Tuesday, December 30, 2008

Rep: It's The Original Achievement System

I have been AFB due to the fact that 1) I need rep and 2) I need gear. First Strike is a raiding guild, first and foremost. And it's ok to be a non-raider in a raiding guild (no, really, it is); but if you want a decent shot at the raid lewts when you go in, you have to make Raider status.

So I've been grinding reps and trying to get geared for 25s. We do 10s, but it's informal. Anyone can sign up, first come first serve, and loot goes to whoever needs it most. But once we get the 25s going, things will go back to the old rules.

I'm ok with this. Heck, I signed up for this! But with working two jobs, juggling finances - I'm glaring at you, Sallie Mae - and every day life stuff, WoW has become a treat.

So I did some math on the three reps I'm actively grinding right now: The Kalu'ak, Sons of Hodir, and Frenzyheart. Two are 'for fun', but I can get away with that - I wear an Argent Crusade tabard exclusively these days.

With the Kalu'ak, I have only 8 more days of quests before I can snag that penguin minipet and epic fishing rod, and then it's on to another rep. For the Frenzyheart, it will take longer... I decided immediately I wanted the Mercenary achievement, but I went Oracle at first without realizing the Frenzyheart have no concept of Phat Lewts. So I switched... about three days ago. Time until I can go back to my minipet-and-mount-giving Bigtongues: 4 days in Honored and 12 in Revered. Ugh.

And finally, the Sons of Hodir. These guys stink, seriously. Two of the three dailies that give rep have limited spawns that are heavily camped, and the other requires a decent-ish droprate item from mobs being farmed, not just for the daily, but for Crystalized Waters. I'm only about half way through Friendly, so I figure it will take 5 days to get Honored, another 8 days to get to Revered, and finally 12-ish days until Exalted. Total time: 25 days.

Sigh. It'll be a while before I get to work on my Dungeonmaster achievement... or coin fishing... or Loremaster... Sometimes it stinks being obsessive about completion. :)

Tuesday, November 18, 2008

What's A Blog? /level

Ah yes... I have a blog.

I'd almost forgotten, in the glow of Expansion glory. So what is Xanth up to now?

Making a Death Knigget to do his farming. Meet Tenderizor, Skinner and Miner extraordinaire. He is the sole reason Xanth may soon revert to Leatherworking - I had dropped Skinning/LWing for Mining/Engineering, and am NEVER dropping Eng! Those goggles are the hotness. :P

Speaking of. New goggles! Must have! And they only require level 70! *mines like crazy*

I've also gotten myself one of those stunning bald eagles from Grizzly Hills. Seriously, this guy is just gorgeous. We used to have a few Bald Eagle families living around here, so I have a small soft spot for the feathery guys.

And last but not least, Xanth is L72. Huzzah! I've finished all of the regular Borean Tundra quests, and am now milking XP and gold from Howling Fjord. Yes, yes, I should just move on to Dragonblight or something, but I want to experience all of this expansion. And if I learned anything in the grind from 60 to 70, it's that you save as MANY quests as you can for pure gold. Might as well get all the XP I can from the lower areas before it's too late!

Oh, and there's a small project-idea floating around in my mind, but we'll see if I even do it... ;)

Sunday, November 9, 2008

The Death of Karazhan

I realize they nerfed the health of bosses a short while ago. I even realize why.

I also realize that the players in my guild are Tier 6 and, even if the gear doesn't quite match that level of play, the playing still does.

But this is just... is just... AAAAAAHH!


Netherspite has always been my favorite boss fight in the game. Kael in TK is more epic. The Council in BT is longer. And Illidan is probably more technical (we never did make it past Council, thanks to time issues).

But there was nothing like learning Netherspite with my old guild, Round Table Raiders.

That fight is nothing but Do X Or Die technicalities. And I LOVED it. RTR had to stay in on all the banish phases because we were still gearing and learning and didn't have the DPS to kill him if we ran out. We had to be very, very careful on heals with the Blue Beam or we'd have no one to take it come round 3. And we had our share of "AMG You stepped in the red beam! OUT! OUT!" moments.

There is nothing like seeing everyone wipe, switching to Monkey, popping Deterrence, and tanking that dragon in the red beam while the PVP Shaman heals your blue tail until a black hole spawns to gank you.

And now... Netherspite is nothing. His HP is gone. His difficulty level is nil. My favorite boss is dead for the last time before Wrath.


RIP Netherspite. RIP.

