hate hate hate damage meters

because they promote exactly that kind of e-preening. So I laid into him. I allowed that he has topped

a few heroics in total damage done because 1) I've been chain pulling instances and the mana users have

to stop and drink periodically so they have less total DPSing time 2) he has been ignoring all markings

so that he can get all his combo points in 3) he's been getting a huge buff from the death knight tank

that doesn't benefit the mage in the least and 5) he's started attacking almost before the tank does -

which leads to aggro problems down the road. I also pointed out that he just lead in total damage done.

The mage was about 300 dps higher than he was. In short, I accused him of being a self-involved epeen

stroking... Well... rogue. Probably not the most mature thing I've done but... He crossed about 6 lines

that day (that wasn't his only inflamatory post). I mean... He cut down one of the more helpful members

of the guild for missing a raid when he was sick when he missed the previous two weeks including the

previous week where he logged off 15 minutes before raid time, didn't log back on until 2 hours after

raid time (thereby insuring he wouldn't have to participate) and started trying to get people to run

him through heroic Gundrak. Really, really pisses me off.

I went on to say that while he tops the heroics in damage done by a small amount, my paladin (who I

can't play when he's on his rogue because we need _someone_ to tank) tops that same mage by about 25%

in total damage done and by about 100 in DPS - while providing buffs that help (*gasp*) others, spot

heals, in combat CC when necessary (like Heroic VH... That one 3 pull where two mobs go one way and one

goes the other), off tanking, AoE, cleansing and all of those other things that a paladin does. Also

not the most mature thing I've done but.. Of the 13 80's we have now, 3 a rogues and our next 80 will

probably also be a rogue. Fan-freakin' tastic. Plus... That guy pissed me off. I mean... So much that I rolled a new Alliance Death Knight on a PvE server (which I've found very relaxing... Not just the fact that there aren't rogues lurking around every corner to gank you but also because I'm playing Alliance and they're so much nicer than the horde generally are) to hide out from him and the guild.

Since then I've ignored him in the forums and have instructed people to tell me if he makes a post that

is in any way constructive... Or can even be considered non-negative if you took words out (but left

them in the same order). For the record, I had to go back 7 posts before I could find one and that one

pretty much blasted the whole guild for not being prepared. But I digress...

I guess what I'm saying is that we had a tumultuous week in the guild. But on Tuesday night, we had exactly 10 level 80's on-line at raid time... And the rogue wasn't one of them. We abandoned the Heroic Violet Hold run we were on and formed a raid. We decided to do Vault first even though with travel time, etc. it takes about 30 minutes. After vault, we decided to do a boss in Naxx. We had seen Anub'Rehkhan but now that we had 10, I thought Razuvious would be easier for us because we really only need one tank for it and I could bring in my druid to heal. Fortunately, one of our members had been fishing in the Dalaran fountains so he had a coin to flip. The coin chose Razuvious.

Which turned out to be a good choice. It took us 3 attempts but we did down him pretty easily. Now that we've seen that, I'm certain that we can do that in one shot, every time. Plus, people had fun and were feeling pretty optimistic and looking forward to next week.

I know it's not much and that PuGs routinely steamroll that place but... They're an extremely casual guild and this is a huge step for us.

Right in the Epeen

They've already offered transfers off the new server because it's too crowded. We were considering moving but it looks like enough people have moved off to make it tenable (ironically, Garithos has been showing up as a medium population server for the last couple of days. The only time that ever happened was right after the 3.0 patch and Garithos was one of about 8 servers that was up).

However, I'm not sure I like the culture of Scilla. For one thing, on Bloodscalp people might ask for your stats but on Scilla, they ask for stats and they want you to link the achievement for the instance they are trying to run... Which is to say, you can't do it unless you've already done it. It's quite mad.

But beyond that, there's the ganking. And it's not the quanity... It's the quality. On Friday I was leveling my shadow priest and I was doing some furbolg quests in Winterspring. At level 56, I got ganked by a level 80 Shadow priest named Insaetia. Now I don't normally call people out for a ganking. Hell... I've certainly ganked more lowbies than I've been ganked. But this was different.

I rezzed and went about my business. Clearly this priest was grinding Timbermaw rep because he found me about a half hour later and ganked me again. A one shot. I'm so impressed. But then he stood on my corpse. He hit me with three emotes. Jumped up and down on my body. Then he started pulling mobs and fighting them on my body.

OK Jackass... You earned it. I logged off my shadow priest and logged on my paladin. I was in Everlook a few minutes later and was actually right behind Insaetia who was heading back to the furbolg camp... Perfect!!! I judged justice. It crit. So did Seal of Command. Hammer of wrath was up before he could even fear. Which he did but I bubbled and nuked him with HoW and boom. Dead. I followed with the same three emotes and started _my_ camp.

But he didn't rez... But I'm sufficiently pissed now. I'll wait. 5 minutes later and I'm still waiting when a mage - Devasteight (of the Shattered Sun... OMG!!! I am so impressed at your ability to do daily quests!!!) showed up and the two the them WTFPWNed me. /golfclap

So I rezzed, healed, etc. and went out looking for them. And they WTFPWNed me again. Completely thrashed me. And this time they started camping me. I mean campfires and beach umbrellas and the whole bit. But I'm not an idiot so I was able to rez and get away. Clearly I'd touched a nerve and he'd gotten a big brother to protect him. So I logged onto my priest with the intention of moving to another area. But as soon as I'd mounted, I was hit with Shadow Word:Death. Boom. Dead.

It was the shadow priest... Again. And the mage. And they'd set up shop again. But now they've been joined by a warrior - Vassilico. Take a look at his armory... I'll wait. Currently, he's Fury and dual wielding Ebon Blade rep rewards. He's got an agility gem in his boots. A +24 stamina gem to get a +4 strength bonus. And he's rocking the +72 attack power trinket (level 70) from the Brewfest event. Grats on your epic fail, n00b.

But I've been tired all week. So I take a nap. I wake up 25 minutes later and they're still there. I went to cook dinner. I ate dinner. Still there. I LOGGED OFF and played an alt for a half hour. STILL THERE. Three level 80's camping my level 56 clothie in crappy gear for at least 90 minutes and I've been asleep, afk or on a different character and they're still at it. At this point, it's gotten sad.

