We spent most of last night wiping on those damn Jormungar in the new 10 man raid. Gormok was ridiculously easy after a few shots – chasing Snobolds down quickly became routine. We just couldn’t get the Jormungar down. That fight has got to be a prime example of where 10 mans are more difficult than 25 mans – if someone dies, which is very likely to happen, then your entire attempt is pretty much doomed. Guh.

I’ve kind of lost steam on Ilthiran – not really that interested in playing him right now. In fact, I’d say after that brief period of revival, I’m kind of bored of WoW again. –shrug- Anyway, I did manage to get to level 71, and thus, Swift Flight Form;

I also managed to finish the Nexus – we had absolutely zero problems this time, so, ha, suck it, Kyp, it was totally the healers fault last time!

Faulsey received a brief revival as well. He had 26 Emblems of Heroism, which were just sitting there, annoying me, so I ran a few HCs to get up to 40 EoH and 200 SKS, to spend on an heirloom chest and shoulders for my Paladin – he’d previously been using some mail shoulders.

Logging onto said Paladin, I had a case of “hey, I should have read the patch notes” when I noticed that A. My Judgements were returning a flat 8% of my Base Mana when cast, despite there being nothing in the tooltip to suggest they would do so, and B. Hand of Reckoning now does ridiculous damage if used to pull a target. Geez, as if leveling Ret Paladin’s had to be even more powerful! –grin-

And random cool screenshots:

(So Algalon is kind of old news by now – I’d never seen this, and didn’t expect any of the scrubs on my server to have been able to take him out!)

Level 70 Druid! Now that I’m in Northrend, I’m actually able to start tanking instances! Yaaay!

Firstly, tried my hand at tanking Utgarde Keep. It wasn’t terrible, but it wasn’t great, either. I think tanking is the hardest of the three roles, by far. Target switching to maintain aggro when you have Death and Decay happy Death Knights is a right pain in the neck, and I’m still not sure of all my abilities, nor have I developed any sort of faith in healers – Barkskin and Survival Instincts are used liberally.

(Note to self: Must sort out Omen’s Aggro warning – not really needed as a tank. And it obstructs screen something awful.)

Shortly after that, I tried Nexus. Whilst trash was generally better than it had been in UK (though there are a couple of pulls that aren’t there in HC Nexus, which confused me greatly), we didn’t get Keri down. We wiped twice, and our healer had to go. I did my best, I really did, and we had her at 8k the last time – I swear I didn’t get a single heal the last 10 seconds before I died, so I’m blaming it on the healer. Bah!

Whilst we’re on the topic of the Nexus, I ran it last night with Kazura and Yuanjia for some emblems. I’ve run it something like 25 times now (20 of those actively looking for the stupid mace) and I never saw it, not once. Kazura had a similar record. We’ve both found other maces – I have a similar quality one from Naxx, and she has a nice one from the new 5-man. And do you know what happened when we looted Keri?

NOWAI!

That slimy harpy bitch! D:<

On the upside, I did get this that run.

I’ve also been on a bit of a baby Hordie kick recently. Spurred on by a desire to do Mulgore again – I love Mulgore – I made a little Tauren Warrior, another in a long line of Faulsey’s, who became the first of that class to reach 10… Compared with at least 5 Hunters and 3 each Shaman and Druid. Only thing I haven’t gotten to at least 10 now is Rogue.

Another baby Hordie, this time created due to a desire to get a Raptor on a character (without lots of rep grinding on some higher level Hordies, or grinding ZG on Ellaria), is a Troll Shaman on my PvP realm.

As much as I love Draenei, I feel the Troll Totem quests are a little bit better – maybe because you do get some nice views doing them. Did you know that at level 1 you could quite easily get to Ratchet from the Valley of Trials within 5 minutes?

I reckon I’ll probably play this gal a decent bit the next few days, to get me a raptor!

