WoW - continued

[Lyanna Stark]

Since the last WoW thread was slightly off topic in the end, I thought a new one was called for.

Helped our new guild's KZ 2 group out (newly formed) and it was sorta interesting to see all the people who stepped into KZ for the first/second time and how they reacted.

Got Midnight and Mores down before I offered to sit out for a mage who was late and very thankful to get his spot. Last I saw they had Maiden down and were heading for Curator, so even group 2 seems to be doing well. I think group 1 is off to Opera/Aran so they're advancing pretty well for a new guild (formed last week). Since it's a new server, they're running with a quite nice amount of paladins, which is unusual. Hopefully by next week they can have a third KZ raid up.

My pally hit 37 and I am really liking the prot build, despite no DPS output. It will be harsh to spec holy at lvl 70 when I have been used to smacking face all the way there.

So, what are you guys up to?

[Stego]

-3% wiping on Hydross. Repeatedly.

-Looking stupid in my Frost Res gear and my puny shoulders.

-Running Kara every weekend to no plate drops. (Business as usual, Anna. )

-Waiting ever-so-impatiently for the patch.

-Leveling my imba Tauren hunter Thirdhoof.

[Arataniello]

So, what are you guys up to?

Started a BE priest on Friday, got her up to level 12 by the end of the day yesterday. Amazing difference between the Alliance cities and Horde ones. Silvermoon is like a ghost town, tons of space and no-one there. The bank is quiet as the grave and the AH is as bad. Does anyone else play on Horde side on Malfurion - it would be good to know at least one or two other poeple over there.

Decided I do NOT like the Draenei area 2 - Bloodmyst Isle. My other non-Rawr alt is stuck at 16 because I can't face the thought of slogging through all that red background and fugly threshing plants. Eversong Woods OTOH is much more pleasant. Undercity is confusing as hell - could not figure out how to get into it (from the translocate in Silvermoon) so just sat by the entrance from Trisifal and then followed the next person.....

May go back and try to finish off Ashenvale with my main tomorrow as well as tidy up Ronachil's log - its a mess frankly at the moment with quests all over the place. As a warlock, I should have called my character RonPopeil instead of Ronachil: after DoTing, I just 'set it and forget it', and move on to another target.

Aratan

[Fez]

Got my warlock up to 19, beat the WC on my first try (it was a good group) as a swansong to the barrens, and have now moved onto Ashenvale where I having promptly gotten stuck with my body surrounded my alliance rangers and so am moving at a rate of about 10 feet before dying again.

[Third Knight on the Left]

Started a BE priest on Friday, got her up to level 12 by the end of the day yesterday. Amazing difference between the Alliance cities and Horde ones. Silvermoon is like a ghost town, tons of space and no-one there. The bank is quiet as the grave and the AH is as bad. Does anyone else play on Horde side on Malfurion - it would be good to know at least one or two other poeple over there.

Decided I do NOT like the Draenei area 2 - Bloodmyst Isle. My other non-Rawr alt is stuck at 16 because I can't face the thought of slogging through all that red background and fugly threshing plants. Eversong Woods OTOH is much more pleasant. Undercity is confusing as hell - could not figure out how to get into it (from the translocate in Silvermoon) so just sat by the entrance from Trisifal and then followed the next person.....

May go back and try to finish off Ashenvale with my main tomorrow as well as tidy up Ronachil's log - its a mess frankly at the moment with quests all over the place. As a warlock, I should have called my character RonPopeil instead of Ronachil: after DoTing, I just 'set it and forget it', and move on to another target.

Aratan

I agree with you there, but I do like the Dranei themselves. Thats why I had you run me over to Northshire.

[Lyanna Stark]

-3% wiping on Hydross. Repeatedly.

-Looking stupid in my Frost Res gear and my puny shoulders.

-Running Kara every weekend to no plate drops. (Business as usual, Anna. )

-Waiting ever-so-impatiently for the patch.

-Leveling my imba Tauren hunter Thirdhoof.

Hahaha yeah KZ drops. Moroes dropped.....shaman mail no dagger. Tbh, I have never seen him drop the dagger or the plate. It's always the bloody pocket watch or the idol of the bloody avian heart. Serisouly, KZ loot list makes me cry.

I feel yer pain tho Steg. Almost thought about grinding some PvP gear in order to enter arena and get Arena gear, but ugh. I've spent months raiding, I don't want to spend lots of time PvPing with a sub-par class getting emo about being two-shotted by fire mages and MS warriors.

They really should sort out the orc shoulders tbh.

Apart from that, can't wait to get my pally mount, only 2.5 levels to go.

Undercity is confusing as hell - could not figure out how to get into it (from the translocate in Silvermoon) so just sat by the entrance from Trisifal and then followed the next person.....