At some point the server rebooted... After which, I was able to log onto my shadow priest, finish the quest chain I was on and head over to Silithus. I get that I'd kicked that guy square in the epeen and that this assault on his manhood could not go unavenged. But... Seriously... I mean... REALLY??!?!? An hour and a half for one piece of payback for something YOU started?!?!? GROW UP!!! And the extent of it... A single level 60 of any class would have been sufficient to keep me locked down for hours. Did it _really_ warrant three level 80's - one of which was decked out from head to toe in epics?

And what about your two friends? How sad is it that you would actually waste an hour and a half of your lives doing NOTHING for an "offense" against someone else? It makes me sad for you... And your sad, pathetic, shriveled, little manhoods.

How is that better?

So... The server move is complete. It was three days of scrambling, setting up interfaces and not having enough guild members on the new server to do anything but we've moved. And now that we're here? There's a longer queue earlier than there ever was on Bloodscalp.

So many people transferred to Scilla that it has gone from a low population server to a high population one. People are logging on at 8 and complaining about queues. Wintergrasp is so crowded it's unplayable. Dalaran is so crowded that I'm reluctant to check mail there.

Which is to say... We actually _did_ trade all of my friends for another bloodscalp with earlier queues but a faster ping time. Fan-tastic.

To Parts Unknown

/sigh

So... The guild switched servers this weekend. I'm not happy about this. Quite the opposite, in fact.

When my Alliance guild broke up, I decided to play with people I knew. It took me several weeks of hardcore leveling to catch up to them because I'd already leveled my Alliance mage to 70. I also tried to keep a toon at about the same level as my main group... Which meant I leveled one character from 35 to 70 and at the same time, one from 1 to 35.

They were behind me progression-wise in vanilla WoW so it was no surprise that when I got to 68, they were still trying to get past the second boss in Shadow Labyrinth. We developed a comfortable group of five people and learned all of the new instances and taught them to the rest of the guild. I even got them started on the Karazhan key quest lines. When others in the guild wanted keys, I tanked the instances for them. No questions asked. Nine months after Burning Crusade came out, we had 7 people with keys and decided to try to make a Karazhan run. We all got together for a party and I helped two people finish the last two legs of the key quest. We downed Attumen that night and everyone was ecstatic... After all, we're talking about a guild that had never even been into Upper Blackrock Spire as a group.

Over the next few months, we got further and further. Curator, a big stumbling block for a number of guilds, was a joke for us. The only times we ever wiped on him were when we tried to 8 man him... And even then it was close. We got all the way to Chess but never got any further. These people had jobs and children... So people got bored. They stopped coming out.

I was still interested, however. So I started PuGging for people who needed a tank. Some of them were terrible... But some of them were pretty good. I was the first person in our guild to down Prince... And Nightbane... And... Well... Pretty much everything after Maiden/Moroes. I took everything I learned back to our raids every time there was an uptick in Karazhan interest.

But something happened I hadn't expected: I made friends. I didn't talk to them every day but it pleased me to see them running around and to /wave at them. Maybe throw them a buff or two. If I ever saw them looking for people, I'd always sign up because I knew I'd have a good time.

Interest in WoW waned after the expansion was announced. It wasn't uncommon for there to be only one or two other people in the guild on-line at any one time... One of them even quit WoW for the summer. But I was still playing and "doing stuff". I even went so far as to download a mod that kept me in the Looking For Group channel all the time. Along the way, I earned the Champion of the Naaru title... Something of which I was really proud because, without guild support, it had taken a lot of work on my part.

When Wrath of the Lich King came out, I was the first person in our guild to hit 80... By about two days. Three more followed in the next couple of days but then no one. All this fabulous new content and I had no one to expore it with. One of the 80's pretty much only logged on to do Wintergrasp. So I turned to the LFG channel again.

After I had gotten to exalted with Sons of Hodir, I spec'd Hiahotah resto because there were more people looking for healers than tanks. I found that I could run pretty much any instance I wanted at pretty much any _time_ I wanted. One of the guilds I used to run with in Burning Crusade invited me to a Naxx run early on. I was undergeared but consider that at the time I hadn't even done a heroic, I think I held my own. I collected badges and got upgrades... We still only had 4 level 80's... In fact, the fifth 80 in the guild was my death knight. My paladin was the 8th.

Two weeks ago, I filled out a slot as a healer for a guild Naxxramas run. It was their first time in Naxx so many wipes were expected. I'd seen a number of the fights back in vanilla WoW or during that time I did it at 70 before the expansion or during that one run. I let them wipe a couple of times on each boss and then made suggestions as to how they could do it better and they would down the boss. It was fun learning the content and coaching a guild through the fights. They invited me back the next week and we got further faster. Learning had taken place. We actually cleared all four quarters and even took a few shots as Sapphiron. A couple of them would whisper me during the week to see if I was coming out on Friday. It was a young group but willing to try and learn. It was a satisfying experience. They filled out their healing roster so they didn't need me any more... Which was great. I can always find a group.

Then this week, we got our 10th person to 80. We did our first all guild heroic in weeks. It was an ugly run through Halls of Lightning but it was the Daily Double so we ground through it. And after about 4 wipes on Loken, we finished it. Great!!

Well... Not really... You see... One of our members (the one who quit for the summer) who has been hot to transfer off Bloodscalp noticed that there were free transfers to Scilla for horde. While all this exciting stuff was going on for the guild, people were talking about moving.

We've been through this before. The guy who quit wants vast fields of mobs all to himself for farming purposes. Some claim they get disconnects and lag. Others don't want to worry about mean old Alliance lurking around every corner waiting to gank them. I tried to argue that there were more horde on Bloodscalp than Alliance (by a 2:1 margin) so it's mostly the other way around for the gankings and that the disconnects were largely due to poor internet connections (the one with the most disconnects uses his neighbor's wireless connection) and the lag was due, in part, to inferior video cards (one guy can't see the statues in the pit in Halls of Lightning... If you've been there, you know what I mean... Basically it's about 20 feet away and he only sees gray mist). As for the vast fields of mobs... Does that really compare with my ability to find stuff to do when the rest of the guild isn't on line? Apparently it does.

The discussion went something along the lines of:

"We want to leave."

"I have friends here."

"We want to leave. There's lag."

"EVERY server had lag during Wintergrasp. It's been better since they made the orb instantly clickable."

"We want to leave. There's a queue."

"For, like, 5 minutes if you log on after 9:30 and, frankly, when you people log on after then, you don't really _do_ much, do you?"

"We want to leave."

