Doing what they said couldn't be done :-)

Either my guildies suck or I rock. At this point, I'm leaning toward me rocking. :-)

My lock turned 64 a couple days ago and I've been on a non-stop XP grind to hit 65. As I looked to see what my guildies were up to tonight, I noticed a bunch of 62's in Hellfire. I asked if any of them still had to do "Colassal Menace" since it is listed as a 2-man quest and was still showing as yellow in my quest log. They responded that they had all done that quest and were busy with other stuff, so I told them I'd try to solo it. Their response was, "it took 5 of us, no way are you gonna be able to solo it."

The gauntlet had been thrown and I was up to the challenge. How tough could it be to kill five 63 elites at level 64? :-) I soulstoned, made sure my fel armor was up and my blueberry was at 100% before heading out for the quest. Since it was right next to the temple in Hellfire, I took the shortcut to the right just as you leave the temple and found my first colossus.

My plan of attack was simple: send in my blueberry, curse of weakness, corruption, immolate, siphone life, rinse, repeat. I noticed my blueberry was taking quite a beating, so I decided to fear. Good call. I had to apply my DoT's 3-4 times and chain-fear, but he dropped. Lifetap FTW. :-)

After the first colossus, the rest were pretty easy. The biggest problem I ran into was having the stupid giants evade after being feared too far from their point of origin. That really sucked because I had at least two of them down to 20% when they evaded and reset.

I died once in the 30 minutes it took me to complete the quest, and that was on my 4th attempt. I had a hell of a time getting a fear off because the stupid giant kept stunning me. Once I got the pattern down for DoT's and fears, my health only dropped because of life tap and my blueberry only lost a couple thousand health during my initial DoTs. I used one pot the whole time and that was between fights to regen my health faster than bandaging.

here's my armory. I'm spec'd affliction with a few points in demonology. Yea, some of my gear sucks, but I have yet to be in a BC-instance on this toon, so the gear is either quest rewards or AH.

New laptop == playing WoW

I've had my new laptop for a few weeks. It's a nice system (Sony Vaio FZ340E) that has allowed me to start playing WoW again. I get between 50-60 frames per second with all graphics settings within WoW maxed out. :-)

Right before I started playing again, I found out about some major guild drama. Ugh. I've mentioned many times how much I hate drama. Turns out it was the same old stuff...the hardcore players were telling the less-than-hardcore players that they needed to be more hardcore. :-\ Whatever.

Since I've been back, all I've really done is farm for gold for my flying epic. I managed to finish some quests in Shadowmoon Valley which have been hanging out in my quest log for a looooong time. I finally got rid of my last piece of green gear when I scored a new helm from one of those quests.

I started playing my horde on Dalaran. Playing a lowbie is fun, especially when all the quests are new. I could pretty much run all the human quests with my eyes closed, so playing a troll (and also an undead) has been fun. Since Dalaran is a PVE server, it's going to be interesting once I get out of the beginner areas. I might "flag" myself just for the hell of it. ;-)

No laptop == no WoW

A little over a month ago my laptop died. My laptop was my primary WoW machine and blew my desktop out of the water in terms of FPS and overall gameplay experience. The laptop is under warranty, but unfortunately they can't seem to find a freakin' replacement logic board.

I'm actually pretty pissed off about it because the laptop is only 18 months old.

At this point, the warranty company is offering a replacement, but so far, they haven't been able to offer anything I want. :-\ The first system they offered I would have gladly taken because it met all my requirements:

- dedicated video
- webcam (not really used all that much, but nice to have)
- capable of running Vista

The first system, as I was saying, would have been fine...it was a Sony Vaio. The day after I "accepted" the replacement they said they could no longer get the model they offered so they tried to replace the replacement with another Vaio, but this time it met NONE of my requirements. Idiots.

I'm hoping they just cut me a freakin' check so I can move on and get something that will fit my needs.

I *could* play WoW on my desktop...but ugh....20 FPS makes for a brutal experience. All i really need is a new video card in my desktop and I'd be fine. Unfortunately, I can't really justify the expense *just* to play WoW. :-\

Update

Wow...it's been over a month since my last post.

Well, the last time I posted, my warlock was at level 30. Today (about 5 minutes ago actually) he hit 58 and is headed for the Outlands. :-) Of course, I'll have to hit Dire Maul at level 60 to get my Dreadsteed.