Undercity is HORRIBLE in the beginning, but it is also extremely symmetrical, so once you get the layout, it's totally logical. In the beginning, only go down, down, down, regardless of which entrance.

UC is a huge circle. The bank is in the middle. On one side of the bank is the mailbox, on the opposite side, the flightmaster. Around the inner ring are lots of AHs, two at each of the four doors. Then the circle outside that, tradeskills, the circle outside that, class trainers.

Orgrimmar is easier to find stuff in in the beginning, but more illogical.

[Arataniello]

Here is the video I mentioned in Guildchat last night

http://www.wowinsider.com/2007/09/01/wow-m...tch-shake-that/

Very enjoyable. See how many bosses and/or named chracters you can see grooving.

Aratan

[Arataniello]

Dunno how much I like playing a Druid - it is stupid the way I run OOM on each kill. I am no healer so Rocow would be a killer. Have to keep trying a bit more and see if more abilities makes it easier to kill shit.

I suffered from mid-teens ennui on my druid, but when you get the bear form (better) and then the cat form (best), things become much more fun. Now I really enjoy the druid lifestyle.

Aratan

[Lyanna Stark]

Bear druids can survive almost anything.

Plus ofc, you have the legendary Alamo Drudis is 4 fite!

[Minaku]

Druid is AWESOME. Once you get cat form it's smooth sailing. A druid's survivability is so high that it's ridiculous. I've been in serious situations where all I had to do was shift out, warstomp, regrowth myself, pop into bear, and tank my way into experience filled happiness. Druid. Is. Awesome.

I've slowed down on the WoWing because it's getting a bit boring again, since I have no friends on Venture Co. and I spend more time on Malfurion chatting than leveling. Well, I've joined a new guild on VeCo. I'll see how that one does. I'm at the point where I need to go to Uldaman. Ugh. I hate Uldaman.

[RaceBannon42]

Got to do my first 25 mans this weekend.

Friday I got pounded on by Hydross. He hit me for 42k. It hurted.

Best go was 3%

Saturday was KZ. Went pretty well. Got Garona's signet ring, and Legacy, so I can walk around looking like a hunter

Monday I got in on Void Reaver. My dps was for crap, but I was in a caster group, so no synergies for me. After that was Gruul. We downed the High King easy peasy, and i got his War Helm. Imba looking. goes great with my dragonquake shoulders. To bad the helm is melee dps and the shoulders are healing.

Having a 4 day weekend was nice. Got a lot of good WoWing in.

[PhelanArcetus]

What the hell are plate drops in Karazhan? Surely you're joking if you expect to ever see anything useful. I know I've pretty much given up on my only source of upgrades (since there's a few too many retards in Gruul to drop him any time soon, and all he has that I really want is a shield, though I'd take the pants for now. I'm still wearing Timewarden's, of course I'd take the damn pants).

Didn't really do much of note over the extended weekend. Did clear a buddy's alt through Slave Penis and Underbog, and helped another buddy's alt finally get all of the recolored valor drops (he needed the shoulders from Underbog). And I discovered that 58 is not Outlands-ready. My paladin spent a level or so getting gangbanged repeatedly, and then I headed to Silithus. I'm now 60, and depending on my mood after a few hours of wiping futilely on Gruul I may either try to bum a Ramparts run or Overlord. (The good news is that every single quest with item rewards so far has produced an upgrade, even though I had to waste a good hour and a half in the Stockades to train up axes after the first one.) And I suppose it's time to start the idle acquisition of paladin epic mount items. Gift of Arthas and Runecloth are trivial, but Arcanite... sigh, why?

[Lyanna Stark]

Got to do my first 25 mans this weekend.

Friday I got pounded on by Hydross. He hit me for 42k. It hurted.

Best go was 3%

Saturday was KZ. Went pretty well. Got Garona's signet ring, and Legacy, so I can walk around looking like a hunter

Monday I got in on Void Reaver. My dps was for crap, but I was in a caster group, so no synergies for me. After that was Gruul. We downed the High King easy peasy, and i got his War Helm. Imba looking. goes great with my dragonquake shoulders. To bad the helm is melee dps and the shoulders are healing.

Having a 4 day weekend was nice. Got a lot of good WoWing in.

Grats on the gear upgrades Race, but boooh for Legacy that bastard never dropped for me like EVER!

Drops are so odd tho, you can wait and wait and wait and then suddenly BAM you get lots of stuff, and it's back to waiting. Or you can get 5 boots in a row and still wait for a headpiece, for instance.

[Mack Kilimaro]

Race is clearly making stuff up. Legacy does not exist.