World Server Is Down

I have to give a big shout-out to BigRedKitty for his idea of Running of da Bulls for Ezra. I worked at that time, so I wasn't able to make it, but from the pics and movies floating around of it, the thing was truly epic. Even if they never made it to Stormwind.

Wait, what's this RodBfE thing, you ask? The idea was for people to roll baby Tauren on Argent Dawn, US server, then run them to Stormwind to sack the place. Horde were invited to come help with the actual sacking, and Alliance were invited to defend their fair city. Meanwhile, the real life avatars of these bovine were asked to donate to the Make A Wish Foundation, even if it's just a dollar. As soon as I get some spare money, I know I will.

Unfortunately... the huge amounts of people who showed up managed to trash the server. :P

I've seen numbers of 500+ baby Tauren, at least 100-150 higher-level Horde coming to help sack Stormwind, and 300+ Alliance ready to defend the city. Now, when the 650 Horde are on one continent, and the 300 Alliance are on the other, things go fairly smoothly.

When the 650 Horde catch a boat to Booty Bay... Heh.

Even the GMs on Argent Dawn admitted both the cause and the run was epic (and seemed to really appreciate the cause aspect of it). But, being GMs, they had to do their duty and /y at everyone. Literally.

So what can we take away from this? A few things.

1) No server, let alone Argent Dawn, can handle a congregation of nearly 1,000 people in the same area.

2) The GMs probably would have loved to divert server-power to Argent Dawn so it COULD handle nearly 1,000 people all PVPing in Stormwind, and then would have shown up in the flesh to battle it out themselves. Or in the pixils. Or whatever.

3) The massive trek of nearly the entire server population to Northrend is going to be very, VERY interesting... :P

Thursday, November 6, 2008

/Sigh

So. We now have one week until Wrath hits. One. Week. Then we get to start leveling again. In all new areas. With all new abilities. And a totally different plot line. (And maybe no Burning Legion would be good?)

I am a Burning Crusade Kiddo. I have never played true Vanilla WoW, honestly hadn't even HEARD of WoW way-back-when. So the stories of what it was like when BC was totally new have me stoked for release night. Only one problem.

I work the next day. At 8 AM. And I'm a good hour drive from work.

So, unless my best friend in the whole world *hint* is willing to let me stay the night at his place - which just so happens to be about 5 MINUTES away from work - with my computer, I will not make the midnight opening. Which leaves me as a sad Space Goat.

Hmm. I must remember to find some blackmail on M before the 13th...

Tuesday, November 4, 2008

The Results Are In

Obama is the new President of my country.

Not sure yet who is the new Governer of my state, as the numbers were all over the place and I can't stay up any longer. Definitely going to have to buy a newspaper tomorrow!

Animal Handler is no longer the must-have talent is was, and I still don't know if my pet is getting any of my hit. /pout

And I can has bat minipet. Tomorrow. My addiction to the stupid election news and lack of a TV in my room caused me to miss a Kara badge run. I'm thinking I'll have to pug it tomorrow.

And it's almost an hour past my bed time! Why am I still awake!?

LFM, just need a Server then G2G!

Maintenance Day. The Tuesday morning where there is nothing to do but read blogs until 11 AM.

Unless, of course, someone at Blizz headquarters spills their Double Whip Mocha Latte with Hazelnut Flavor all over the main server, thus causing the rest of HQ to go into panic mode and push back "maintenance" to 1 PM.

I'm not sayin' that's exactly what happened, but that's certainly a valid explanation. Either way, here we are, with another hour to go until the servers return to life and answer the most important question in WoW-history for this particular Space Goat...

Is Mirkblood still there???

I'll admit, I was lazy with WoW last week. I just did not feel like playing at all, even though I still needed the Headless Horseman mask and the Batling pet. Well, I still need both items - no new title for me this year - but I'm hoping beyond hope that prissy Blood Elf is still poking around the guest chambers when the server comes back up.

If not... hopefully I can get Prince to die for the Achievement.

Erikka has reached her 60th season now, and is aiding the over-worked Honor Hold populace in thinning demonic numbers, reclaiming trinkets, and generally being a pain for the Burning Legion. In return, they are offering up some nice new armor for her tanking tail.

Surprisingly, leveling in Hellfire as a Protection Paladin isn't that painful. The painful part is not having an epic land mount. And getting pummeled by an invisible Fel Reaver after finally putting that last Helboar add out of my misery.

Have I wasted an hour yet? ...Darn.

I suppose I shall go back to looking for a good Scrolling Combat Text addon that will actually work while I wait for them to dry out the servers.

Sunday, October 26, 2008

Holy Flying Ziggernauts, Batman!


