Gitr Knows WoW

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Gitr

Key Fragment #1: Check

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Last night, I was joined by my fellow warrior guildie, Alaron, for a PuG through SL for Gitr’s first key fragment. It was an unusually quiet night for the guild with only 4-5 of us on all evening, so I was thankful to have one comrade.

He was leader and explained the fights I had not experienced yet quite accurately and successfully. We didn’t wipe until our first attempts on each of the last two bosses, but alas, no tanking loot dropped.

I was neglegent in e-mailing myself the screenshots this morning because I simply fell asleep at my desk after I got out of the shower and my wife had to wake me up to go to work. Maybe staying up until 1:30 in SL had something to do with it…

We had a very durable group, which made it much nicer than constantly rezzing the squishies. We had Gitr at MT, Alaron as dps, a ret shammy, a holy pally, and a hunter of unknown spec. My final screenshot showed me taking 38% of the damage, if my memory serves me correctly. I was at 50% until the wipes began. I was dead for nearly the entire last fight when the Sonic Boom and The Bomb were in the same area and I had no idea what to do about that.

What last night did was really instill the confidence to tank for a raid that my recent (and historical for that matter) experiences with PuGs weren’t feeding me. When the group pays attention and has a vested interest in getting to the very end, it’s amazing how much better a run goes. I almost can’t remember the feeling of raiding with 39 others for a common purpose, but I’m halfway to experiencing Kara, which sounds like it’s totally PuGgable on Silvermoon at this point.

I’ve seen several guildies in Kara on non-raid nights, so what are the odds of getting in on a LFG request for Kara as a MT/OT? I’ve been included on the Team 2 Kara raid for Friday nights, so we’ll see if I get to play next Friday.

70… Now What?

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Over two years in the making, Gitr has finally hit the level cap. He was the first of my toons to hit 60, which immediately led to getting keyed for Molton Core and raiding for a few weeks before the big /gkick of frustration. One year, 2 level 60+ alts, and a level 50 alt later, it’s decision time.

Am I still an alt-aholic?

My first answer is a resounding “YES!” However, if that is the case, why have I not logged into a single alt for a single minute since Sunday? I haven’t played an alt for more than 30 minutes while waiting for Gitr’s hearth cooldown since he transferred to Silvermoon in the middle of December. One month, 10 levels, and 2 thousand gold later, I’m left with a big figgin’ “Now what?”

I want to raid, I really do. I really miss the sense of accomplishment and camaraderie of a group of seasoned veterans who actually know how to play (as opposed to sucky PuGs [keyword: PuGs] who couldn’t fight their way out of a wet paper bag). There is something to be said for banding together for a single purpose and getting phat loot along the way.

The problem with raiding is commitment.

No one can say I’m not committed to playing WoW, as I most certainly get my playing time in, much to the disregard of sleep and personal edification. What it does fall far behind is eating dinner and spending quality time with my wife and getting my school work done since college is so dang expensive. Those two priorities pretty much rule out positive commitments to raid on a specific raid night. Things happen that busy, responsible people must pay heed to rather than isolate themselves in front of the computer from 8:00-midnight on a specific night.

What does that leave me to do?

  • Get yer dang flying mount, boy!
  • Get yer dang epic flying mount, boy!
  • Well, I can certainly be on backup for raid night on Fridays if they need a tank or a plate-wearing dps (I guess 20g for my next respec wouldn’t kill me).
  • Rep rewards are looking mighty fine. epics for getting rep seems like a pretty good motivation to me.
  • PvP rewards intrigue me and can be easily enough obtained without any kind of calendar commitment.
  • Become uncrushable. There’s something about that feat that intrigues me.

What would you do?

Gitr *FINALLY* Dings 70!

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After 30d 18h of /played time on Gitr, he momentously hit the level cap at 1:30am EDT January 13th, 2008. It was a time of great celebration… amongst myself, as the server and guild were pretty much empty at the time. He dinged as he turned in a quest in Shadowmoon Valley. The whole thing was vid-captured, but there seems to be some problem with clipping it to the actual event. Stay tuned for the link soon.