"THere's enough of a population here to support PuGging. Something that _I_ enjoy when you're not around. I've played on a low population server before. It's painful watching someone begging for a tank in LFG for two hours. They don't allow transfers to high population servers."

"we want to leave."

I've checked the new server. There are about one quarter the number of the people in the LFG channel that there are on Bloodscalp. Have you checked to see if the lag and disconnects are any better on the new server?"

"We want to leave."

"Look... I'm being asked to give up something that is a large portion of my enjoyment of the game. If you can prove that your technical concerns are valid, then I'll drop my objections."

"Just move one of your characters then."

"I have a whole mini-economy going. I'd hate to leave one out in the cold."

"Just roll a new character and level it to 80."

"Screw you."

"This isn't a democracy. You don't have to move." (Read: We're leaving.)

"One of my friends just transferred from there to Bloodscalp. He says it sucks."

"We left."

So... To me it feels like I've lost a lot for a vague hope that any server would have to be "better". No one is able to define what that means or prove that things are less "unbearable"... And things that I just haven't had a problem with. I think it's safe to say that I play more than anyone else in the guild and I've not had a problem with any of the things they complain about. Maybe there are the odd, 2 to 3 second lag spikes but I think it's a small price to play for a LFG channel full of people who are also looking to "do stuff". So this move has limited benefits for me and a huge downside. For them... I don't know. I don't know what was wrong with Bloodscalp and what makes them think a new server would be better... I guess I'll find out.

Now my (horde) characters in a queue to move to server unknown and I'm locked out of being able to play them for 48 hours. I have no idea what will happen... But those asshats had damn well better be available for instances when we get to the new server or I'm going to be super-extra pissed.

The Joys of PuGging

So... There I was minding my own business... I'd just gotten to a convenient stopping point in doing dailies on my paladin (who is 80 now... As is my death knight) when someone asked for a healer for Heroic Nexus in LFG. Hiahotah (who is resto now... Man... It's been a while. Whole other story...) was sitting on the daily from the day before so I logged onto him and said I'd go. I wish I'd thought that through...

The first warning sign was when they started calling each other by real life names. It turns out that three of them were from the same guild. Oh good. A guild that can field three players but can't find a healer. The second warning sign was when one of them asked how to get to the instance... Which was THE NEXUS!!! It's the first damn instance 80% of people do!!!

The group consisted of a prot paladin, ret paladin, boomkin (the guildies), a rogue and me. We managed to down the first mob with only the ret paladin dying. (Seriously?) The tank didn't consecrate or taunt so when the ret paladin body pulled and then fought back... It was over pretty quickly. Yes you're in plate but you're still not wearing a shield. We wiped on the second pulls. The paladin _still_ didn't consecrate on a 3 pull. Very, very bad sign. I thought about leaving but decided to give them another chance. I figured that with 2k spell power I could make up for a little nubitry.

I wish I'd thought that through. It turns out there were two skinners in the party but one of them didn't have a high enough skill level to skin the mob. Oy. You got to 80 and didn't level your skinning? Oh come on!!! At this point, one of them said he had turned his microphone on. I shudder to think that these guys were actually communicating with each other.

We got to the "optional" boss. And wiped because I couldn't keep the melee up... And because the tank backed up into me just as I was trying to heal him and just as the boss did his whirlwind. That's when I decided I wouldn't be using any more buff foods. I gently suggested that the melee needs to run away from the whirlwind. I should have said that they should run away as soon as they see it and stay out until it was over. My bad. In any event, they were nominally smarter and we got some lucky fears just before whirlwinds so melee was out of range for a couple of them. We downed him with only one death. The druid got the achievement for looting his first emblem of heroism. Another ominious sign. But now I was saved to this instance so I was in for the duration.

We had a couple of deaths before the mage boss... One of which was me. The paladins seem to have misplaced their resurrection buttons so I ran back. The mage boss can be very chaotic during the splits. Things happen. This time, the ret paladin - the one who was leading and seemed to have some reasonable gear and doing the most damage - died about half way through the fight. It happens... When you consecrate and the tank doesn't so you end up with two of the adds on you.... And people aren't focusing on one of them. So I battle rezzed him... He didn't take it until the boss had about 10% health left. There are TWO druids in your party. One of them knows what he is doing. You don't go AFK after you die. You just... Don't. Wait for the battle rez.

The clear to the next boss... And the next boss, for that matter, went mostly without incident. No... Wait. Scratch that. The tank ran in just before the second boss and pulled 6 mobs but didn't consecrate... But he needed heals so... I healed him. The 5 mobs he hadn't generated threat against me... Killled me dead. The boomkin and the ret pally managed to heal him through the fight. And one of the paladins found a rez button after about two minutes of me not releasing. We did down the rift boss without too much trouble. It was around this time that I started looking at their gear. Among other things:

1) The boomkin was rocking a staff that had +242 spell power, a pile of int and some spirit. A two hander with +242 spell power? There's a level 78 one hand rep reward with +314 spell power. Sure you have to be revered with the Kalu'ak but... Who isn't revered with the Kalu'ak? I mean... They look like Wilfred Brimley!!

2) It wasn't enchanted. Throw in an off-hand that has a modest +25 spell power and you're looking at another 147 spell power. Things will die faster. As it was... I was running out of mana and having to use innervate in what is generally considered an "easy" heroic.

3) The tank had 22k health... Buffed. I've got a death knight who has that much unbuffed and I wouldn't even _think_ about tanking a heroic like that. So I inpected his gear. Helm. Tempered Titansteel helm. Good. But... Two gem slots... Both empty. Throw in a +32 stamina meta gem and a +24 stamina gem and with blessing of kings, we're looking at over 600 extra health. Or maybe throw in a +21 defense +5% shield block value meta gem in there. Either one will make things a little easier on your healer. One will provide a little extra cushion, the other will improve your mitigation. Can't go wrong with either one.

4) The helm didn't have an enchant on it. If you're going to be remotely serious about tanking... You get to revered with Argent Crusade so you can buy the head enchant. Even if you aren't serious about it... Do it anyway.

5) The tank had attack power trinkets equipped.

6) The boomkin had level 65-66 healing idol equipped. I know idols are hard to come by... But... Still...

7) The tank was wearing his Blood Knight tabard. Maybe he wants something from Horde Expedition but... Damn man... Slap on an Argent Crusade tabard. Get to revered. Get to revered with Wyrmrest for the two sweet tanking pieces.