I’m finished at my little job now – seriously, the management was farcical, I had to get out of there – and am totally free for the next two weeks before I start university. Well, kind of free. I need an eye test and new glasses, amongst other expensive things. Guh. But in any case, interest in WoW has returned somewhat recently, so I should be playing a fair bit.

I believe my last update was Ilthiran reaching level 55. He’s now 61, making him my third “proper” character in Outlands – Death Knights don’t count, since they near enough start in the damn place. And, thanks to the mount changes in 3.2, he can fly!

Look, Storm Crow Form. GET IT? AHAHAHAHA… /wrists.

But there’s something rotten in the World of Warcraft. Right now, Instance servers are totally stuffed full of people, I imagine a large part of that is to do with the changes to Emblems – I see many people looking for groups to run through multiple HCs for Emblems.

So, in an break from the usual path, Ilthiran hasn’t actually set foot inside Hellfire Ramparts, though not for lack of trying. Twice. For half an hour each time. With full parties. Ugh. This is especially annoying, because the Ramps quest gives a pair of Blue boots as a reward, which would be a great improvement over my 40-something Greens, and the follow up Q’s in the Blood Furnace give a great cloak – one that I’ve made sure to grab on both previous trips through.

I have, however, finished Blood Furnace. And I did it as a tank! My first time properly tanking. It was a bit iffy at times, partly due to my awful gear, lack of an actual tanky spec, and general newbishness. Oh, and those @#!?*% technician mobs, that bomb the crap out of you. Hatehatehate. But we managed to complete the instance, and I got valuable EXP as a tank.

No loot though. Sigh. Shouldn’t be that concerned with it, since it’s going to get replaced in Northrend, if not before. I just like having good gear. Clown look doesn’t bother me, since I spend all my time in forms.

When back in Darnassus learning my level 61 abilities, I remembered how pretty some of the places in WoW can be. Nowhere near as lovely as such a scene would be in real life, but still pretty damn nice.

(Kind of a “faux glow” there, had to edit pic a bit, since for some reason screen cap ignored the shiny glow!)

I actually had the “Full screen glow” effect off since I first started playing the game, as a matter of performance, but I didn’t even think to keep it on when I got this new computer back in November… I think the difference in NE areas is quite drastic.

Anyway, WTB gargantuan tree with pretty Elven city in it’s boughs IRL, PST. Just make sure it doesn’t have any of those Elves as tenants. They are creepy.

3.2 hit EU servers today, which means I could finally pick my Druid back up, with his shiny new forms. If you’ve been reading this blog for a while, you’ll know I love white animals, so, I had to pick the white forms.

Pre.2:

Post 3.2:

Bear pics are kind of small because for some reason I had to make sure my name was in the shot, and your name really floats quite high when you’re in bear form.

I was kind of iffy about the pink ‘do on the Cat Form, until I discovered it made me the ultimate Winterspring predator!

Almost impossible to see me. Muwahaha.

I went from 53-55 on him today. Would have done more, but wasn’t feeling up to a massive grind. Should be in outlands within a couple days, thanks to his nice new tunic.

My Shaman UI has kind of exploded right now, so I’m not going to play Ellaria for a little while, till everything is back in order, and even then, will probably just run the odd heroic. Though I’ll need to remember to do the Orphan quest whilst I still can.

…and business is good!

My WoW goal for this week is to get Ilthiran, my Feral Druid, to Outland. Thanks to that Zul’Farrak group a few days ago, I got a nice jump start to levelling again. I hit level 50 today, which means… Mangle!

With Mangle, I’m now taking great delight in making enemies bleed to death. Pounce –> Mangle –> Shred –> Rake –> Rip –> Cackle evilly. Probably not the most efficient levelling rotation, but it’s fun!

At 60, I’m considering shifting over to a bear-heavy build – tanking is what I want to do on this character, but I’m not sure if Outlands has enough population these days that I’ll do much in the way of instancing there. Might be worth it to keep with a totally Kitty DPS build till 68, in that case. Hmmm. Thoughts, anyone? Oh, and no – I’m not dual speccing at this stage.