First Strike went 5/9 in Black Temple this past Friday, with two of those being new bosses (Teron and Bloodboil). We're going back in to hopefully see the rest of 'em die tonight, but it's pure progression now, so it'll be fun. Even if we see no phat lootz.

But phat lootz we saw! Legionkiller is now ours, with a shiny crit scope slapped on top. This has to be the best looking crossbow in the game, and now it's mine. Bwahaha!

But now, I have Scourge to kill for Argent Dawn rep. I want that tabard and it's acheivement. And besides, it's fun.

Tuesday, October 21, 2008

/target Xanthelei, /cast Revive

Well, now that our skies are blue once more, it's about time to get back to blogging! I have been busy while I was silent, so I'll start with what's new in the Draenei realms.

Firstly, I have added a new blog to my blogroll (as well as renamed it from "Blogroll"). Big Bear Butt has caught my attention, and even his non-WoW posts are hilarious. And since I'm leveling a resto Druid for PVP myself, it's fitting he's next to be added to my blogroll. I'm still looking for good blogs to read, so if you know of any, feel free to drop a comment and let me know!

Next, we move on to the Armory. Erikka, my Protection Paladin, is finally added, as is Ruinator, aforementioned Druid. I took the liberty of appending their titles, as well as updating Xanth's. This is my current "team" of played alts - more may or may not be added. Not pictured is my little Dwarf banker, Bankofxanth. Why? Because he has no roleplay potential, natch. (And I'm lazy.)

And finally, Gorilladin + Volley = more fun than monkeys in a barrel. Pun totally intended. So who are my pets now? Well, I have Alvar the Ghostsaber (of course!), Wailflash the Gorilladin, Origima the Wind Serpent, and Kaida the Warpstalker. Who's liable to return to the wild? Kaida and Origima, should I find a good reason to. I have one un-bought stable slot that is being saved for Rhino Bowling funtimes.

Ah, but now it's way past 11, the servers are likely up, and I must go have some leveling fun with my friend M. Or he might Charge poor Ruinator and beat him over the head with his shield.

Tuesday, October 7, 2008

Into the Wild Blue Yonder

Sorry the blog has been a bit quiet lately. Besides the fact that First Strike isn't doing much raiding right now, I've also found out that my satellite internet service, Wild Blue Communications, has a hidden clause that states "You have 12,000 MBs of downloads in any given 30 day period." (It resets to the last 30 days every day.) How much have I used? 12,115. So they've slowed us down to about 30-40% of the normal speed that we pay $70 a month for.

It takes a while just loading my own blog. =(

So, if I haven't been raiding, what have I been doing? I have messed around on the PTR a bit more, and am happy to see they've finally fixed the Beastial Wrath bug. For a few builds, having The Beast Within was a wasted talent point, as every time you used Beastial Wrath it would ONLY apply the pet buff. Your poor Hunter would stand there, watching his big red pet sadly as he himself was denied the joys of being big and red.

But that's fixed! So /cheer! Also fixed is Spirit Bond. It may take a while to register with the server, but it does now affect Mend Pet. I gave my L65 bear full Stamina and Rhino Blood, then had someone hit him a few times to see what MP would tick for. I got about 165 per tick, which isn't bad. Then I popped one of my unspent talent points (I have a habit of only taking the "duh" talents when on the PTR, so I can check various effects and such) into Spirit Bond and took him on the Dailies grind.

At first, I was disappointed, as I couldn't see any difference in the Mend Pet ticks. The tooltip also hadn't changed, so I figured it was a lost point in Spirit Bond and I should report the bug/misleading talent tooltip. About five minutes later, I noticed that MP was indeed ticking for more healing now - and probably had been for some time. So I dropped another point into SB to see if it would increase again, wrote down the new number, and continued on. About 3 mobs later, Mend Pet began giving 215 health per tick - much better at keeping my little bear alive against L70+ mobs!

On Live, I've been going into a collector's frenzy. I already have increased my mini-pet collection from about 5 unique/rare pets to, say, 14. I've listed out all the Horde-only pets, the grind-pets, the rep pets, etc. and do plan on getting all of the ones I can. Why? Because in about 8 days mini-pets will no longer take up bag space! Same with mounts - I've been grinding rep with the major Alliance factions for the racial mounts, and have actually bought all three L30 Stormwind horses. (Yes, I'm a nut, I want them all!)

Hmm. I'm going to need more gold. /plot

Monday, September 22, 2008

Can't Touch This



First Strike has downed Kael'Thas in The Eye and finished all of Teir 5 content as of about 10 PM PST, 9/20/08!