As for recent raiding exploits:

My guild more or less has Gruul's on farm, and we're pretty close to having Magtheridon on farm after a few weeks of killing him. As well, we have now gotten down The Lurker Below in SSC and hopefully we will pick off Hydross this week. This is pretty cool because we are now the #4 guild on the server in terms of progression, since we've leaped ahead of several other guilds (who are stuck on Mag) and could leap over another one which has yet to do Hydross.

[Kalbear]

On the thread from a bit back:

The thing that bugs me about Arena and the awesome items there is that they're so trivial to get for anyone. Simply put, you can put a team together and just lose and lose and lose, and you'll still get the items eventually. It doesn't take skill or ability to get your ass kicked. You could go in naked and gain the points.

That, IMO, is not the same challenge as getting a raid together and killing things. If you fail in a raid, you don't get the good items. If you fail in Arena, you do. That makes raiding more challenging than Arena for the purpose of getting items. Now, you can get the items more efficiently if you're a good Arena player, but this isn't a requirement. And since the challenge isn't proportionate, the rewards shouldn't be.

I do hear that they're thinking about making the top-tier arena items for teams that win, and that makes some sense and makes me happier in some ways, but really - what they need to do is make the itemization from PvP and PvE just totally different in terms of requirements so that it isn't even an issue. That top-tier sword in Arena would just utterly suck for PvE. Heck, if you like - just make it completely unusable in PvE. They already do that with talents, and they do the opposite for some gadgets in arena - why not just literally make it do nothing outside of pvp play?

[RaceBannon42]

The thing that bugs me about Arena and the awesome items there is that they're so trivial to get for anyone. Simply put, you can put a team together and just lose and lose and lose, and you'll still get the items eventually. It doesn't take skill or ability to get your ass kicked. You could go in naked and gain the points.

Were you watching us PvP? Last night was actually kind of embarassing. We got the same team all 10 matches, and they were queuing in Shattrath right next to us, so we had stand next to them after each pwning. You'd almost think an Enhancement Shammy, a Prot Warrior and a Sword Rogue, in PvE gear weren't tailor made for Arena.

My only enjoyment of Arena is throwing my Axe in peoples faces. But another month of losing and I can get a mace better than anything short of T6 level raids.

Mack, Sadly I only took legacy to save it from being turned to a void crystal.

[RaceBannon42]

Hammer of Grammar

damn this is funny!

[Kalbear]

Heh. Just sent Carrie that link too. Illidan pouting made me lol as well.

And this kills me.

[Stego]

What the hell are plate drops in Karazhan? Surely you're joking if you expect to ever see anything useful. I know I've pretty much given up on my only source of upgrades (since there's a few too many retards in Gruul to drop him any time soon, and all he has that I really want is a shield, though I'd take the pants for now. I'm still wearing Timewarden's, of course I'd take the damn pants).

I'm with you on the plate drops in Kara. I think I'm up around 20 runs without seeing the chest, shield, neck, boots (EITHER PAIR), or belt.

On the other hand, I've been very lucky with 25 man drops. In fact, I just got the shield Ro linked, yesterday.

Timewarden's leggings are better than the T4 pants. No question. Not even close. T4 pants suck ass, and the leggings are probably your strongest piece.

Please don't take this the wrong way, but you have at least a dozen ways to improve your gear pretty easily, assuming what's on the armory right now is your tank set. I'd be happy to help you out if you want.

[PhelanArcetus]

Nah, currently armory shows the set I call "ShieldSlamLOL". It needs improvement, though. I need to get on the Netherwing quests and pick up the two block value items there. Also the cloak and trinket from badges. To be honest, I use it for some 5-man tanking; with a good healer it's quite sufficient even though I'm crittable. Certainly it's appropriate for doing things like normal mode Underbog.

Felt tired as hell by the time I got home last night and only logged in long enough to tell the Gruul people I wasn't playing.

Kalbear hit arenas right on the head. As long as you show up, you will eventually get gear. You don't need as many people, you don't need as large a chunk of time (how long do 10 5v5 matches take? With 2v2 we spent about an hour once, mostly waiting in queues), though you may need similar total time. Sure, if you win, you'll get stuff faster, potentially quite a lot faster, but there is a guaranteed return for an hour or two a week, regardless of effort, which I can't say of raiding.

In terms of Kara loot I have... the belt, pocketwatch, chess boots, T4 gloves, tank bracers, and I think that's it. Chess has never dropped a King's Defender. Maiden dropped the neck once, the paladin offtank got it. Same with Curator's pants. We only took down Nightbane once yet, and he didn't drop the chest. Prince we haven't tried yet. (I have at least three dps items nobody else wanted, for when I pretend to be fury.) I looked on wowhead not too long ago. In every case I looked, tanking gear was one of the rarest drops from the boss. Attumen, Maiden, Curator, Chess, Nightbane. I didn't look at Moroes, or bother with Netherspite, Opera, or Prince, though.