I'm also cruising along on his enchanting and tailoring, but I kinda stalled at 263 for enchanting. I'm just not getting the drops to DE for mats like I was.

As for my rogue...well, Kara group 2 hasn't been doing well. We're either short 2-3 people for our runs or we end up burning 3+ hours taking down Attumen and wiping on Morose. This past Monday though was a different story. Instead of rehashing it here, here's a link to a post I made in our guild forums:

http://www.clanbbf.com/viewtopic.php?t=53605

If you read that entire thread, it looks like I'll be running with Group 1 starting next week. ;-) Woohoo!

Playing a warlock

Due to level 70 boredom and no kara last week, I've been spending quite a bit of time playing my warlock. In the past week, I've taken him from level 22 up to 30.

Warlocks are cool and I'm trying to figure out which is more fun: a hunter or the lock. Playing ranged is a nice break from the in-your-face DPS or a rogue. Send in blueberry, dot, dot, dot, shadow bolt, rinse and repeat. Oh, and it's nice to be on the giving end of "fear". ;-)

And, OMG, I love soulstoning myself. ;-) I've been in some tough situations where I'm a long way from the graveyard and I've already sacrificed my blueberry...having that soulstone is a beautiful thing.

My lock is also a tailor and enchanter. I've really focused on progressing these skills so I start making some $$$. I'm finding enchanting a bit tougher to level than the tailoring, but both are still right where they need to be.

So...to sum up: ranged + fear + pet + dots + soulstone = AWESOME. ;-)

Kara

For the last couple of weeks, my guild has been able to get a second group into Kara. Unfortunately, we've always been 2-3 players short and have had to rely on pick-ups.

Our first outing actually started on a Saturday after our Friday run got cancelled because the raid leader had ISP issues. The Saturday run was ok even though we couldn't down Attumen. Our pally off-tank doesn't have the gear and kept dying. On one attempt, after Attumen mounted Midnight, I screwed up by hitting him before the tank got agro. He turned around and pretty much one-shotted me. ;-) Lesson learned.

I scored Grips of Deftness, but haven't worn them because my Fel Leather Gloves with gems are better. The group learned a lot on this first run and it helped on our second run the following week.

Last Friday we ended up pickin' up a fill-in warrior off-tank since our was unavailable. This really helped. We downed Attumen pretty easily, although I ended up dead for most of the fight. :-( I'm not even sure what hit me...

We moved on to Moroes and tried him 5 or 6 times. On our 5th attempt, the group got him down to 1% before wiping. The 6th ended up as a wipe. Again, we learned a lot from this run.

Our Saturday night run started out looking for a damn healer again. We found a pick-up healer, but he bailed on us after the 3rd Moroes attempt. Asshole. :-\ Jesus...it's not like every single group that goes into Kara kicks ass from the start. Grrr...

Anyway, after a futile attempt to find a replacement, we decided to help a guildie (holy pally) run BM so she could join us this week. :-) During the BM run, I scored the Hourglass of the Unraveler. :-) :-) :-) hell yea! That thing freakin' rocks.

Hopefully this week goes better and we actually down Moroes and move on.

Kara, here I come!

After helping a guildie run Old Hillsbrad tonight (totally kicking ass along the way), we hit Black Morass with me, a pally tank, a pally healer, a shadow priest and a lock.

On our first attempt (yes, meaning it took more than once) I ended up pulling agro on the fourth portal that came up. I didn't realize how large the agro range was on the Rift Lords, but I learned pretty quickly. Even after vanishing and pulling out all the stops, the stinkin' dragon would NOT leave me alone and eventually killed me. The group managed to take care of that particular portal, but the 1st boss was already out and no one had time to rez me, so the group ended up taking the wipe.

Second attempt was better. We actually got to the final boss, but for some reason, the healer ended up pulling agro and was almost killed right off the bat. While he was busy healing himself, the tank got killed and we ended up wiping.

Attempts 3 and 4 were pretty much the same kind of thing. Always close, but never quite close enough.

Attempt 5 - the group changed slightly -- we lost one priest and the pally healer, but gained a mage and a holy priest. It was smooooothhh. Not a single death the entire run. :-)

Good stuff! I ran to Kara to finish the quest line and now I'm ready baby and I can't wait!

Buying my way to Exalted with The Aldor

Starting a couple weeks ago, i decided I was going to grind my way to exalted with The Aldor so I could replace my nasty main hand sword (mine had +15 Agility, +23 Stamina) with something better.