Aside from the fact I noobed it up and accidentally abandoned the quest to kill Kael and Vashj (and then didn't pick it back up before raid time ><), I was there! I saw him die! The little bugger got me with a fireball crit right after I landed and bandaged up to full health, so I sat out the last 15%. But it was still awesome. And I can't wait to go back in there - I wants a chest from him! (T5 2 peice bonus is so sweet looking.)

As it was, no Hunter loot dropped. But again, that picture alone is worth it. Congrats to all of First Strike! :D

(Also, this is late in getting posted because I am in the last week of school right now for this quarter. So, real life before WoW, and all that. Now, on to Brewfest token gathering!)

Friday, September 19, 2008

Where I Stick My Foot in My Mouth

Once in a very great while, I find myself on the WoW forums (usually the Hunter forums) looking for a good debate, entertainment, or general news I somehow missed. Today, I found this thread.

I've been reading through it and honestly wasn't planning on writing anything about it, since I don't PVP, but I have to share a post written byAktarin, a Hunter from the Shadow Council server:

Hunter: Look, I think this is overpowered and here's why. *sets out logical arguments*
Rogue: OVERPOWERED?! YOU ALL HAVE STUNS! STUNLOCKS! POISONS! THINGS!
Hunter: No, that's you that you mean.
Mage: Um yeah. That'd be you.
Rogue: WHAT THE HELL ARE YOU TALKING ABOUT! You ALL have stuns and things I can't fight! You.. you.. you can iceblock! NOT FAIR!
Hunter: Can we just get back to the point?
Rogue: THE POINT IS THAT YOU CAN'T PLAY!
Warrior: What were we talking about?
Rogue: How hunters are overpowered! They can wingclip! And frost trap!
Hunter: No, we WEREN'T talking about that! We were talking about dismantle and how it's unfair when you already have a gajillion stuns against our class!
Rogue: *starts flailing around spouting gibvberish and quoting improbably statistics*

-pause-

Warlock: Oh god. he's going to do the wookie defence.
Rogue: But, ladies and gentlemen of this supposed raid, I have one final thing I want you to consider. Ladies and gentlemen, this is Chewbacca. Chewbacca is a Wookiee from the planet Kashyyyk. But Chewbacca lives on the planet Endor. Now think about it; that does not make sense!
Hunter: Oh god.
Rogue: Why would a Wookiee, an eight-foot tall Wookiee, want to live on Endor, with a bunch of two-foot tall Ewoks? That does not make sense! But more important, you have to ask yourself: What does this have to do with this matter of OPdom? Nothing. Ladies and gentlemen, it has nothing to do with this matter at hand! It does not make sense! Look at me. I'm a roguer defending my unbelievably overpowered class abilities, and I'm talkin' about Chewbacca! Does that make sense? Ladies and gentlemen, I am not making any sense! None of this makes sense! And so you have to remember, when you're in that developers room deliberatin' and conjugatin' the Emancipation Proclamation, does it make sense? No! Ladies and gentlemen of this raid and development team, it does not make sense! If Chewbacca lives on Endor, you must nerf hunters!
Warrior: But..
Rogue: LOOK AT THE MONKEY! LOOK AT THE SILLY MONKEY! *waves a stuffed toy*
*Warrior's head explodes*


I may be alone in this, but this just cracked me up. Part of what I like about the Hunter community is we tend to attract some hilarious people. BRK is a very good example of what I mean. These people can make their point and do it in a way that is funny. I'm sure other communities have people like this, but I'm biased and so enjoy the Hunter people more. :P

So what's the skill they're all crying and ranting and debating about over there? Rogues are getting a new skill called Dismantle. It is first available at level 20, and increases from there - meaning Rogues will have this, as a base skill, come the 3.0 patch.

Is it OP? I honestly have to say "I don't know" because I didn't fight that many Rogues when I was dorking around in arenas with my Shaman friend. I have never really fought a Rogue because I know, with my latency, I can't kite him. That, and I don't enjoy duels anyway. :P

However, I can say if I had tried to level on my old PVP server and Rogues had this, I probably would have quit by the time I got to STV. It was bad enough getting camped by 70s, but having no weapon to help defend myself against a same-level Rogue would have been worse. I have managed to beat a Rogue at the same level as me on a PVP server in STV, but it was a very close thing. Only saving grace was a freezing trap -> aimed shot crit -> arcane shot crit. If he had had a trinket, I would have been toast.