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Shammy news:

Work struck, and gave me a shift for Wednesday coming. The guild usually does FL (and Razorscale now, probably) on Wednesdays, so I’ll miss that – and guaranteed that the Pyrite Infuser will drop. Tomorrow we should be continuing Ulduar – hopefully we’ll finally get at least XT down, maybe Ignis and one of the Antechamber bosses too?

Ooh, and I need to tell you my idiot PUG story. So, I’m looking for HC Nexus, since I still need that damn mace for my resto set. Get an invite from a Paladin, and we end up just needing a tank. Nothing in LFG, so I ask the guild, and a guildie agrees to come. Paladin is totally oblivious to the other three party members saying “Hawl, you, invite this guy, ffs.” Guildie tank understandably decides he has better things to do with his time than not get invites. This was the first sign that the Paladin was an idiot.

Finally, we get the Paladins attention, and another DPS’ guildie comes to tank. We’re doing OK – DPS isn’t great, around 1.6k average, but it’s not horrible for a Heroic. The Paladin starts saying how the DPS is crap, and picks out the mage especially. I point out he’s hardly doing much better, to which he replies “Yes, I am” – at this point he’s doing 1.7k DPS. Ooh, so strong. –eyeroll-

So, we’re fighting Telestra, and the idiot Paladin immediately draws aggro on her first split and dies. We manage to keep her splits under control, whilst the Paladin, clearly not content just to eat dirt like a good idiot DPS, informs us (and I quote)

ul will wipe coz im not aliv not enuf dps wivout me

At this point, I’m healing like absolute crazy – Riptides and Lesser Healing Waves are zipping about the place every GCD, barely managing to keep everyone alive – so yes, it’s looking close, but I was determined that we’d survive, just to prove that fool wrong.

Then, he asks “no1 got battle res?” The remaining party members were Shaman, Death Knight, Rogue and Mage. Tired of his idiocy, I reply “No, because we have no Druid you blithering idiot. ” –facepalm-

We manage to down her without anyone else dying, and I reluctantly res the idiot. The rest of us move onto the floating platforms with the dragons – skipping the trash pull just past Telestra. I dunno about you, but every single party on my server skips that. Guess what idiot Paladin does? He aggros them, and drags them to us, wiping the party. Needless to say, people were furious. Fortunately, he left the party (I hadn’t healed him, in the hopes this would mean the mobs would leave us alone) and we were rid of him. Calling in another paladin (amusingly, from the same guild, though he wasn’t an absolute cretin like the other) we made it through the rest of the instance without a hiccup, unless you count the mace not dropping, as usual.

I think that has to rank as one of my worst PUG experiences ever – even worse than groups that just wiped endlessly… at least in those groups people were silently stupid.

Progress – it tastes sweet.

Guild run of Ulduar tonight, and I actually got past Flame Leviathan! Ok, sure, we only downed one more boss, but still rather pleased.

We took down Razorscale – our first try we were kind of slow to ground her, and when we did, we had a couple of mishaps that resulted in DPS dying and her reaching the enrage timer. Second attempt was much better, and we took her down without any of us dying.

Lady Loot was on my side, and blessed me with two items. The first, a pair of awesome bracers to replace the crafted blues I had, and some legs for my offspec. Both items kinda fell to me by default, since the Hunter had the Bracers, and no one else could use the legs. Muwahaha.

I was really pleased with my DPS performance, too. Given I’m still in a lot of Heroic Blues (still iLevel 200 though – same as Naxx10), I think I’m doing pretty well. 2.7k on a boss where I had to be on the move for the first half, to take care of Watchers is not to be sneezed at, right?

We tried XT again, and did a lot better than we had on Monday night, where we didn’t get him much past 65% – and he just healed up after that anyway! We managed to get him to about 37% tonight, but due to one of our healers having problems, and letting too many scrapbots slip through, we weren’t able to kill him.

