Patch 4.0.1

According to MMOchamp the patch is due to drop this week, honestly it's taken long enough! I've been in the beta for over a month and I've pretty much stopped playing both live and beta due to burn out, instead concentrating on other games like ZvP, Minecraft and Starcraft2 amongst others.
The changes will be enough to get me back online though. Having fun playing with the new talent trees. Getting used to my Mage and pally again in wintergrasp. I really want to go fire again, so hopefully I'll be able to reforge enough hit to make it happen.
Word from the PTR is that paladin healing has been hit hard which is a shame but I'm hoping that I should still be able to do battlegrounds ok as I hadn't aimed on healing properly with Tam until cataclysm.

Here's hoping that the patch bring the spark back for many people. Bring on Deathwing!

Ding! 80, finally.

The one good thing about your second 80 is that you can plan out exactly which quest chains you want to do, for Tam I picked the Sons of Hodir chain, Argent Vanguard, Fallen Soldier before starting the Arthas' heart chain I love so much. It made me happy I got my ding after just completing the quest where you become Arthas and killing his troops in order to turn them to scourge minions. So yeah screenshot or it didn't happen I know.

Now begins the gear grind, I've already sorted out her final ret spec and I'm researching her OS holy. On the dummies I managed 1.7k dps on the normal dummy with questing gear so hopefully I'll be an awful lot better when I get some epics on my side. Just nice to finally be here.

Bringing the War to Warcraft.

After my complaining about slow levelling I powered my way through the Wrathgate chain and helped me ding level 73 in the buggy as hell Battle for Undercity. Headed to Grizzly Hills for some colour after the bland Dragonblight and then I discovered the wonder of Alterac Valley call to arms. I already have fond memories from this battleground when levelling my Mage around level 55 but this was just amazing. So now I'm level 75 (!) and wondering how I'm going to do this final push to 80.
It's always nice to take a change whilst levelling prevents a character getting boring.
But alas I think my time may be taken up a little more by Starcraft 2. Fun times!

Oh Outland I miss you.

I started to type this a couple of days ago but then my phone got a call and I lost it. My paladin is now level 72 using a mixture of questing, battleground and random dungeon finder because honestly Northrend at least Howling Fjord and Dragonblight have been kinda boring with heirlooms and cold weather flying from 68.
Outland I knew where to go for good questing hubs and although these were again improved in Wrath, I just don't seem to be managing to level quite so quickly and I'm guessing that's due to the fact that the experience required for each level has gone up massively. I shall however continue on, starting to worry how I'll ever get two sets of gear together (ret and holy) I had enough problems just managing one for Red.
Speaking of Red she's only 35 frost emblems short of her four piece t10 bonus. I should really fix that this week.

Not much to say tonight.

I did want to say that I'd been working on my paladin and she'd gone up x amount but I haven't. Instead my boy got me into an ICC 25 pug and it didn't wipe after Saurfang! Yay! In fact we managed Rotface, Festergut, Blood Princes and we even saved an internet dragon! yeah, she started off as :

But in the end became:

This makes me happy :D I'm now 40 frosties away from my full four piece t10 and then I have no gear aims before cataclysm, I know I'm not going to win marks to upgrade them and I'll not beat any of the higher bosses to get better loot for other things. But hey, it's nice to know I can do most of it.

Just a shame we couldn't get our guild Ony/Uld raid done tonight due to lack of people.

A blog before bed.

So as I type this my boyfriend is in ICC10 attacking the Blood Princes for the first time. My main has been well and truly shelved for anything none guild raid wise an my paladin is now level 71 and just started questing in Dragonblight. I was having fun running Eye of the Storm until it got to the time of school finishing, unfortunately for all of summer now, and magically we couldn't use tactics anymore. I seem to be doing between 800-1500 dps is northrend normals which I'm finding alright as I'm in greens throughout and I was still wearing my Argent Dawn stone collection trinket until tonight!
All in all it's seems to be going well. I power levelled her cooking and I'm working on fishing and her blacksmithing but I need another profession, potentially alchemy if I can get the money together to fund it.
I'm finding ret fun an excited at the prospect of getting holy for guild raids. I want to be more useful and I know boosting the dps numbers massively is good but I think this could be better. Let's just hope it doesn't take me too long to get from 71 to 80 and then to get two semi decent sets of gear!

When things go well.