So while I personally don't care if Rogues get more buffs to arena, I know there are plenty of people out there who would like to PVP on their Hunters. For their sake, I hope this gets reworked, because I can't come up with a way to get away from a Rogue without a melee or ranged weapon equipped that is not easily countered by a PVP spec Rogue. Short of having a secondary weapon, anyway (if you can even re-equip when disarmed).

Tuesday, September 16, 2008

Tanking Pet Goodness

I managed to get onto the PTR last night (indeed, I was up until 6 AM my time), and decided to test out the pet tanking abilities. So I grabbed my Warp Stalker, named her Kaida, and went looking for someone to test with.

A Boomkin in IF was willing to duel me, so I could test out some things that I'd heard rumor of and/or wanted to see myself. First I put up a Serpent Sting and trapped him; yes, Traps will last with a dot! Next goal is to get a lock to help out, dot the bajeezus out of a tank, then trap him. I'm curious to see if there's a damage limit to what the trap will handle, or if it only counts direct damage now. I'm sure if they fixed this for trap, Hex/Sheep is the same. Hmm, must test that too...

Then I played around with Disengage. Going up hill it sucks. I think I moved 2 feet. =( But going downhill (we were testing on the road out of IF) it is wonderful. Popped me to my max distance, and I landed with auto shot still running. Can't wait to try it against a SStep Rogue and charging bear/Warrior. :D

Oh, and Viper Sting still sucks.

After he did his testing, and found his Resto set was better for Boomkin than his Boomkin set (lawl), we went off to test the healing capability for him and the increased heals for my pet. Banthar, take one: down in about 15 seconds with hardly any mana missing from the Druid. Hmm, we need something with more hit points... Oh look, there's Durn. *grin*

He took a bit longer to kill, but again, there was no real strain to keep Kaida healed. Since the instances were down, we headed off to BEM to take one the dragons. Instead of dragons, though, we were met with... tiny blue-and-white checkered boxes?? I wish I could find that screen shot! Kaida tanked like a pro, and even took on two adds our Druid friend was feared into. Peice of cake! Add a mage, Titan warrior, and pally to the group and off we go for Dragon 2. No aggro problems, no adds, and no lack of heals.

"Your pet is easier to heal than some tanks I've had."

/boggle

Tonight, I'm hoping to do a Ramps run or two with this guy. Just the two of us. It shall be epic.

Monday, September 15, 2008

A First Time for Everything

The PTR is open for patch 3.0, and I did a very odd thing. I got off my lazy bum and figured out how to get onto it. I only managed about a half hour today, but I do have a few first impressions.

1) The sign in screen for Wrath > the sign in screen for BC.

2) Everyone is on the PVE realm! Why is everyone on the PVE realm!? Get off the PVE realm so I can get on already!

/cast misdirect [target=PVP] /shoo!

3) The graphics got a nice upgrade. Love what they've done, but somehow things seem a bit grainier than they are in Live. Though, this may be because there's so many people on the same server... Also, must see if the shadow thing is on live - cause I love it.

4) Love the pet Ferocity tree! Respec'd Alvar, my ghostsaber, then had to respec him again as I found Heart of the Pheonix is borked. How is it borked? For those who haven't followed such things on the Beta forums, HotP allows you to rez your pet for free during battle. However, it has a cooldown of 10 minutes (though the tooltip shows it as 7 minutes). So what's the problem?

This cooldown restarts itself every time your pet is summoned. Mount up to go from the pet trainer to the Auction House? It resets. Still on cooldown and you have to rez your pet? It resets. I'm not sure as I haven't managed to test it, but I'm reasonably sure zoning into an instance and taking a taxi flight will also reset the timer.

5) Love the pet Tenacity tree! Went and tamed a white L70 Warp Stalker in Terokkar to play around with, and realized after that I had no fruit or fish. /facepalm

So, I plugged in the talents, and went off to see how quickly Guard Dog would increase happiness from Sad to Happy. Three mobs later, I had a fully content Stalker. /cheer!

6) The Cunning tree looks good, but I haven't had any chance to play around with it yet. A certain Shaman friend has demanded any testing I do be with a Spore Bat (indeed, he demanded I go tame one immediately), so we'll have some fun with it. Later. When the server isn't locked.

7) I am staying Beast Master for the expansion. Why? Because I already demand the 4 extra skill points Beast Mastery provides. Though, to be honest, I wish respecs didn't cost 50g in the PTR... Because of this, and my perpetual Broke-ness, I will not likely test the other two trees.

8) Five pets. 'Nuff said. (Though, 50g and 150g for the last two stable slots really hurts, considering the first two are 1g and 10g each.