Elgar Getting Love

Elgar has been getting a lot of love as MoP closes in.  As my favorite toon, he usually gets lots done after each patch and then get shelved once he’s “good enough” so that I can work on leveling alts and professions.

After catching Mr. Pinchy last week, I reviewed some of his achievements and identified a few things I wanted to get done.  So here’s some of what I achieved in the last week on Elgar:

Exalted with Consortium
Coin Master
Accomplished Angler
Outland Dungeonmaster Hero
35 Exalted Reputations

The goal before MoP is to get 150 pets.  This will be a challenge, but I think I’m either at 145 or 146 now.  I don’t think I’ll get enough Darkmoon Faire tickets this week to get another pet, though I might buy some of the artifacts if I think it will help me.  There were some questlines that reward pets (like Withers) that I hadn’t completed so that is good.  I think I can do it before MoP, but since I’m concerned that the 150 pet achieve reward will be removed, I’m trying to get it taken care of as soon as possible.

I also realized how there were many reputations that I had as Revered but never finished.  Hitting 40 Exalted reputations might not be impossible either.  I’ll hit Darkmoon Faire this week so that will give me 37–and I’m not exalted with Baradin’s Wardens or Wildhammer yet…there’s really no excuse for those yet.  Whoops!  If I get lots of Call to Arms: Healer the next couple weeks, I should hit exalted with Wildhammer.

Though I had planned on leveling Floy (Death Knight) to 85 and getting the warrior, Mouret to level 80, I don’t think it’s going to happen if I push on Elgar.  We’ll see…leveling through dungeons in the 70s goes quickly anyways.

It’s getting down to the wire, and there’s too much to do, and as always, not enough time!  I hope you are all achieving all that you want to before MoP hits!

Server Choice

The other day at lunch I was having a discussion with one Addoe, Adoe, Ado, Adorand…whatever his name is now, and I was talking about how I was ready to transfer some of my toons on my second account over to Horde and server/account transfer them so that I can only be paying for one account every month.  Since he and his wife play on Drak’Tharon and I have a few low-level toons over there, it was assumed that I’d move over there…I know many people over there.  But said that I was going to transfer to Kargath instead.

Why?

I said, well Kargath is PvE and Drak is PvP.  I don’t want play on a PvP server.  They gave many solid arguments saying that you don’t really run into many people and that people don’t really jump you.  And Addoe pointed out that it’s fun to get into sparring matches and said how they were outside a raid and he got into it with a Death Knight.  I on the other hand pointed out the constant anxiety I would have while leveling or doing anything if I could get jumped at anytime, and that I didn’t find beating each other up outside a raid while trying to get it organized very fun.

It was funny though, because on that same day that we agreed to disagree about how fun PvP servers could be, I went home and got to experience exactly what I was talking about.  First was just minor, a friend who transferred over to a PvP server recently was saying how he died 12 times in Mt. Hyjal while trying to level up.  12 times in one hour.  He wanted to be on a PvP server, so he didn’t mind too much, but said 12 times is a bit ridiculous.  And there’s not much a level 80 can do against a level 85.

The second experience was my own.  I’ve been pushing Elgar to 150 pets.  I think he’s at 141 and there are a few that I could get fairly easy, like the Tol Barad seagull.  Elgar skipped TB stuff initially.  So I headed over to do some dailies.  I have only ever done the dailies in the PvE part of the zone.  So there I am, killing ghosts at Largo’s Overlook.  There was a bit of competition that day, 3 or 4 others there at the same time, so I decided I would dot up several and then use Mind Sear to AOE them down.  So I’m doing just that, 3 ghosts all with DoTs and me in a bubble doing Mind Sear.  People are running around and I see someone running toward me, I assume they are going to run past me to get more ghosts.  And right before they reach me, they turn yellow, like PvP yellow.  And then instantly red.  Because now, my Mind Sear had hit them.  And I hear the “you are now in PvP” noise.  Awesome.  Since I’m focused on keeping Elgar alive and killing the ghosts, I’m really caught off guard and the guy seems to just run past me, then I see a flagged Draenei Shaman trying to kill this Tauren Death Knight.  I kill my ghosts and decide it’s do or die at this point, and jump into the fray hoping that I can help the Shaman enough.  But I’m at 50% health and the Shaman is less than that, the DK however, is 90%+.  Our efforts seem futile.  Then, a Blood Elf Rogue shows up and makes quick work of the Shaman, the moment I see the rogue, I decide it’s time to flee.  I make a run for it.  And I make it pretty far timing my dispersion so they couldn’t slow me down.  But it’s not long and I’m eating dirt.

I will be the first to say I suck at PvP whether I have a good start or not.  I’m just not that fast and usually people who are partaking in it are pretty well experienced.  Now if someone else in full crappy PvE gear and a poor spec who never wants to do PvP wants to challenge me, I’ll take them up on it. 