I’m really really loving my paladin, yesterday, again with a little help from my boyfriend, I completed the Hero of the Mag’har questline. I love epic lore quests and can’t wait to get going on the Wrathgate chain again. This morning my little Belf girl hit 67, so it’s just once level of questing to grind out and then I can head to Northrend.

Like I said before I already heave her cold weather flying money now I just need to decide which starter area I want and I’m kind of leaning towards Howling Fjord, seen as I do love the Undead lore and all.

The only issue I have with her are her much neglected professions, with heirlooms it’s really easy to power past them, unless you focus on them like I did my priest where she has been capped out most of the time with inscription. I’ve definitely decided on blacksmithing but I’m not sure for her other slot.

Hopefully tomorrow she’ll hit 68, but I’m not sure as it’s Naxx night. Yes, we raid content for fun *gasp*.

Where have I been and what’s been going on?

Well it’s been a busy time, University has finished for the summer, so I’ve had a little more WoW time. My main has seen some of ICC but I’ve been bored of doing the same 5-6 bosses over and over and as I don’t want to join a raiding guild I’ve pretty much stopped pugging it.

I faction transfered my paladin, she’s now a level 64 Belf sitting enjoying the pretty of Nagrand and if RL stuff and a FF14 beta invite hadn’t stopped me playing she’d be on her way to Northrend by now. My aim is to dual spec her either prot/ret of holy/ret as I do love DPSing and she’s leveling ret. I already have her cold weather flying money saved so that should save some time once I get to the cold lands. I completed the blood elf epic mount quest on her too, with a little help from my boyfriends level 80 hunter. So here’s my newly elfed paladin burning down a church and showing off her fancy new Blood Knight tabard.

Other than that my priest has gone from Holy to Shadow and now to Disc and I’m slowly getting annoyed with LFG again but I’ll get there, she’s level 40 now and her inscription has been maxed out from the start, as soon as she gets to 50 or 55 there’s some more for her to learn.

Life goes on in Azeroth. Cataclysm videos get me very very excited for seeing my first expansion launch!

A lot can happen in a short space of time.

This is just a brief update but not much has changed in my WoW life. I went on holiday in April and along with many other Europeans I was affected by the ongoing Volcanic Ash problems from Iceland. This meant I ended up being stuck in Australia for two weeks longer than planned.

After returning I found it hard to get back into playing My main and so I've been bouncing through a variety of alts. A hunter, a Mage and my pally seem to be the favourites. I'm excited to see how quickly I can get my now properly specced ret pally up from level 46 as I pushed her two levels tonight. I'm also interested to see how quickly I can level another Mage. I'm crazy that way.

As soon as exams are done and I've done my Jury Duty it will be all hands on deck to do those pushes to 80 and I'm excited to see how many I can get over the summer.

Bye for now.

Just when you think you’re out of the alts game….

Well after the last blog post I had everything thrown at me! I’ve found a guild that seems like the perfect fit for us, unfortunately they’re on a different realm, but luckily still EU, but they have been lovely in letting me set up an alt and try and level her within the guild to join them raiding at the end.

So my alt of choice this time? A Dwarf Hunter, because as we all know from Frostheim of  http://www.warcrafthuntersunion.com/ there is no other class to play as a hunter (I of course know this is not true as my boyfriend’s hunter of the Troll variety). Looking at the racials though I do like the added 1% crit on guns and stoneform has been helping to save me a lot as I haven’t yet hit level 10 so I don’t have a pet yet.

The dead zone is hard though. Ah well I shall plod along, some of the Dwarf starting area quests are quite hard though so I may end up grinding the end of level 9 just so I can move on from there. I would have picked Human just to help with the rep grinds but I did quite fancy this class and I’ve already got myself a mini rotation down.

I had set myself on leveling Marksman but with the changes coming to the class in cataclysm:

• removal of mana for Hunters
• removal of ArP (which is the main MM stat)

I’m not quite sure, I guess it means I’ll have to decide depending on how quickly I level as I have no access to heirloom items.

I’ll close with a picture of my new little Dwarf.

Of Raiding and Guilds

Guess what, my server likes to run the achievement game. Shocking right? Well not really seen as it would appear pretty much every server runs this way now. We’re lucky in that gearscore is a phrase well know on the server but it would appear not so widely used.