On the way to the rock giant boss, the rogue bailed. We joined LFG for about 2 seconds and resumed clearing. Just before we got to the boss I asked if we were looking for someone. They said yes and I said that "a hunter in my guild was willing to go but we'll have to summon him". The hunter was actually my brother but I wasn't going to tell them that. They invited him and kept clearing to the boss... And, yes, it was in the hallway respawning plants... So we had to fight all the way back to a safe spot. And we'd taken the long way around, so we had to run all the way back through the instance to summon and then once again to get back to where we were... And then we had to clear the hallway... A third time. We did, however, down the boss with no deaths. It was hard as hell to keep that paladin up through the enrage though. Cripes. I'm guessing he isn't defense capped.

We wiped on the end boss. The ret paladin body pulled, got insta-gibbed and the prot paladin never did pick her up. The second time went a _litte_ better. There was still one death but that's mostly because it took so damn long. I had to make a choice between healing myself or healing some DPS with healing spells of their own. I didn't really need any of the loot but the boomkin rolled need on everything (it was cloth and leather so... Whatever) including the Frozen Orb. Now I had 4 on me but that was a PuG and 3 were guildies. He had a 60% chance of getting it. The orb is one of those little niceties that you give PuGs a chance to roll on... Particularly when you've been carried by one of them through the entire instance.

So... The short version is... I won't be doing any (heroic) runs with that guild any time soon and if I do, I'll check for gems and enchants first. Don't get me wrong... Things like that make me a better player but... It really stressed me out. My chest was actually tight for about a half hour after it ended. I don't need that.

Back to the Grind

It's been a while since I posted. That's mostly because I've been playing the game at night and actually having to concentrate at work. Since I last posted, Hiahotah got to 80. I had started fourth thursday of november just into level 78 with the intention of grinding it out to 80 that day... I mean... Why the hell not? I've got nothing better to do that day... Man do I hate fourth thursday of november. But I digress...

I was making good progress towards 80 but at around 8pm after about 11 hours, I started getting a little punchy. I was working my way through Sholazar Basin and I was having a very hard time making decisions about gear, so I was just letting it accumulate in my bag. I was also having a hard time with a number of the "vehicle" quests. By 10 pm, I was a third of a level away. I could have made it but... I was completely asleep at the switch and I wasn't enjoying myself... So I shut it down early. Just turned off the computer and went to bed. I just can't understand those people who plow through to max level in just a couple of days.

Since then, I've been making the rounds of dailies: Seven in Icecrown (I'm over half way to exalted with Ebon Blade and about a third of the way with Argent Crusade), 3 in Sholazar (I got to revered with the Oracles just this afternoon and I'm not that interested in the trinket, so I'll probably stop doing those (on Hiahotah...)), one in Borean Tundra (for Wyrmrest Accord rep), another Wrymrest quest in Dragonblight, the Troll Patrol quests in Zul'Drak for Argent Crusade rep and now 5 in Storm Peaks for Sons of Hodir rep... Oh... And the cooking daily if it's not the one that takes 12 chilled meat.

I have to say... I do NOT like the Wrath dailies at all. There are no major quest hubs... Well... That's not entirely true... But a number of the quests just grant gold. No rep. No possibility of a badge... Just... Gold. That seems cynical to me. There _are_ 6 Ebon Blade quests in Icecrown... At two different locations. All told, it takes me about 3 hours to do those 24 daily quests... About a half hour of which is just traveling.

But that's not all... I really actively dislike some of the quests. I find them very frustrating. For example, he quest where you free prisoners from the mine in Icecrown where one of three things can happen - you can free them, they turn on you or... THEY JUST RUN THE WRONG WAY... IDIOTS!!! Very frustrating. Also in Icecrown is the one where you have to shoot down 20 drakes and riders. If you're not in a group, that one just sucks. Out loud. I did OK this morning when I was by myself but things didn't pick up until I joined forces with someone and we got credit for each other's kills. When you're not in a group, you only get credit for the ones you tag. If you're very unlucky, you could down 40 of them, but 20 would be credited to someone else. The patch notes on the PTR say that they are changing that quest so that you only have to kill 15 and it is reducing the energy cost of firing the cannon by half. It should make that quest better. I'm not sure how it got out of Beta that way. It's excruciating... Like the quest to control the super awesome looking cat to kill 50 wolvars in Sholazar... The cat that doesn't kill things any faster than I can kill them just by going into bear form and swiping 5-15 mobs at a time. And then there's the Apothecary quest in Zul'Drak... I can't tell you how many times I've gotten to adding the last ingredient and he's listed something that I've never seen before and there's only one of and, oh yeah, it's only found on the other side.

But the granddaddy, worst Wrath of the Lich King daily quest that I've found so far? It's the one for the Sons of Hodir where you have to harpoon a Wild Wrym and kill it while you're clinging to it's belly. You have to keep mashing the button (on a GCD) that tightens your grip while spamming a quick, small attack while the big attack is on cooldown and trying to dodge when he swipes at you but... Be careful... The big attack prevents you from dodging for about 5 seconds. Then at about 20-25% health, he switches over and you have to pry his jaw open and use a fatal strike that misses repeatedly. And... Yes... It does appear to be on a bit of a timer so don't take too long or you'll be unceremoniously dumped... Same if you lose your grip. I don't know if you would die from the fall because I'm on a druid and just pop into flying form on the way down. But I'm usually two minutes from the starting point and at low health after every attempt. It's never taken me less than 6 attempts and I've actually died from the quest at least 4 times.

That said... The quest line to open up the Sons of Hodir dailies is among the most fun quest lines I've ever done... Particularly one of the last quests... Where you're riding the drake with a harpoon in your hands and... Well... I won't spoil it for you. Trust me... It's fun. Do that quest line.

In other news, my death knight is almost 75 (About 3% away) and I did the For the Horde achievement series in a PuG last night. There were some coordination issues and people who didn't get credit for various kills started bailing. By the time we got to Ironforge, we were down to about 30 people and the Alliance started defending the boss there. But we ground him down with about 15 people still standing, rezzed the dead and hopped a portal to Dalaran... And in the mailbox... A Black war bear. I've been meaning to buy one of those but... Free is good too. I'll have to take it to Undercity at some point to see if I can fit onto the elevator while mounted...