Now, the path for getting keyed for Karazhan has begun. It looks like level 70 will be fun, since he’s already got a blue 1H mace (Apexis Crystal Mace) that does 71.7dps! Well, it cost 120g, but that was cheap for what simple blue armor sells for. That doesn’t really matter, though, because in just 2 short hours of questing away in Nagrand, I racked up 75g and didn’t turn in my last 3 quests for over 13g each. The mace is up to 334 skill level, so I’m almost hoping Gitr can find another one on the AH and dual wield them when he’s not running an instance as a tank.

You know what’s so darn cool about being 70? I don’t give a rip what level something is now. I need rep in Nagrand, so I just went out after the lowest level mobs that gave rep and drops. Such a great feeling.

It’s late, once again, so I’d better get some sleep so I can function at work and school.

Introducing BlizzCast – The Blizzard Podcast

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Blizzard has joined the rest of the community with their very own podcast today! The first episode features Samwise Didier, their Art Director and concept artist. They discuss what he loves about Warcraft and Starcraft. It’s a great listen and I look forward to many more episodes. Down with WoWpodcast, long live BlizzCast.

Check out the transcript if you are on a lame connection or download the 24MB mp3 file.

You can subscribe to the feed by clicking this link and, as always, please subscribe to our feed to make sure you don’t miss any of our articles.

Ding 69! Ten Hours to Go…

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This morning Gitr dinged 69 by completing a quest from Ruaan Weald, deep in the Wyrmcultist cave. Experience Fu is estimating that I have 10 hours of leveling to go to ding 70. Here is my plan for the week to get to 70 in good shape:

  • Go back to Shadowmoon Valley to complete many of those quests that I’ve neglected by doing Netherstorm instead.
  • Do frequent LFGs when I do get 2-3 hours to play to get into some instances for XP, rep, and loot.
  • Play the AH to get enough gold for my flying mount upon the big ding. Time to go get Auctioneer Classic again… Advanced is bugging the heck out of me.
  • Clear out all of my group/elite quests that are jamming my questlog.
  • Research the Protection spec I will be using for instances/raiding with Doom’s Assailantsย on Silvermoon (US-PvE).
  • Consider re-speccing now and simply instancing my way to 70 in really fine, fun fashion. Who wants to grind/quest anyway?

Preferred Methods of Improving Your Gear, Sub-70

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Since all of my toons are still sub-70s, none of them are eligible for the best crafted items or the heroic/end-game instance loot yet. That still leaves me with several options for getting better gear than the standard quest rewards. Let’s begin, shall we? Then we’ll discuss what is best.

  • Outlands provides a cornucopia of group quests at the end of long questlines that often reward you with blue, even some socketed, gear that is far superior to the regular AH greens.
  • PvP is an option all the way through the levels, with varying degrees of reward value. You could arguably save up all of your BG marks for level 70 and get some working man’s epics right out of the gate.
  • Rep rewards offer blues for Honored/Revered status throughout Outlands. The Hellfire Peninsula rewards for Honored will hold you over for several levels, so check out what the later rewards will get you and whether they are worth it to you, since those 5-mans only take 2 hours with a PuG or 30-60 minutes with well-geared guildies.
  • Lastly, who can resist socketed blue gear from the 5-man instances that you will need to master in order to do them in Heroic mode anyway? There is some dang fine gear in there that puts the old Tier 0.5 junk to shame.

Personally, I’ve been indulging myself in as many quests as possible and running them all the way to the final Elite group quests. When I have a bucketfull of them, I look for someone in the area or hop on the guild chat or LFG channel to knock a few out for massive XP and shiny rewards. Some faction quests take you to instances for super rewards, starting in Ramparts onward.

On the nights that I have the time and patience, I run the instances for Rep, XP, and loot… all in one. You should be able to get 15-20g, another 20-40g in greens and vendor trashing, and a considerable amount of rep if you haven’t done all of the quests in the zone yet.

My personal favorite when I wasn’t leveling as fast was to play the AH a tad harder than normal and just buy my way into blue and purple gear. I’m making about 150g per day by questing, vendor trashing, herbing, and selling greens on the AH. I haven’t even been playing the AH because I hate Auctioneer Advanced for that, so I’m going back to the regular version to play for my flying mount coming up in 26 bars.

OMG! 132% until 70! /shudder