Gitr Knows WoW

Unlike your other World of Warcraft blogs. Quality over quantity, and a terrific community.

Gitr

Gitr Goes Widescreen

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This Christmas, Gitr broke down and built a brand new system and got gift cards to buy a new LCD monitor. What transpired is nothing short of a gaming revolution. WoW is an all new experience now. If you are playing on an old computer, trust me, I feel you. I was running at 1024×768 resolution with the shortest vision and nearly everything turned off. Entering Ramparts, frame rates dropped to a measly 4fps, which makes both tanking and healing exceedingly difficult.

On Wednesday, the new computer got built with a fresh install of Windows XP on a new SATA drive and got all of the WoW patches loaded for some evening playtime. Here’s the current system build, resulting in 35-72fps (depending on the location and party size) with everything at max and my new 1680×1050 resolution:

  • 2.66MHz Intel Core2 Duo with 1033FSB
  • ASUS SLI-ready motherboard
  • 2GB 800 DDR2 RAM
  • 160GB Western Digital SATA HD
  • ASUS Silent nVidia GeForce 8600GT 512MB
  • Envision 22″ Widescreen LCD with DVI-D cable

I’ll move to SLI, 4GB RAM and additional hard drives when the time comes and then top out with a Core 2 Extreme when the prices match what I just paid for this chip. So… using my wife’s bonus, we got all of this stuff in time for my week off of work (don’t worry, I have money coming in this week to replenish her bonus), got a desk, rearranged the office, and took down all of the Christmas decorations. It’s been quite a week, so it’s time to start posting again. BTW, Ding 68!

A Night at the Ramparts

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Gitr went to Hellfire Ramparts last night as a level 62, Fury specced, Bogslayer geared, main tank. I’d hit Honored with Honor Hold and bought two of the one-handed swords, but went to the AH to buy a new shield for running an instance properly. We had a nice makeup of the group, minus a hunter who never seemed to drink and left his raptor with growl on the entire time.

It was fun, and here’s how it went down.

We entered the instance and started off with… you guessed it: a wipe. Ramparts has to have one of the most difficult initial pulls of any instance up to that level, if not the whole game. It’s chaotic and a rude welcoming for a newly formed PuG. Hilariously, a 61 priest had joined the group thinking he was there for dps because there was a level 62 shaman. Thus, no one was healing. My health just went down, down, down, until I went down. I’ll leave the rest of that pull to your imagination.

We quickly regrouped and by the time we rounded the first corner, we could finish a pull with everyone but me at 100% health. That is how things went until we got to Watchkeeper Gargolmar. I really like the marking ability of my UI, but don’t ask me what does it, because I have no clue. Possibly Discord Unit Frames, but your guess is as good as mine. I marked him for me to tank and to freeze trap a healer while the others downed the second healer. The fight went exactly as it should and he dropped cloth shoulders for our priest.

There were quite a few messy pulls on the way up to Omor the Unscarred, but we scarred him pretty good and killed him after I kept his attention on me the whole time. What was happening to the others, I have no idea. I think that’s part of what I like about tanking. I watch the boss, my healer’s health, and see if anyone is taking enough damage to warrant a run, rescue, and taunt. With Deadr and Huntr I was always more aware of the fight as a whole. With Gitr, I don’t know and don’t care what people do to themselves as long as the following things keep going:

  • I keep aggro on what I’m hitting
  • My healer takes zero damage
  • The vitally important dps or off tank stays alive

Those are the only things that a change in status will cause me to do anything other than whack, revenge, and sunder my target.

With Omor down, we headed over to Vazruden & Nazan. The first time we killed the two guards, Vazruden didn’t jump down, so we all died by fire. Eventually, Nazan landed and I sacrificed myself to go ahead and let us reset the fight by causing a wipe. Two more attempts later, we had enough damage and mana to get the job done rather easily. The priest ran out of mana, but everyone pitched in to take Nazan down faster. My 7k buffed HP helped quite a bit. I got down to about 20% at the end and wasn’t going to get any heals. I got a nice cloak with +Sta that made me happy. I turned in my quests and picked up the Blood Furnace quest for tonight. Looking forward to it, I am. Yes.

Calling All Alt-Aholics

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Life as an alt-aholic can be quite strenuous on the mind, although I’d argue that it keeps you sharp. The great makers at Blizzard did not intend for you to only play one toon, or they would lock out character creation after the first toon is born as a level 1 n00b, am I right?! Right, of course I am. I am Gitr and unabashedly cocky in my opinions.

That said, when one hits a major milestone, close enough to smell the next great thing (read: Outlands), one is to abandon ship (regardless of cool gear in hand) and jump on another toon. If not, then alt-ism does not run in the family and you need not attend AA meetings (Alt-aholics Anonymous).

To get the full grasp of the condition, you have to look at the time spent on any one toon. It’s not uncommon at this point for people to have hundreds of days on their main toon, even if they have multiple 60s or 70s, because their main is their true love. Gitr has roughly 25 days of /played time, Deadr around 16, and Huntr and Paladr are still under 10 days. I still have yet to hit level 70 yet, and have 0, read: ZERO, pieces of Tier 1 or higher gear. Every time something dropped that I could roll on, I lost. That kind of brick wall started me on the path of the alts.

Deadr

He’s currently my highest level toon, climbing at 67 for greater and greater things. He entered Blade’s Edge Mountain and Netherstorm last week and looking forward to completing several level 67 quests for the gear upgrades that they offer. He feels powerful and fun to play, but lacks the healing gear to sufficiently main heal 5-mans as a Shadow spec. He has +558 Healing, but is constantly running out of mana because of a lack of… talent. It’s tempting to repec Disc/Holy for added healing, but trying to maintain some level of damage and survivability for the last 3 levels.