Lost Weekend

I've been playing both my druid and my death knight still. Right now I've got the third highest level character in the guild at 76 (or more appropriately, the third closest to 80). I actually did all of the started quests in Howling Fjord and in Borean Tundra. I wanted to do the D.H.E.T.A quest line but couldn't find their camp (plus I was exploring new areas and doing new quests... I couldn't help myself... New content!!!). By the time I did find it, I was close to completing enough quests to get the achievement for quests for Borean Tundra. So now I'm working Dragonblight and the mobs are level 71-72. They die really fast. Particularly with the new rank of Ravage I got critting for 4k and the new rank of Mangle I got at level 75. There are a lot of new quest types, believe it or not. I'm pleased with the variation in the quests (and the lack of collect X of item Y quests with crazy low drop rates). It can still be tough with people spawn camping but I've been able to get through everything. The next pass will be faster because I know where things are now.

As for the Death Knight... Well... She's a problem. My druid would be at 80 by now (although there's still a chance I can overtake the others on the 4th Thursday of November - I boycott the event so I have the whole day free) if not for her. She's been a lot of fun. I plowed through Hellfire, Zangarmarsh, Terokkar and Nagrand. It's a lot easier because I know where everything is. I hit level 68 after a few quests in Blade's Edge and went straight to Northrend. While I'm not getting any major upgrades (I've upgraded my boots, bracers and trinkets and have some shoulders that will be good when I decide to break my PvP 4 piece for my DPS set and some balance upgrandes... No tanking upgrades though) on my druid, pretty much everything piece of plate is an upgrade for my death knight.

Along the way, I did a couple of quests that gave me pretty nice one handers and I tried dual wielding them. I don't like it. It seems to reduce my DPS AND reduces my spell damage - which in turn reduces the amount of healing I get from death strike. Since runes are a limited resource, I want the most bang for my buck that I can get out of them. So after a level of playing with dual wielding (to make sure it wasn't just the low sword skills that were hurting me) I switched back to my axe of killing everything dead (I got a BoE green axe "of the beast" that I could equip at 67 that does 110 dps - it's 70's heroic drop quality) and have been much happier. I hit 70 on Sunday morning and promptly forgot to get her flying mount training. So I went back to Ebon Hold to buy the special death knight flying mount that scales with riding skill. It cost 950 gold PLUS the 800 gold for flying mount training but it's TOTALLY worth it. It's arguably the best mount in the game. And in seven more levels... I'm really going to enjoy it.

Week One of Wrath of the Lich King

Big week up here at the lodge...

It's now been a full week (and 8 hours and one minute) since I got Wrath of the Lich King installed and I haven't been posting because I've been busy. Here are some of my early observations:

- Wow. Wow to the scenery. Wow to the details. Wow to Ember Clutch. Wow to the Death Knight quest line. Wow to death knights in general. So far I've only explored Howling Fjord and most of Dragonblight but what I've seen has been amazing - particularly Howling Fjord. Don't go there if you get vertigo. Between the mountains and the outright chasms... I've felt a little nausea a couple of times when I was riding near a cliff or down a mountain. The terrain is incredible. And some of the details... Like the pots of stew in some buildings (and at least one cave) that look like they are actually boiling and the vegetables are moving up and down... And the troughs in Utgarde keep that look like there's water dripping into them. And did I mention Ember Clutch? That just blew me away.

- The are vendors on the turtle boats. Getting around isn't cheap. I've seen flights as high as 2 gold 50 silver so far. So I've been making a point of using the turtle boats where practical and doing the daily quests at each end of their routes. In between, you can vendor and repair. That's a handy little time saver.

- March of the Giants. This quest brings out the worst in people. For this quest, you have to mine the corpses of 4 level 70-71 elites. They're easy enough to kill (OK... If you realize they have a stacking debuff and are smart enough to stay away from them) but the corpses aren't tagged for the person or party who killed them. Any jackass on the quest can just wait for you to kill it and mine the rune - meaning you don't get to do it. This happened to me three times. All three were ninja'd be members of the same faction. When questioned, two of them thought that "everyone got a whack". God... I hate people.

- Potential server transfer. Bloodscalp is one of about 20 servers that can take free transfers to a new server. The guild is discussing moving. I'm mostly against it. Yes... There have been some unfortunate crashes over the last couple of months. Yes, the server is down more often than Garithos. Yes, there have been queues lately. But it also has a vibrant population and I have friends there. I don't necessarily talk to them but I've spent many hours in Karazhan with them and it pleases me to see them running around. We buff each other, wave and move on. I also like that there are enough people in LFG that you can get a group together for just about anything. On my Alliance server, I once watched someone begging for a tank for the daily heroic for 3 hours. It made me sad. On Bloodscalp, I can get a group for just about anything - even if I'm on a DPS character. Plus, you can find just about anything on the AH at any point in time. I'll allow that the performance issues are a concern. But I already feel that some of the guild members are xenophobic and deliberately moving to a low population server would just reinforce that. I've done high pop and low pop and let me tell you... High pop is better. It's a social game. And I believe the queues will die down as soon as some of the excitement about the expansion wears off and people are done leveling and get back to normal usage patterns... And if some people transfer away...

- The first two instances - I've done Utgarde Keep twice and The Nexus three times. So far, I'm impressed. I had another "wow" moment as soon as I climbed the first set of stairs in Utgarde Keep. And the Nexus... It's like... Some weird combination of Botanica, Exodar and a Rubick's Cube. We've pretty much been facerolling those.

- Death knights. The starter quest line is amazing. Just great story telling. My friends with consciences have some problems with the early quests and some others have problems with their reception in the capitol city but on the whole I'd give a 12 out of 13 on that quest line. As for the death knights themselves... I've really enjoyed playing mine. Maybe it's because I'm more familiar with the content so I don't feel like I'm fumbling around as much. Maybe I really enjoy the playstyle. I don't know but I've really been enjoying myself. At first I was just button mashing and things were dying but I had to stop and eat frequently and my UI had hidden the rune bar so I had no idea when or why some abilities were unavailable. It did, however, force me to read my tooltips and I've developed a rotation that allows me to handle 3-5 mobs (although I prefer 1 on 1 fights... Always have... Except on the bear. Particularly now that swipe hits infinite targets. I took out 15 mobs (stood in the wrong place) the other day. But I digress... Death knight. Having a lot of fun with her. She's up to level 65 already and is at 376+ herbalism and 325 inscription. Hooray for the AH.

