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Gitr FINALLY Dings 70!

January 15, 2008 By Gitr 16 Comments

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

January 10, 2008 By Gitr 2 Comments

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…

January 7, 2008 By Gitr 20 Comments

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 Assailants 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?

A Night at the Ramparts

December 12, 2007 By Gitr 1 Comment

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

December 6, 2007 By Gitr 6 Comments

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

November 30, 2007 By Gitr 13 Comments

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.