As you can probably guess this whole link your achievement thing bugs me quite a bit. When I changed my account from a trial to a full one I was quickly snapped up into a big guild, a big but very dead guild. I think this was just standard practice but then I quickly found out through resources like WoW.com and the livejournal community WoW_Ladies that this wasn’t always the case and sometimes people had very active guild chats and even Vent servers!

This lead to myself and my boyfriend Zorendiil setting up our own guild which we love and adore, recruiting was hard work but it paid off in bringing in a few core members who still now 5 months on we can count on to be there for us even if we just want to sit on an alt and rant.

As with all guild though the initial period guild chat was incredibly busy but unfortunately at that time we weren’t level 80 so we couldn’t really get any raids going from the beginning.

Now however we do try to at least get a ten man run on a Saturday afternoon, we know people have to PuG things because that’s the way it works in a non committed raiding guild but we rotate the “compulsory” raid in order to try and prevent banging our heads against a brick wall.

And here is where my problem occurs, because of this I don’t have any raid achievements, other than Sarth and that’s just with all drakes killed. So I try and jump into PuGs where people know me and know that I can do fairly decent DPS. This week our guild run was ToC10 man and there was just no way we could manage it, I didn’t mention we had no healers online, and so later in the week when a trade message was posted and they weren’t requesting an ach link I jumped on it.

Now as Co-GM and most times raid leader I’ve researched tactics a lot, I’ve seen all the tank spot videos I run grid (even though my main is a mage) so I can keep an eye on everyone, I am a compulsive decursive user, so I know how to keep an eye on my surroundings. This was my first time in there really, the guild run had wiped on those damn worms over and over so anything past that was going to be new for me even though I knew what to expect.

I didn’t know what to expect when we had to 5 man Icehowl and I’m pleased to report that I didn’t get hit even though I' got targeted more than anyone else, so not fair picking on a clothie, but the adrenaline run afterwards was amazing. The rest of the run went really smoothly for a PuG and I’m pleased to report I now have the achievement to show for it. Should make further PuGs a little bit easier.

Now I just wish I had an ICC 10 man one because I know those tactics oh so well but no one will take me. Sigh.

LFG Holy Priest *ping*

How wonderful is the LFG tool, yes I know I only started playing WoW the day patch 3.1 dropped but really patch 3.3 is the best thing ever! My little priest Rionia is now level 26 thanks to healing old world dungeons in holy spec, and I’ve never had a wipe yet which makes me quite proud. She has mouseover macros going and a fairly good grid scheme which is helping loads, and when there’s a good tank in there I barely have to do anything more than Power Word Shield and renew constantly which is awesome.

So far she’s completed:

• Ragefire Chasm,
• Deadmines,
• Wailing Caverns (although I think I was boosted there)
• Shadowfang Keep
• Blackfathom Deeps
• Stormwind Stockade
• Razorfang Kraul

On the subject of BFD that seems to be the place where all the weirdos appear, no idea how or why but it’s a very odd place. One time we had two DPS needing to go AFK, far enough it happens in these long instances, after about ten minutes of the remaining three of us dancing, jumping etc the other two start to get into a little bit of role play. Now if this had been standard role play that would have been fine, of course it was the NSFW variety. I will state now that none of the realms in my battlegroup are RP so lord only knows how this started.

The second occurrence of the BFD crazies was a group where we unfortunately had to kick a DPS, it always makes me sad when this happens as they’re not going to learn how to play the class that way but sometimes it just needs to be done. As soon as the kick was passed the hunter left in the group proceeded to ask my toon to remove her clothes, yes unfortunately my Priest is a Blood Elf but this is the first time I have actually experienced the immature male players being, well, typically male. There’s no need for it, it’s pixels, go buy a magazine if you really need that kind of thing. Quitting group and knowing they would have problems getting another healer did make me feel better but I did feel sorry for the tank who messaged me saying he was sticking up for me.

I will be eternally happy when BFD is completely out of my range of dungeons.

In other news of my priest I somehow managed to max out her Inscription profession until she reaches level 35. It’s cost me quite a bit in herbs but hopefully if I can make a list of all current in use glyphs for cookie cutter builds I can make quite a bit of money back.

Guess I better get her back in and healing to boost her level a bit. I can’t remember the last time I actually did a level appropriate quest with her!