Huntr

He’s is my most recently super-neglected toon, despite his status as my second-highest toon at 62 in Zangarmarsh. I brought him out a couple of weeks ago to tame Ironback, but that’s as far as his fun went. The most he’s got going for him right now is maintaining guild control as the guild master of Buttered Monkeys on Velen. I’ll probably go back to him when someone is getting closer to 70 (or 60… or 40).

Gitr

He got an offer he couldn’t refuse on Tuesday in class: transfer to Silvermoon and I’ll get you into Kara and the other end-game instances. That’s right! Runnik is the GL of Dooms Assailants and they have two teams in Kara, with one of them on farm status. Now I need to get to 70. Talk about motivation, I’m telling you. It’s almost enough to drop the others’ progress, but noooooo. That would not be in character. I must remain true to my inner player and ignore my head when it comes to matters of leveling. I still couldn’t resist getting him to level 61 this morning before work.

Paladr

He hit 50 despite the fun he was having in the BGs as a 49 twink with double epic handheld equipment (see above). He still surely wants to hit Outlands as soon as possible, but not without neglecting his brothers. He’s a very fair, honorable paladin, worthy of respect for that understanding. Right now, he’s waiting his turn in the line-up so he can enjoy his new shield a bit more. The double epics twice in one sub-60, let alone any dual weapon epic, is a first for me, so Paladr is quite special.

Frostr

He hasn’t done much, but got to 25 super-fast and wouldn’t mind getting some more fresh air. I’m sure the inn is getting a tad stale after 5 months or so of sitting there wondering if I’ll be back. Unfortunately, he’s on Burning Legion in a nasty PvP atmosphere that really takes a bite out of clothies (have you seen Deadr lately!?) and it’s debatable whether to re-level him freshly somewhere else or pay $25 for my 25 hours of leveling he’s done to take him to Velen. I’m definitely interested in playing around with a frost mage build and see how often I can get stuff to crit.

The Evolution of a BG Noob: Let the Battles Begin

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Gitr finally got into some PvP with Paladr this week. Other than about 2 hours of total time in WSG matches for over 40 days played, this was my first entry into hard-hitting PvP. Of course, Deadr grew up to level 66 on a PvP realm and was the victim of hundreds of gankings, world PvP is nothing like fighting in a battleground setting, that is for sure.

This will be an ongoing series of my personal exploits in BGs as a complete and total noob for this kind of playstyle. See it as your one opportunity to openly laugh at me and have a good old time at my expense, because I’ve made some seriously dumb mistakes, but learned a lot already. I’ll be as transparent as possible in an attempt to comfort other noobs who are coming to learn from scratch.

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Taming Ironback, the Rare Hinterland Turtle

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It was a quiet evening in the lowland of The Hinterlands, killing turtles and making a path to get Lard’s lunch off the North coast. Paladr was enjoying the scenery and the challenge of wearing down multiple tank-like hard-shells when an unusual sight caught his eye underwater off the coast: a red nameplate hovering over a turtle.

Seeing that the UI indicated a level 51 gray elite named Ironback, I sat up a little bit when I saw SilverDragon pipe up that it had spotted Ironback. A quick hop on over to Petopia, and I learned that Ironback is a rare elite beast that just so happens to be tamable. I wanted him for myself, or Huntr, actually. As a level 62, it should be a pretty easy feat, but still a special pet due to the rareness. Some research reveals that the respawn time is between 12 and 24 hours. Time to go fetch Huntr, and quickly.

The Location

As I mentioned, Ironback was swimming along the northern coast of The Hinterlands, just East of the waterfall from the highland. The approximate coordinates came out to be 83, 48.5, just to the west of where Paladr accidentally aggroed him and had to die to leave Ironback there. /silly pally. Let the screenshot and dot speak for itself. The map location will read The Overlook Cliffs.

The Tame

The steps are about as mundane as possible, with only two things to really be aware of:

  • opposing faction on PvP realm
  • Gammerita – a roaming aggressive turtle who will aggro you if she wanders while you are standing on the shore

Of course, the basic tactic is to drop a Freezing Trap to ice block Ironback while you tame him. So, place the trap on the shore and swim out and hit him with a Concussion Shot and spin 180-degrees and swim back to shore and just past the trap and immediately start spamming Tame Beast, which you conveniently have on a toolbar, right?

If all goes as I have foreseen, your tame should end at the exact moment the ice block breaks. There is an awkward moment when it does, because you are not quite sure if OldIron is a friend or foe until you see him join you at your side. Feed him some fruit and he will begin to smile. Congratulations, you now have a pet with a great skin, cheap food, and more armor than he knows what to do with.

What Are You Doing This Weekend?

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As most of us are on Thanksgiving holiday this weekend, some of us are away with family, have family over, or are left to our own devices for 4 days of unabated WoW playing. Gitr is up in the Great North in Ohio without so much as a technology fix, aside from dial-up and a chance here and there to check e-mail and moderate comments.

Last night was a fun-filled night of dominoes with his grandparents and wife. Low score FTW! I dominated once again, as I do in everything I do competitively, or I don’t play at all. My wife just reminded me of that time she killed me in Scrabble… yeah, we don’t play that any more. ๐Ÿ™‚

Anyone level their toon to 70 or have major plans to do some farming to get an epic mount of some sort?