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In random alt news, I dusted off my Feral Druid last night. Whilst in Tanaris, I got an invite to an at-level Zul’Farrak party. I was sort of the tank – but an overzealous Ret Paladin did most of it. –coughs- We ripped through the place, and though I didn’t get the Embrace of the Lycan, but I did get a pretty good staff. Oh, and an entire levels worth of EXP just from the mobs, then another third from the quests, taking me from 45 to 47.

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In random silly news, Bytor sent me the code for some pet biscuits, so I was running around with a super Speedy tonight. Thanks!

No, not the seige weapon!

Feral Druid!

Feral Charge - Cat is made of so much awesome. (It can be used when stealthed!)

Mrrreeeow! -Hissss-

I know, I said I wanted to try Boomkin on my Druid. I did! … For a level. I think, perhaps, the best idea would have been to level feral, THEN go Boomkin for a while. As it is, I bored myself of Balance, and didn’t really play my druid beyond the occasional login to /dance. I’d been toying with the idea of going back to Feral for a while, but hadn’t wanted to do it.

I caved today, and 100g worth of relatively budget gear later, I’m Ferlol! And it feels gooood. See, Balance is a downtime spec. Feral doesn’t have downtime. You claw some stuff to death, you pop a couple HoTs, go cat again, and when you next need healed, you’re at full mana! I can’t play specs with downtime. I’m spoiled by having two classes where it’s easy to regen mana. On Faulsey, when I need mana, I just dip into Aspect of the Viper. On Ellaria, I use Shamanistic Rage, and in 12 seconds, I’m up to full mana. So playing a class where I had to stop and, eugh, drink, was unbearable.

But really, I just missed RIPPING FACE! Bwahahahaha!

Ahem.

It’s fun, but I’m not particularly good at it yet. My previous ferlol was level 31 when I abandoned him, so I’ve had 10 levels of new abilities that I haven’t learned how to use. Give me a couple of levels and I’ll have it down pat!

Oh, and when I said “budget” gear earlier, I meant budget…

It's not just women who get the revealing gear!

I presume the idea of keeping the nipples out is in case I require to cut glass with them in a cold area. Utility nipples*, go!

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And since it’s been a while since I posted anything truly random, I’d like to share this with you.

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ho7gIb91Jc0&hl=en&fs=1]

This is an advert that was on TV when I was really young, but the memory of it has stuck with me. It is, quite simply, the best piece of advertising in the history of ever. It was also the height of amusement for me, apparently. My mum swears I used to laugh and clap when it came on.

Enjoy!

*Batman has utility nipples. They are provided by penguins. They steal them as they slide down the stairs in your house. Beware! (A fuller version of this story, complete with sound effects and snatching hands, was told to me on a train in the early hours of the morning, sometime in January. I laughed so hard I cried… … Ok, maybe you had to have been there.)

But he does like achievements and belts!

We got this totally by accident cause me and the warlock were AWESOMES.

You have no idea how much I hate the Skadi encounter. I really loathe it. In a PUG environment, it can be either extremely easy, or extremely difficult. Most of the time it’s difficult.

HELLZ YEAH!

I really hate Utgarde Pinnacle by now, so I’m really glad I finally got the belt. I’ve ran the instance every day for the past week, a couple times not making it past that bitch, Skadi. So I was ecstatic when I saw the belt. It now has a shiny blue gem in it, now I just need my helm from Ingvar with the meta slot, plus some boots from Keri and legs from Sjonnir. Ran the first two instances a billion times, but only run HoS once, so that might be difficult.

Slowly working my way towards a Nether Ray – Kazura and Yuanjia helped get me a 1.5k rep boost by killing Terokk – he’s a lot easier when you’ve got someone to heal your pet through his enrage.

Terokk defeated

I believe I’m around 18k rep away from exalted. This… this could take some time. Given that the mobs will now give full rep for kills, and are exceptionally weak, I’m seriously considering just going into Skettis and decimating the place.