I Guess I’m Really Not That Much of an Altoholic

Every time I aim to focus on one of my alts something or other happens to make me want to work on achievements on my main Arednel. Last night I was in the mood to raid but unfortunately she doesn’t have the proof that’s she’s done them so my server being what it is that means a no go. It did however mean that I looked for something else to do that felt vaguely similar.

So I decided to look back at old world content that I missed out on due to only joining the game at patch 3.1 (Ulduar) and of course joining before our beloved Dungeon Finder that is making levelling alts so much easier. I was missing three items for my Classic Dungeonmaster:

• Maraudon
• Dire Maul
• Lower Blackrock Spire

These three were ones I’d dreaded soloing, long and winding or in the case DM winged and had to be performed in a certain order, but I figured seen as I was in the mood for a raid I might as well give it a go and with the changes to frost spec after patch 3.3 I wouldn’t technically have to go it alone.

I changed my frost pvp spec to a near enough pve one and glyphed for my Elemental making him permanent so I had someone to cover my back at all times but kept him on defensive.

We made short work of Maraudon, other than getting lost on the way in and going in the Orange entrance instead of the purple one and then the chore of Dire Maul began. I’m pleased to report that in the whole evening I only had one death and that was due to me forgetting to clear all the treelings in DM North before attacking the first boss, I should have expected them to all come running.

The good thing is that the squishy mage named Arednel has now conquered two more old world dungeons and hopefully tonight alongside my boyfriend and his level 80 Troll hunter Zorendiil we will take on Lower Blackrock Spire.

Today’s picture I’m going to leave with is a shot I took of Thunder Bluff, I love that place although I very rarely go it just has something about it.

These things always happen…

Well since I started this place I haven’t really played. I do however have plans in mind for what I’d like to do next and where I’d like to focus.

My main aim will be to level my Death Knight what with that lovely high level starting point it would be really silly not to have one at level 80 and tank gear ready, for those emergency guild situations.

I’d also really like to get a healer up to 80 for pretty much the same reason, but I’m torn, I don’t know if I should got the druid or the priest route. I don’t want a paladin, my two paladins are Alliance side and my Guild I love and adore is Horde, I do not want a Horde paladin (until Cataclysm comes out and then I’ll be rolling that light loving Tauren paladin quicker than you can moo!) so priest or druid it is, I really can’t decide.

I guess in the meanwhile I’ll focus on getting my DK through Outland and up to NR, she had heirloom chest and shoulder pieces on now so she’s fully XP bonused up just need to get round to actually levelling.

A background

First and foremost this is a World Of Warcraft blog, yes another one. Here I will be talking about the things I do with my characters to keep it separate from my normal Journal on LiveJournal. My realm of choice is in the EU, an English speaking realm of the normal PVE variety, and this is due to the fact that my friend referred me.

My main is a level 80 female Troll Mage named Arednel. She is currently dual specced for Arcane (because we all love it’s single target uber dps right now as of 3.3) and Frost which I occasionally play with in Wintergrasp but I don’t (yet) have any pvp gear for her, I am contemplating it as I do play Wintergrasp fairly frequently.

My other characters that I play either infrequently or not are the following:

Caladwen – level 15 Human Paladin – prot spec,

Messina – level 20 Tauren Druid – feral spec,

Rionia – level 22 Blood Elf Priest – holy spec,

Isowen – level 41 Draenai Paladin – ret spec,

Sidhiel – level 60 Undead Death Knight – blood spec.

So that’s a little bit about all my little baby avatars. Yesterday I focused on leveling Sid’s mining, I swore I wasn’t going to take her to Outland until she hit 300 and yesterday she finally got there, making a fair little profit in the mean while selling all the ores she managed to get! I’m sharing the plate heirlooms between three toons now though so that may get a little confusing.

Rionia was my other focus, I didn’t know what professions to take when I first started playing her. In the end I settled on herbalism and inscription because another way to make money is always good. Yesterday I spent the time power levelling her inscription, I think I did pretty good, made sure I varied all of the glyphs I produced and threw them straight up on the auction house. I’ll spend time looking at all the specs on WoW-wiki to see which ones are the current main used for the main specs and I’ll produce more of those ones to sell. No point in making them if no ones going to buy them!

So that’s me for now, I’ll try not to forget this place. And I’ll leave with this picture of Arednel, enjoying the peace near the tournament amongst the penguins. She gets bored of killing things occasionally!