I found it ironic that on the same day that I’m talking about PvP and people jumping me when I’m just trying to do things and how I don’t like that, that someone flags me and then kills me which is exactly the thing I was talking about hating.  And of course that Adoe was trying to say it hardly ever happens and yet here on my peaceful PvE server, I got a little taste of the frustration.

I just wanted my Tol Barad badges so I could get a seagull and instead, I got dead.

To be fair, part of the reason I don’t like PvP servers is because I tend to play WoW as though it’s a single player game.  I’m off doing things by myself most the time and I pretty much want to be able to play as I like without other people getting in my way.  I don’t need WoW to be an MMO for me to have a good time.  Yes, it’s great that I’ve met some awesome people and have a wonderful guild, but I’m as happy as a clam just doing my own weird things by myself, without the constant worry that some idiot who thinks he’s god’s gift to whatever class he is playing is going to gank and then teabag me.  There’s plenty of douchiness in the real world, I don’t need it in my video game too.

Finally…

After literally years of trying…it finally happened.  I just about died.  Literally.

L2Mage

I’m getting ready to transfer some of my RAF level 80s (there are what, 8 of them) over to Kargath on the Horde side.  I’m going to transfer three toons.  So to prepare them I’ve been working on their professions to make sure they are up to Cata level so that if they need anything from my main Alliance toons I can still get it to them before the switch sides and move to Horde.

I got a little distracted though and worked on one toon that isn’t going to be transferred.  She needed TONS of frostweave cloth for tailoring.  It seemed to be raining from the skies back in the day, but now, not so much.  A stack of 20 is going for over 40 gold.  Ick.  So I figured better to just go farm it up.  I decided to run some heroics on a toon that had Cloth Scavenging.  But that’s my mage and warlock.  That makes it a little harder to do LK heroics quickly.  It’s not impossible, but also some of the fights are a little gimicky and make it weird when there’s only one of you.  The point is that while it was working, it was SLOW.  So I just decided to use Monona the level 80 mage to run LK heroics with other level 80s.  I got in with a tank that wanted to do more than one, which was nice.  So off I went.

It was going well.  We get a tank though that hasn’t been to all these dungeons before, on normal or heroic.  It’s okay, I can explain.  But we have another fire mage in the group who’s a little…antsy.  He pulls a few groups and expects the tank to pick it up.  Someone tries to vote kick him, but it fails.  We’re in Azjul-Nerub.  Hadranox is weirdly bugging and we’re entering combat early.  But then I realize it’s not bugging, but the mage is trying to pad his DPS by attacking early.  Those unfamiliar jump into the fray and we all die.  I try to explain the fight.  But it pretty much happens again.  I am annoyed.  Then with some stroke of luck, the fight bugs, Hadranox falls over dead and all the adds despawn.  Sure we can’t loot, but hey, we can skip this nightmare.

We get to final boss.  I am trying to type in that we have to wait for everyone to get inside the ring before we….and they pull.  So the healer is locked out.  I can see it’s going to be a wipe.  I continue to type in what should have happened and wait…timing out my Invisibility so I can mass res everyone.  Tank and other DPS die, then the healer, so it’s just me and the other mage.  He’s attacking everything so they are all on him…he’s at 15% health.  I invis giving it time to work and wait…he ice blocks.  O M G.  I’m praying to the gods that my invis lasts longer than his ice block.  He dies with 2 seconds left on my invis and I can escape and boss despawns.

I resurrect everyone.  I’m annoyed.

The mage says to me, “how you live?”  I’m thinking, not with Ice Block buddy!!  One thing that always gets me is when people don’t know all their abilities.  Especially abilities that can save their lives…people who think that mirror images is ONLY for increased DPS, for example.  So since I’m annoyed (especially with this loose cannon) all I type in is “L2Mage”.

It was completely out of character for me to actually type it, sure I think it ALL the time, but there it was, right on the screen.  He says something back, I can’t remember what, but I start then to explain that I used invisibility to end combat because I was the only one left, allowing me to mass rez everyone.  The tank though had released and we’re waiting for him to turn to us.  The mage fires at the boss.  I figure he’s going to do that and drop group, but when the boss leaves the circle he despawns.  But he does this one time and the DK joins in and dies.  The mage laughs.  I initiate a vote to kick on the mage and type something like, “I’m too old for these shenanigans.”  It passes.

So I guess my tip of the day is:  Mages, you can save a wipe by using invisibility in a timely fashion.  While your job is mainly leet DPS, you still have survival and utility abilities!

So Many Characters

Some readers are aware that I have two active WoW accounts. Because really, 10 characters on one server was not enough… Actually, the second account came along years ago, when two friends and the kid I mentor wanted to try the game. So that we could play at the same time I got a second account. The friends later got their own accounts or stopped playing and the kid I mentor has toons but almost never plays.

The account also was great for Recruit-a-Friend (RAF). I’ve done the program 4 times now. But my main account has 7 level 85s, 1 level 83, 1 level 80, and a level 71. So that doesn’t fit well for playing on my main server. The second account though had many empty spaces with just two toons at level 70+ a couple in the 60s and mostly disposable start-ups.