- Hiahotah is up to level 73. I'm struggling to play him but I suspect that most of that is me not liking that I don't know where everything is. I'll do a quest and then run back to turn it in and find that I had two other quests in the same area... And then there are some chains that just seem to send you marching back and forth between quest hub and the same quest area. Well... That and it takes 60 quests at 25k per to get the 1.5 million XP it takes to get a level these days. It takes me 3 days to get one level but only one on the Death Knight. We'll see. Tanking has been really fun so far and I've been putting up some really massive crits in bear form.

- Last night after we did Utgarde Keep, our mage (who is now 75) ported us to Dalaraan. So I spent about an hour looking around, picking up flight points, doing a daily cooking quest, talking to vendors... You know... Touristy stuff. I set my hearth there and got kicked out of the Alliance section... I wasn't going to cause any trouble... Honest. Why does no one ever believe me? To be fair, those huntards who ganked my death knight (shot me in the back with a mob on me... It is their way) had that thrashing coming... OK... Thrashings... But I didn't start that one and I certainly didn't hover around a the corpse of someone I'd just shot in the back and had outnumbered two to one. It's not _my_ fault that my level 70 paladin happened to be nearby. Where was I? Right... Dalaran. Nice place. I'm not paying 750 gold for a bear mount. I might pay 600... But only if I thought I could get around in Undercity while riding it.

So far... I'm enjoying the new content. I could do without some of the running around and the quest hubs in the middle of nowhere that have 3 quests and that's it but I'm sure that will bother me less the second or third time around.

Position in the queue: 538

I've got a few minutes to kill tonight. There's a queue. Bloodscalp has always been a busy server, but there hasn't been a queue to speak of since the first couple of weeks I played the game. It does, however, give me a chance to talk about that last 24 hours...

I got to the mall at a little after 10 pm and they were being very efficient. They were having people pay for the game early and then at midnight, we would exchange our receipts for a copy of the game. I was about 35th in line so once they started handing them out, I'd be getting it quickly.

The guy running this event takes his gaming very seriously and he was really earnest. Every 15 minutes he came out and threw gifts to the crowd. For really exciting items, he had people do a dance from the game. Some people were into it, but I'd brought a folding chair. I wasn't going to get up for some t-shirt. I already have too many of those.

I talked to a couple of people for a few minutes... Including someone who, apparently, writes for Azeroth Advisor. The woman behind me in line was clearly there picking it up for a child. Kind of disappointing because she was exactly the kind of person I'd expect wouldn't play WoW.

I had my copy and was in my car by 12:06. It was 1:06 before I got logged in. I started a Death Knight and... That quest line is incredible. Lots of new quest types. Great story line. Lots going on. Everyone should roll a Death Knight even if they never play it past that opening line. I played until 2 in the morning before I called it a night.

The next morning, I started right up and finished that quest line. 3 hours. Blues at every slot that are equal to anything I've gotten in Outland so far. 14 slot bags... And an epic mount. Nice. I still don't really have any strategy. I specced her frost and I pretty much just mash 3-4-5-6. Still... I could see how that class could be a lot of fun.

In the afternoon, some of my guild members started logging on and we started doing some of the first quests in Howling Fjord. There's one quest where you have to kill 3 named mobs. Talk about your spawn camping. About 15 people were just spamming AoE trying to tap the mobs. But it was the precursors to a quest for Utgarde Keep, so we stuck with it.

After that, we ran Utgarde Keep. I'm still not entirely sure how to get there. I ended up circling around through what looks like the Alliance starting area. We pretty much facerolled the instance but it was spectacular. That first room... Wow... Just... Wow.

After that people started logging on and it became harder and harder to do quests. My death knight was in Outland and it was pretty much the same thing... But with a bunch of level 70's who didn't have the game yet who were just griefing lowbies.

On the whole, I'm really excited and impressed with what I've seen. And now I'm 7th in the queue so... Back to the grind...

A little pre-wrath downtime

The servers are down so I've got a few minutes to kill. There's a lot of excitement in the guild about the release of Wrath of the Lich King. We're planning which continent we're going to start with and already starting to look ahead at replacing gear.

For my part, I've been thinking about the last expansion. When Burning Crusade came out, I was still in Crucify and the first signs of the impending breakup were in the air. We'd recently gone through a shakeup in our raiding style. We cut down on our number raiders instead of making a second Blackwing Lair run. It was decided that we'd be more successful with a smaller number of more serious raiders. It was the right decision but it caused a little strife and some people left. We hadn't raided in a few weeks because people were busy PvPing (they'd just switched to the new honor for gear system) and just taking time off before the expansion. Our guild leader, a young man I knew as Crazyirish, had gotten a new job so he was unavailable. He was very well liked. He could be a little drunk during our first forays into Naxxramas and we'd be setting up pulls on new trash mobs, someone would ask "what does that mob do?" and Crazy would announce "Let's find out..." launch a frostbolt at it and iceblock. But people loved him so it was OK. When he stopped coming around, people stopped coming out and we couldn't really browbeat people into raiding.

Hiahotah was still a level 38 druid that I never, ever played... Like... Never. So when it came time to go to the midnight release, I didn't have the current local guild to go there with... So I went alone. I got there pretty early so I was near the start of the line. There was a group of college students who obviously played together right behind me. She talked at length about her mage. From the sounds of things, she hadn't done anywhere _near_ the things that I'd done but she loved that mage just the same. But I didn't talk to anyone because I was the oldest person there who wasn't obviously buying it for their kids by about 5 years. I was a little embarassed to be in my mid-30's and waiting in line for a video game.

So... Here I am... Almost two years later. I've pretty much switched factions (although I've been playing my Alliance characters almost exclusively since the release date was announced). I now have 6 max level characters instead of just two. I have a fairly godly tank and a group of people to run the new instances with. I play with a group of local people... People I know in real life.

And yet... Because of real lives and the Gamestop where most people ordered their copies of the expansion, I'll be attending the midnight release alone again. I think this time, I'll try to make more of it. Maybe I'll go through the line and ask people which server they play on. Maybe I'll run into someone I've given a complex over the years. Or maybe I'll just run into someone else who plays a druid and we can just talk about theorycrafting... Like, maybe, the funniest thing you can do to a huntard (there's never a time when it isn't funny to sleep a huntard's pet).