-

Silly gchat to finish off.

Not often everyone is competing for the title of "Ugliest guild member", is it?

BOOMKIN!

Moonkin dance = HAWT!

This weeks goal: Achieved! I am now officially a fully fledged (hah, fledged, and I’m kind of a bird type thing – geddit, geddit? … Tough crowd) balance druid!

Picked up a couple shiny pieces of equipment this level. The first were the Dryad’s Wrist Bindings from WSG marks, which are awesome all round. I also grabbed some Dreamweave Gloves from the AH for about 20g. Normally that would be totally beyond what I’d pay for leveling gear at that level, but, as I’ve mentioned so many times before, cloth is really my only option for leveling Balance.

Really, Blizz, how hard can it possibly be to go back to the old quests, and add some spellpower Leather, Mail and Plate here and there? Not a lot of it, just enough that you can level wearing your classes “correct” armour.

Gave Boomkin a quick whirl, loving the 5% crit boost, as with the 4% bonus from Nature’s Majesty, I’m at about 18.5% crit, which isn’t too shabby for a lowbie Laser Chicken. Certainly making a noticeable difference.

PvPing has made me a bit itchy for Feral though. I still intent on going Balance until outland, but when PvPing, I focused on defence – cloth armour + outdated Bear form = so squishy, so even with Travel form, I was not suited to flag running, and I’m a terrible BG healer. So I spent most of the time prowling in the flag room – so much time that I earned the Not in my house achievement (which was actually hotfixed to two kills ). Since I was prowling, what better way to deal with intruders than a nice Pounce -> Rake -> Rip -> Moonfire -> Insect Swarm DoT combo, followed by a few quick blasts of Wrath? Good times, good times.

Shortly after this, a rogue sprinted in and took the flag. Oops.

-

Despite the fun that is Boomkin, now that I’ve reached level 40, I’ve hit the same wall I did on Faulsey – there’s nothing for 18 levels. My options are thus:

1. Continue leveling Ilthiran, pushing for Outlands.

2. Give Ellaria a little attention, and try getting her to 40, whereupon she’d promptly hit the wall as well.

3. Dust off Faulsey, and starting doing Heroics, you slacker!

Decisions, decisions. Given Kazura, Yuanjia and Kiaara are around the right level, I may drag them, and pick up a random Tank, to do normal Azjol-Nerub, Ahn’Kahet and Drak’theron, so that I’ve cleared all of the Northrend Dungeons on Normal.

I say drag, but really, it’s exp, and lootz, so that should be incentive enough to go, no?

Though Spirit Bond would also have been useful tonight.

I was doing some PvP on Ilthiran (2 marks away from my level 40 bracers, huzzah!), when Kazura mentioned she was going to run VH. I hadn’t run VH on normal, so I asked if I could come along, so I could get a feel for the instance before I run it on Heroic.

Aside from the irritating mage (My shoulders are from doing Arena, I’m SOOOO skilled, blah blah blah. -eyeroll-), the first waves and boss went down easily. We were totally going to breeze through the instance.

Then the Tank DC’d. So, I did what any crazy Hunter does in that situation, and called “All heals on pet!” and set Ella on the next wave. Yes, Ella. I had my level 79 Bird of Prey tanking. It was… difficult. I had to throw out so many Revive Pets, making me so glad it was only a 4 second cast, with a 40% mana cost reduction, else we’d no doubt have wiped. Not to mention having to try and get in some cheeky Carrion Feeding moments to boost her happiness without spending a zillion mana on mend pet.

This had to happen, because of the nature of VH. As it’s a totally scripted, wave based dungeon, we couldn’t wait and see if the tank came back – we had to press on or die.

For the multiple enemy waves, I was Trapping one, having Ella tank another, whilst we blitzed a third with Ret Pally tanking, and any extras were taken care of somehow, you can forgive me for losing track, given I was frantically trying to keep aggro off Kazura and make sure Ella wasn’t dying horribly.