Grinding Marks of Sargeras and Fel Armaments sucks. It sucks bad. I think i'd rather be stuck fighting the Inciter than burning hour upon hour for extremely low drop-rate items. I farmed in all the best places, but it was still going to take way too long to get the rep I needed to get the sword. For what it's worth, I was only part way through honored, so I needed a ton of rep.

This is where my perpetually level 37 mage comes into play. BigSissy sits in Stormwind to post stuff from my rogue on the auction house or to purchase items for my rogue. Every now and then I take him out into the world to quest, but he soon returns after getting his cloth-covered ass kicked. In fact, he's only about 9,000 XP from level 38.

As luck would have it, he had about 500 gold on him so I used him to buy Marks and Fel Armaments from the AH when the prices were low enough. On my server, stacks of Marks start at around 10 gold and Fel Armaments typically run around 17 gold each. Whenever I saw Marks or Armaments lower than those prices, I'd scoop them up and send them along to my rogue. During this time, I was also using my rogue to farm those same items in both Shadowmoon Valley and Netherstorm. Within a couple of days I had worked my way up to revered and within a few more days had gotten myself within a few thousand rep of being exalted. All in all, I think I spent around 500-600 gold, but I saved a ton of time. It was also nice in that most of that gold came from auctions of leather, metal bars and the occasional arcane tome or green/blue item.

Once I got within a few thousand rep, I figured I'd stop buying the armaments and marks and complete some Aldor-related quests. Unfortunately, most of the quests are group quests and I HATE pick-up groups. I did get some help from a friend, but finally bought the last few marks needed to take me over the top and into exalted!

So, after dropping 186 gold with the Aldor quartermaster, I'm now packing Vindicators Brand. As lame as it is, I'm still packing a green OH sword. Everything I've read says the best OH sword is Latro's, but I doubt I'll be getting that anytime soon. My current plan is to get my new MH sword enchanted with Mongoose as soon as I find out what the mats are.

I can't wait to get out and lay some smack down. :-)

Good SL (and Shattered Halls) run

Well, tonight I hopped on my rogue and before I knew it some guildies invited me on another SL run. The group consisted of a prot warrior, a resto druid, a shadow priest, a mage and me. We ripped through the first couple of rooms (again) and burned down the first boss with no problems.

Once again we ran into issues with Blackheart the Inciter and wiped a couple times. This time it was due to the druid only being level 68 and not having very good armor (mostly cloth items). After the second wipe the warrior and druid had to leave (husband and wife) so we brought in another druid to tank for us and another priest to handle healing. this time we cruised right through Blackheart and then had NO issues at all with Vorpil. Murmur was pretty easy except he hit me with Murmur's touch about 5 times during the fight. :-\

I did win the roll for the Wrathfire Hand-Cannon that drops off Vorpil. Not sure that I'll ever use it, but since noone could DE, we all greeded and I won.

Ater totally kicking ass with this new group we all decided to hit another instance. ths time it was The Shattered Halls. This was my first time in this instance and I thought it was pretty damn fun.

We absolutely kicked ass all the way to the final boss. The pace was quick and I think only our mage died once or twice. I scored the Cloak of Malice off the second boss. :-) mmm....good stuff.

Unfortunately we had a hell of a time controlling the adds on the final boss and ended up quitting after the second wipe. bummer.

Bad SL run

There's a reason I hate pick up groups (pugs), so I always try to run instances with good friends or guild mates. Of course, there are times when even a group of guildies perform as well as a pug and a recent Shadow Labs run proved that.

I dislike SL for several reasons, but the foremost is that fear absolutely, positively pisses me off. I get angry when I get feared. I get even angrier when I get feared multiple times in a single fight. It'd be one thing if the PVP trinket was on a 1 or 2 minute cooldown, but at 5 minutes, it's pretty damn pointless in a place like Shadow Labs. BTW, another reason I hate the instance is the fact that I've never been with a group that's cleared it. I know...that's pitiful...after all, it's not like it's a super-tough instance, but that's neither here nor there. ;-)

Anyway, I was playing an alt last night when I got a whisper from Tiff on her priest alt (pretty much her main now since she can't get her warlock into Kara) asking if I wanted to run an instance. Without getting any details I said "sure". The group itself was filled with people I've played with and they all know what they're doing. We had 2 priests, a mage, me and a pally. The first couple of rooms were cleared without incident, although we did wipe once on the first boss. I can do no DPS if I'm fuckin' feared all over the goddamn place. :-\