As for what I do after I get the game installed... I just don't know. I don't want to get too far ahead of everyone else because some people I play with regularly won't be getting the game until the weekend. I still haven't decided which one of my characters I'll level first. I could roll a death knight but... So will everyone and their uncle. People will be spawn camping again. I'm not looking forward to those first two nights because there just won't be any mobs to fight. Of course... This year, I've got a group to do instances with... And new bosses with new abilities.

"What does this boss do?"

"Let's find out..."

360 Degree Threat Generation for Druids

A number of people have been complaining in various forums about the lack of 360 degree threat generation for bear tanks... Which is to say: Swipe only hits targets in front of you. Paladins have 360 degrees of threat generation with consecrate and warritards have... I'm going to say... Thunderclap but bears only get 180 degrees with swipe. I've given this some thought and come to the following conclusion:

I'm OK with that.

And here's why: I've never played a warrior but I have tanked on a paladin - and this was before swipe and thunderclap hit more than 3 targets so if you wanted an AoE tank, you wanted a paladin - and even then, I positioned the mobs so that they all faced me. Why? One reason: You can't parry attacks from behind.

A tank has two dual roles: Threat generation and damage mitigation. If you're going to choose one, it's safer to err on the side of mitigation. If you're low on threat generation but high on survivability then the DPS can just learn to count to three but a tank that can't stay alive for three seconds is of no use to anyone. So while you _can_ tank with your back to mobs on a paladin or a warrior, you're going to want to have them all in front of you so you can parry.

Druids can't parry (or block) but they will want to keep all mobs in front of them to be in swipe range. In my opinion, all tanks should be positioning themselves so that all mobs they are fighting are in front of them: Paladins, warriors and death knights for the chance to parry and druids for the threat generation of swipe.

But if you REALLY want 360 degree threat generation on a druid... Pop into caster form, hit yourself with Barkskin and drop a Hurricaine right on top of yourself.

Laundry Day

I don't have a washer and dryer in my appartment so I tend to wait as long as I can before making one big trip to the laundrymat - generally 4 weeks. I've got it down to a point where I'm in and out in under two hours. The problem is... I was planning on doing laundry last Sunday but I ended up being so sick I could barely get out of my chair and I felt exactly the same way on Monday. On Tuesday and Wednesday, I still had remnants of whatever was affecting me so I just went straight home after work. By Thursday I was feeling better but, eh... I'd made it that far. Why not just wait for the weekend, right?

So here I sit at the laundrymat in (what passes for) the bad part of town (in Vermont). The tiles are cracked. The washers are old and dented. The regulars have some opinions about which dryers to use and which ones to avoid. The ceiling tiles are stained and there's fly walking on the cover of the flourescent light above me. On the other hand, it's relatively cheap and, at the moment, it's empty except for me.

What surprises me, however, is the number of wireless signals I'm getting in this part of town. I'm getting no fewer than 10 signals right now. What surprised me even more is how many of them are secured. Only two aren't and of those, one has too weak a signal to connect to and the other one is only connecting at 1-2 mbps. I can't play WoW, but I _can_ make a blog entry.

My latest WoW projects have been getting Hiahotah the "Guardin of Cenarius" title - not because he needs another title but it seems like a very druidy thing to do and because of the amount of work I've already done - and getting Hoban a "the Hallowed" title.

Hiahotah is already exalted with the Cenarion Expedition because I wanted to get the Earthwarden. I did that by getting in every Steam Vault run our guild ever did for a number of months. When that wasn't enough, I single pulled the slaves in the hallway before the bridge to the second boss in Steam Vault for hours... About 8 of them, I'd say. At 12 rep per mob and with an average of around one Coilfang Armament per reset... It was excruciating. (Hold on... Time to move the laundry...)

OK... I'm back. Sorry about that. While it's totally awesome that I can still fit in clothes I wore 15 years ago and with the changes in my body, a lot of the more cavernous articles now look less clownish... 5 weeks worth of laundry... There's a _lot_ of it. But I digress... Where was I? Oh yeah... Guardian of Cenarius.

However, when I looked at his Cenarion Circle rep, Hiahotah wasn't even half way through Friendly. It makes for a long haul. I know because I've done that grind before. Back in the day, we were running AQ20 a lot and I really wanted the sword you could get 1) if you got the drop and 2) you were exalted with Cenarion Circle. So for weeks, I ran silithyst dust. If the Alliance controlled Silithus, it was because I had made the run about 190 times that day. I ground Twilight Cultists by the hundreds. I collected hundreds of texts. And I _got_ to exalted... And the drop came. It was between me and a druid. When he found out that I'd gotten to exalted with CC, he let me have it. A pretty mature attitude for a 13 year old.

So I got my sword... And I got it enchanted and I went out and even leveled my sword skills for a bit - I was that excited... Until it got replaced about 3 weeks later with a staff from later in AQ20. Typical.

So I thought about the grind a little and decided to see how I liked it at 70. I did a few quests. I tried the combat quests and those just weren't worth the time. So I went back to just grinding cultists. While they doubled the rep gained per mob from 1 to 2, the big improvement to the rep grind is that you now get 500 rep per encrypted text turn-in - up from 100. If you happen across the Twilight prophet (who is a lot easier to solo as a level 70 feral druid than with a level 60 fire mage), that's 7 to 10 texts right there. The cultists die in a couple of mangles. And with feline Feral charge, closing the gaps between them is faster. In just a few hours, I've gotten to 4k/21k to exalted. I might be able to do that by the end of the weekend.

As for Hoban the Hallowed... That was a quirk of the RNG. I won a roll on the helm and got the squashling as a drop from trick or treating. I'd already downed the Headless Horseman so from there it was mostly a question of flying to every inn in Azeroth and getting people to hit me with the wands. I hit up all the candy buckets and just with the people who were on last night, I got all but the ninja wand. When they remove the objective to collect one of each mask as a requirement for the title, I'll just have one wand left for the title. Someone in the guild will have it.

And now my laundry is "dry" (or at least what passes for dry here) so it's time to fold it and go home... Maybe I'll try to get into a Kara raid this afternoon. We'll see.

Busy, Busy, Busy

Wow... Just... Wow.