With the last RAF which just ended, it was intense. With the others it would be maybe one toon to max level. But Joe was set on getting as many as possible. We had a slower start, but near the end we were cranking them out. At the end he had three level 80s and a level 41. Which means that I too added three level 80s and a level 41 to this account as well. I removed a draenei hunter in her 60s, she was never played and deleted a name place holder to make room for all these toons. Because I also had one other thing to consider with RAF, free levels.

Every two levels the recruited gains, a free level can be granted to a character on the
recruiters account, so long as it’s not a level higher than the recruited character. So if you
do the math, at the end of the day Joe had 140 free levels to grant to characters on this
account!!

Some toons got topped of to 80 or near 80 and a warlock went from 21 to 80 eating up a good chunk of levels. Another 39 or 40 went to a new gnome warrior and a few to a paladin to bring him up to the same level as Joe’s level 20 hunter and then they leveled up to 41 through dungeons. No levels went to waste.

However, that leaves this account now with 8 level 80s and 2 level 42s. It’s full. I now have two accounts on Winterhoof totally 20 characters and 17 of them are level 80 or higher. Holy crap.

I’ll be updating the character pages to reflect the recent changes and plans for each character. There will be pictures too! So for now, while Team A has done their duty, it’s time for Team B to get some play time.

There may be defection to the horde in the future as well. We’ll see though, we’ll see. The list of things to do though, just got insanely longer.

End of RAF

My friend and I have been doing recruit a friend for some time now.  It ends July 3rd.  We will have made 3 level 80s in that time and possibly one more.  Die hards could do more, but since he can’t seem to get WoW to connect at home, we’re basically limited to whenever he can come over to play.

Having played a hunter on my second account before, he started with a hunter, but at level 20 we tried something else.  Hunter is good for starting players, but he wanted to try something not ranged.  So he rolled a paladin.  So to compliment his choice, I picked shaman (enhancement).  And so the two Draenei were off and running.  He did well as a paladin and leveling as protection didn’t hurt him either.  We didn’t do any dungeons as I’m not so cruel to toss someone into tanking on their second toon ever.  After they hit 80, we started in on new toons again.  Worgen this time.  He decided to go with a mage, and so I picked druid and would level as boomkin.  Two spellcasters seemed like a good idea plus I had the options to heal.  Recruit a friend (RAF) works best in my opinion if the two characters are the same style, ranged or melee.  Last time I did this we leveled a rogue and boomkin and it was a mess.  Because if the boomkin pulled aggro, the rogue was left chasing mobs.

The worgen did many more dungeons and I switched to healing at level 60 for instant dungeon queues.  The levels 60 to 80 were crazy fast.  And so with nearly two weeks left we decided to push for one more, spending weekend marathons playing.  We’re on one of those now.  He wanted to try a rogue this time, melee is good for him, in my opinion.  And so he made a gnome rogue.  So then…well…I did too.  So there we are Brobert and Respighi the gnome rogues.  We both are leveling as subtlety.  I wanted to try assassination, but since sub gives faster run speed in stealth, I figured I better sub too so that I could keep up!  Today we start the day at level 69.  I am sure by mid afternoon if not sooner we’ll be level 80 and off to the final toons.  I’m not actually sure what those final toons will be.  He might go back to that level 20 hunter for the sake of starting at level 20, or we may find ourselves running on new toons.  Time will tell.

All I know is that there’s a little paladin waiting in the wings to absorb all these levels.  Linus might pick some up too and be level 80 in no time too!  Free levels are great!!

Now I just need to decide who gets the two seated rocket!

Aside from the power leveling of more alts than I need, Bocat and I have been playing on my private minecraft server as well as the kid that I mentor and a few others.  We’ve really created some awesome cities for a bunch of rookies. We have great plans for things too after the next patch and they introduce a few new things.  You can see a map of it at:

http://minemap.verygames.net/server8633/Stonehaven/#/132/64/616/-1/0/2

Trout over and out for now!  Keep on gaming and enjoy the summer!

The End?

Though it may appear that I stopped playing WoW, or switched to something else, or died.  None of those things are the case.

I have been playing WoW and Minecraft lately, same as usual.  However, the place where I work blocked WordPress and all things WordPress related.  So I can no longer post, read, or comment on blogs at work.  I suppose that’s fair, they aren’t paying me to read the internet.  But it’s why I have all but vanished.  I’ll be honest, while at home, I hardly ever use the internet.  If I’m on a computer it’s for a game.

So though technically this isn’t a “good-bye, I’ll miss you all” post, it is one of those classic posts where someone says “I’m just too busy to blog. “  I’m very excited about my new career and the opportunities that come with it.  But being on the road will cut into my gaming time and like I mentioned, blogging outside of work just hasn’t really happened.

So I want to thank the community for letting me be part of it while I could.  This has happened before, so who knows…maybe I’ll be back one day.  Until then, keep leveling, learning, and most importantly, sharing your ideas and experiences!

Troutwort