The mobs before the second boss were cleared pretty easily, although the pally running the show absolutely refused to take advantage of any freakin' crowd control. Stupid. Stupid. Stupid. Ok, I can see not using a sap...fine. It is a relatively risky proposition and once the mob is up, they can't be re-sapped. Fine. But if you have a mage (which we did), then use the damn sheep! I am of the opinion that the fewer mobs you have to fight at any given time, the smoother things will go. Ugh. To be honest, I did get a couple of saps in and they did help. :-)

Ok, if the second boss was a real person, he'd be a f***in' c**ksmoking piece of sh*t. ;-) GRRR...his constant "let's have some fun / incite chaos" bullshit causes me to go into fits of cursing. :-) The biggest problem in this fight is that the boss wipes agro so much of the time was spent chasing after the stupid boss and maybe getting one or two hits in before we were all hacking away at each other. More than once I ended up killing a healer or the mage during his "fun". Ugh. Not cool. I will say though that since were all in vent, we had a fun time with healers yelling (pleading) "don't kill me!" and me responding "there's not much I can do about it" and my toon got the killing blow in.

Yea, so we wiped a good 5 times trying to take this boss down. Everytime the tank and I got into a good position (backs against the wall so we wouldn't get knocked back too far and take a bunch of damage), the tank lost agro. Once again...ugh. It was a very disappointing run.
I will say though that we did get him down to like single digit % in health, but we just couldn't sustain the fight for the last few seconds we needed. By the time I left, my durability was at 2%. Thank God I don't have any epic gear because my repair cost with my blues was just a touch under 10 gold.

Since we were only there for reputation, it was no huge deal, but still...it's frustrating to go into an instance and get totally owned.

Progression

Geesh, in the very short time I've been back with BBF, I've gotten my last 2 key frags and run Old Hillsbrad. :-) Of course, guild drama is still there, but I've been staying as far away from it all as I can.

Hopefully I'll be doing a Black Morass run soon so I can be Kara-attuned, but everyone I've talked to says BM sucks ass so I'm not sure when it'll happen.

BBF isn't the most well-geared guild, so it may not be that big of a deal, but I'm happy to say I was #2 in damage (after a fire mage) during our short Steam Vaults run and #1 during our Old Hillsbrad run.

I re-spec'd before taking my vacation from the game and am pretty happy being a combat rogue, but I do miss some of the talents in the subtlety tree.

Back in the game

After taking close to two months off from playing, I renewed my account last night. I also rejoined BBF.

After SI disintegrated a few months back, a group of fomer SI guildies tried to keep things going, and they've actually had quite a bit of success in Kara, but it never felt like a guild for me. These guys, while all really cool, were focused on end-game stuff and not really helping others (unless it was killing horde).

So, before I left the game for my break, I was pretty damn bored. All I'd do when I played was farm for gold and rep. That gets pretty boring after awhile. Anyway, at the end of June, beginning of July, I went to visit a friend in Chicago and didn't really even think about playing until just recently.

I've kept in touch with Tiff and finally told her that when i started playing again, i'd join BBF (she's now a guild officer). So, after renewing last night and jumping in-game, she invited me. it was kinda strange. I wasn't sure how people would react to me coming back. I was happily surprised at the reception I got and so far, don't regret my decision to re-join.

I played for a couple hours last night. Almost all of that time was spent helping Tiff run some quests on her "new" toon -- a lvl 69 priest. God, I can remember helping her when she was in the 20s and 30s on that toon. At one point, we had some horde trouble, and after a quick call for help in vent, about 5 other BBF members showed (bringing our total to 8) and we laid waste to the horde. ;-) Good times.

Having fun

While I'm still guildless, I've been having fun lately. Besides the frequent trips to STV or Southshore to gank lowbies, I've been running a lot of the new quests and trying to gain rep and gold. A couple days ago, one of my friends decided to level his tailoring and needed some rugged leather so we both hopped over to Winterspring to kill yetis. Lots of fun until some dumbass 60 hunter decided to send his pet after me. :-

Yea...he died pretty quickly. Not sure WTF he was thinking. ;-) I think he was made because I "stole" one of his yetis.

Saturday night I played way too long (started at 9p and ended at 4:30a). Tiff asked me to join a BBF run to Shadow Labs...it was lots of fun, but no good rogue gear dropped and we had a lot of trouble on the final boss. I do have to say...the second boss sucks...sucks bad. Really bad. I did achieve my goal of that run by getting the first key frag for Kara (yea. finally).