I was so worried that the game would change radically and I be lost of fall behind or something. Boy was I wrong... And right. The 3.0.2 patch was just what I needed. I'd been just marking time until Wrath of the Lich King and... Boom!!! All kinds of fun goodness dropped right in my lap. I've been playing almost non-stop since. There's all kinds of new, fun things to do - including but not limited to:

1) Playing a paladin: For years people have made fun of me because I had two paladins and how boring they are. Who's laughing maniacally now, bitches!!! Retribution got so many buffs that paladins are the "it" class right now. I did a WSG and someone said "Oh good. We've got 3 paladins. We're going to tear shit up" (his words, not mine) and that we did. Ret has become such luscious burst damagey fun that I can't play my paladins enough (nor can other people. I've seen 5 on a side in WSG and 12 in AV). I just want to go and smash things. I like watching rogues run away (or even help me quest just so I don't turn on them and squash them like the bugs that they are). I like seeing a warlock and thinking I can kill him. I like destroying warriors... And huntards... They're the best. Making them go splat while they flail away with their clumsy little toy weapons.

But seriously... The first day, my Alliance server came up first so I took that paladin on a tour of Stormwind harbor (that place is magnificent by the way... those dwarves have been busy... And there's now a way to get from Stormwind to Darnassus that _doesn't_ involve a run through level 20-27 contested territory. /cry) and tried out ret. I did the two Skettis dailies and later told my horde guild: If you see a ret paladin, you do what we do... You run. I was still clumsy at it but... Damn... Things just die so quickly and I don't lose mana because of replenishment and judgement of wisdom. If something _does_ live long enough (and between Crusader Strike, Judgement, Divine Storm and Hammer of Wrath, very few things do) to do damage, I get an instant cast flash of light often enough to keep me at full health. It's obscene...

So I've been PvPing up a (divine) storm. It's just too fun. I know the nerf bat is coming so I'm enjoying it while I can... On both of my paladins. Words elude me for how fun it is. I can walk up to another character and do 12k of damage before they are really even aware that something is hitting them. Each has earned enough honor to pick up a couple of pieces of Merciless Gladiator's gear and I soloed a mob in Botanica on my Alliance paladin(and on my Alliance mage) so I could fill out the rest with the blue gear.

2) Karazhan: After the patch, people were on and interested in trying out their fancy new 51 point talents - myself among them. I was also worried about how much my armor was being nerfed. It turns out that the armor on PvP gear was not lowered and since I used 4 pieces of PvP gear to tank in, I was almost completely unaffected. I lost about 5.5k armor but it's a lot less than I thought it would be. With swipe affecting more than 3 mobs, Hiahotah is a tank tank tank tank tanking machine. The 8 pulls of mage killers in the ballroom? Didn't lose a single one of them. So we breezed through Opera with 8 people on one night. The next night we got all the way through to Chess and even took a look at Prince - with 9. We had 10 on Sunday night but the server crashed and was down for over an hour. Everyone left. Monday we had 10 again and we downed Prince for the first time... On our first attempt. And then we did the same with Illhoof, Netherspite and Nightbane - all guild firsts. We've cleared Karazhan - sure the mobs have 30% less health but that's never been the problem for us. It's about finding a time when 10 people are on. But those times are few and far between because people have jobs and wives and husbands and kids and... Well... You don't want to miss summer by staying inside and playing video games. There hasn't been a time in the last 5-6 months when we couldn't have done it if we'd had the time. But now that's done. And about 9 people got the "Karazhan" Achievement. Which brings me to:

3) Achievements: An interesting wrinkle. It gives you something to work towards. I've spent time just wandering around zones and getting to the one or two nooks or crannies I didn't get to and getting an Achievement out of it. I did a couple of the fishing items. I've done a few of the PvP Achievements (including the 300k damage one that I got last night during a long WSG turtle). In some ways, Achievements are ruining battlegrounds because people are selfishly doing things that, under normal circumstances, help the team but if the other team is doing the same thing, their selfish individual goals prevent us from winning - specifically trying for the "Not in My House" achievement - where you have to kill 10 flag bearers before they leave your flag room. I hated WSG before and I hate it more now. But I got my marks for the Alliance paladin's new bracers so I'm done for a while.

4) Hallow's End: As of yesterday, the Sinister Squashling and the helm can drop from trick or treating and not just from the Headless Horseman event. My horde paladin now has both of them so... I'm feeling like I should go for the "The Hallowed" title - which as of 3.0.3 will no longer require the "collect 20 masks" quest. We've also done the Headless Horseman event a few times. We all have the rings from last year but it's still a way to get the Squashling. And we _do_ have some new alts that don't have the rings and haven't got the achievement to kill him. I got to do him on my horde paladin last night and we thrashed him. He didn't even throw out pumpkins on phase 3. And then I two hand tanked him. I put on all my +dodge/parry/defense tanking gear but kept my giant epeen and beat the crap out of him to hold aggro. It worked pretty well, but I took a lot more damage than I would have if I'd worn a shield... But where's the pleasure in that.

5) Inscription: With the assistance of our resident packrat, I got my horde inscriber to 350 (the effective max level right now) but the Alliance side has required a certain amount of gathering. She's only up to 215 or so. But they can both make armor vellums so I've FINALLY been able to enchant my alts' gear. FINALLY. It's been so frustrated to have a max level enchanter all decked out in epics and alts that don't even have the most basic enchants on their gear. No more. All I need now is a spin around the Hinterlands with an herbalist and I'm good to go. I've also been trying to recoup some of my expenses so I've spent a little time at the AH.

6) Titles: Some of my characters already have titles. Hiahotah has three: Champion of the Naaru, Ambassador and Grunt. Gifteye has Lt. Commander (and is closing in on Ambassador). Kaylee has Ambassador. Touchofgrey is a Sergeant Major. But Hoban doesn't have a title. He's a few costumes and a few trips to the candy buckets of Kalimdor away from "the Hallowed". Hiahotah is exalted with CE and I could grind out the Cenarion Circle rep pretty easily. I've certainly done it before... But on a level 60 mage. As a level 70 tank, I have other options - namely completing group quests solo, summoning mini bosses and jumping that level 60 elite that drops 7-10 encrypted texts every time I see her - not to mention popping my head into AQ20 to try to solo some of the early trash pulls. I'm proud of the Champion of the Naaru title, but the Guardian of Cenarius also seems fitting.

There's just so much to do, I get distracted. My Alliance characters need the most love in the way of grinding and gathering, but the horde guild is considerably more active so I have been hanging out there a fair amount (including 5 trips to Karazhan in 8 days). I should really pick one goal and stick to it because as soon as the expansion comes, it's a race to 80 (with 5 70's now, not 2), rolling a death knight and then it's all the new instances... And heroics... And then Naxx-10. It will be 6-8 months before I even think about doing any of these things again.