The big enemies with 130k HP were a bit more trouble, and Ella died to them a couple of times. She is easy to keep up at the start of a fight, but as it goes on, it’s harder to keep her running on like 10k HP and crappy armour, with a Balance healer – Balance healing works with a proper tank… not with a Cunning pet. The second boss (Beholder type thingy) dropped pretty easy, though he took Ella with him at the end.

The final boss, Cyanigosa… she was evil. She killed Ella twice. Once wasn’t good enough, clearly. I think Ella lasted for about half the battle, went down, causing me to feign, revive, mend, and misdirect before sending her right back into the fray, to die again when the boss was at 30k HP, by which point it was just a case of pulling out all my instant shots to try and kill her before she got one of us.

Tank? Who needs a tank! Not I, for sure!

It was actually a lot of fun, but yeah, not something I would like to repeat. Especially not with the douchemage. He had the cheek to complain Kazura was greedy for greeding on boss drops, despite the fact we had no DE. (Har har, yes yes, it’s called Greed, so?) Pass if you want mate, other people can do with a little bit of extra cash. Especially when you take this into account:

Epic flight club... plus hanger on.

Epic flight form! Woo! Ahh, poor Yuanjia. He hates us both so much now.

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Other instancey type goodness: I can now, if it wasn’t the tackiest title ever, be known as Faulsey Jenkins. Kiaara invited me on a run with some of her Guildies to get the Achievement, and since like everyone else (deep down, in your heart, you know you are) I am an achievement whore, I had to go.

Jeeeeeeenkins!

Getting the title was quite fun, and since we were there, we decided to clear the place for another achievement, cause that’s how bad people are when it comes to achievements.

-

Thanks to Kiaara, Ilthiran now has some nice, shiny new gear. A belt, neck piece, and Robe from Razorfen Downs. I’d link, but really, it’s 4:30 AM, and Wowhead is just far too much effort. The neck dropped twice in a row from the same boss, who on the third try dropped the belt, and the robes took a full four tries on one boss, which was incredibly irritating.

Bwaha! Mine!

As I mentioned at start, I’m 2 marks from some very nice epic bracers, which will see me to Outlands, as there is no way I’m going through the ordeal again at 49, and 65k more EXP will mean Laser Chicken time!

I anticipate I should get that tomorrow night. I’d have it all by now, but I wasn’t on at all on Thursday, or friday night, cause I was too busy doing fun RL stuff, like failing at the pub quiz.

Malcom Young. Which band did he play in?

All three of us: ACDC!
Friend1: Wait, that was Angus Young, wasn’t it?
Friend2: Plus, that riff they played, totally not an ACDC riff.
Me: What do I know about music? Pff. -thinking in head- Wait, ACDC does have brothers… Nah, it’s not the Youngs though…-

-2 minutes later, handed in answer sheet. Friend 1′s brother, who was on another team, comes over-

Friend1′sBro: So, what was the ACDC song? We couldn’t figure it out.
Us: Uhhhh… Oops.
F1B: Yeah, bro, you’re disowned.

FAIL.

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Ah, one final thing. Breana has made it quite clear in the past two TNBs, though particularly the most recent episode, that she expects a blog to have a contact page.

Now, all I really have for contact is my e-mail address – no twitter or anything – so no page devoted to contact, but that is now available on my About page (which I had already – am I a good boy or what? ^.~;). This e-mail has been relatively junk free for a couple years now, so I’d like to keep it that way – I may have to kill people if I end up with some form of chainmail. Just a fair warning!

“Thou shalt have contact info available for all to see – or face our wrath!”

Thus spake the gods of WoW blogging, and so doeth their followers!

Also, early morning post of fail. If the wrong word has been used (I originally had complete instead of repeat somewhere… lolwut?) somewhere, I’ll fix it later. I has the tireds, BAI!