I'm kicking around the idea of a re-spec, especially if I'm gonna be running more instances, but haven't done it yet. Tiff really wants me to re-join BBF and after the run I told her I'd talk to the GM when he gets back from vacation.

70 is just as boring as 60 was

Pre-BC, I described level 60 as the most boring experience. Well, now that I'm 70, I'm saying the same thing. Since the disintegration of SI, my time is spent either grinding for gold (which, BTW, is MUCH easier with a flying mount), ganking lowbie horde or playing an alt.

Granted, I enjoy playing one of my many alts, but I have to say I'm getting pretty fired up about playing a warlock. Geesh, even at level 12, I can still kick ass. ;-)

My old guild, BBF, continues to let me know the door is open if I want to come back. The fact is, I'm still hanging out with SI, mainly because I'm not playing that much and I'm still truly not sure I could go back. My buddy Trez joined up with a new guild, but that's only because he has both a prot-spec'd 70 warrior and a 70 priest that he's probably already re-spec'd to holy.

They said I could come along to, but that was just a pity invite. ;-) I turned them down because the guild master is a rogue, so that pretty much means I'd be screwed on instance runs, especially the big K.

Ding! Level 70!

Well, it didn't go quite as expected, but yesterday afternoon around 5pm, I finally hit level 70!



I was on my way to turn in a quest (which would have taken me over the edge), but decided I wanted to be fighting when I leveled (it'd make a much better screenshot than me standing at an NPC) Anyway, so I stealthed and was within a second of hitting the elemental when I leveled due to discovering a new area! D'oh! So much for my action shot.

My pockets were overflowing with about 1950 gold, so I immediately dropped 900 of it for flying mount.

69!

I just dinged 69 about 5 minutes ago. Only another 778k XP to get to 70. The cool thing is that I have over 1600 gold so as soon as I hit 70, I'll have my flying mount!

Anyway, here's my toon from the armory.

Regarding the SI drama, there's still a few people sticking around. I'm kinda hoping it'll keep going because I do like the people, and to be honest, I hate the idea of being guildless, mainly because that means 10 freakin' random guild invites per day until I join another one.

The guild master of BBF said I could come back. :-) I'll have to really, really think about that one before I decide. I didn't exactly leave on the best terms, but to be honest, maybe it would be different as a normal player and not as an officer. That's one of the great things I've enjoyed about being in SI -- I've managed to stay away from the drama...

And it's over

Nope...I haven't hit 70 yet, although I am close.

Tonight the guildmaster of Spanish Inquisition told us all that he was done playing WoW. He's not taking a break -- he's done. I totally understand his reasons....there's more to life than WoW and him and his wife want to spend time doing other things.

What sucks is that SI was a great guild and I really enjoyed the people in it. Unfortunately, with him leaving, the guild has pretty much disintegrated. It looks like I'll be guildless again. :-(

There is some talk about joining another guild that some former SI people are in, but I'm just not sure if it's gonna be worth it. My play time has slowly gone down to an hour ever couple of days, if that and I really hate to commit to a guild and then not be available when they need someone.

A long road to 68

Wow, 19 days later I hit level 68. :-)

Tiff helped me with some quests in Netherstorm earlier today and that put me over the top. After leveling I hit Stormwind to train....god, it's sooo strange going back there. I sure wish they'd put some trainers in the Outland. :-) Anyway, 20g later, I headed back to the Outland to quest some more.

I'm hoping to start running some more instances with SI soon.

Let's hope I can hit 69 sooner than 19 days.

Finally hit 67

Yea...it's been weeks since my last post and I'm only 67 (literally just hit 67 tonight).

Been working way too much and playing way too little.

My friends Tiff and Squig helped me tonight and I really appreciate it. They both hit 70 yesterday, so a big congrats goes out to both of them.I may hit 70 this year. :-)

Leveling

Well, I hit 63 sometime last week and after another 8 hours of playing, I hit 64 (that was yesterday). Most of that was solo'ing the quests, but I did have some help for a couple quests. The gear keeps getting better and better, although having to drop over 30 gold for training kinda sucked.

A few guys in my guild hit 70 over the last few days. A few more weeks and I hope to be there as well. I've kept my play time down to one-two hours most days of the week, but it all depends on what else I have going on.