Gitr Knows WoW

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

On your marks…get ready…get set…GO!

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Over on Big Red Kitty, BRK is getting a naked gnome race together for this Saturday on the Drenden realm and has a poll up to decide on the start time. I have decided that I want to participate, mostly because this would be the first time for me for this sort of thing. It really seems like fun and though I will most likely lose, I think it will be really interesting.  So if you join in the fun, look me up. I will be a little green-eyed warlock gnome named Punlock.

And don’t worry, I haven’t logged in as him yet. See you there?

Key Fragment #2: Check

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I am remiss in not updating that I got key fragment #2 on Friday last week. To get back on track, here we go.

I was questing out in SMV trying to cross off as many off my log as possible when I got a whisper from a 70 mage asking me to a group to complete a quest and that he had a full group AND could summon me AND would pay me 10g. I said I would and I was summoned to the end of the path of Elites just West of the Blood Elf outpost.

I asked what to do to help them, and they said to tank my guts out. There are going to be 4 waves, and I needed to put my game face on… I think they looked at my gear and got worried. We wiped on the first attempt when the second wave let too many mobs free on the squishies, but I think they were targeting mobs I wasn’t tanking full-time. We made it on the second attempt, and the third, and the fourth. People kept coming in the area and I was like a tanking prostitute. I never did get the gold, but I will be able to rip through this when it’s my turn to go to Black Temple.

Soon after, I got to go on another PuG with Alaron to get the fragment from Steamvaults. That was a dang easy job, and we moved on to get the third fragment. Alaron had the key to get into Arc, so we were all set, or so I thought. Anyone guess my problem last Friday? Tempest Keep? Gitr?

Right! I couldn’t fly yet! I ran to the flight point, flew to Area 52, and then got summoned to the TK meeting stone to pick up that flight point. The next thing I knew, every busted out their flying mounts. It dawned on me at that moment that I had finally reached that instance I’d read about that required a flying mount to even get to. Yeah… suck bucket!

After facing some ridicule in green text that I didn’t appreciate much, I left the group and started killing warp hunters, feeling so miserable about the let down of not finishing the fragments that I logged for the night and went to bed.

Respec

Since the Kara Team 2 for Doom’s Assailants needs an OT, and everyone keeps saying I need to return to my ways of Fury, I respecc’d for the awesome deal of 15g last night. I didn’t really get a chance to try it out yet, because I went directly to an AB match… you can guess how that turned out.

Newly-minted 70s in BGs with a re-visited spec do not fare well with epic’d out warlords. I died 6 times and only got 35 honor kills and one Mark of Honor for our 2000/930 loss. It was pitiful. It took 12 of us to re-take the Stables… I don’t know what it is about Alliance and Horde in AB. I’ve played both, so I’m pretty sure most of them have. It just doesn’t make any sense at all that Alliance can’t get their act together.

Since I’m sure to get a lot of questions and feedback on my new spec, here it is for all to see, comment, and make fun of. I’m not a build shop master by any stretch of the imagination, so we’ll see how this goes when it counts.

I’m going to try to get into TK with a PuG tonight because it’s the second night in Kara for Team 1. Time to get some gear!

I Believe I Can Fly!

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After dedicating myself to Netherstorm quests that involved killing humanoids for cash and good reward money, I was well on my way to a 200g night after only a couple of hours. I had 146g more in my bags than when I started and got 6 green drops to auction off when I saw a guildie ask if anyone wanted to do The Ring of Blood.

Did I!? Heck yeah, double gold at level 70 for 10 minutes of pure fun, count me in. We blew through them and had great healing from a random 67 pally in Nagrand who only got silenced once and made me pop a potion. I selected the 2H axe for 10g vendor trash and announced to the guild how glad I was to only be 200g from getting my flying mount.

The next thing I know, Pandara (70 uber mage) opened up a trade window and very slowly typed 2   0   0 in the money box. I asked him if he was sure because I wasn’t asking for assistance. He said to pay me back in time because I’ll be rolling on gold soon. I gladly accepted the gift and flew off to SMV to buy my biggest purchase ever: 800g of riding training and a Snowy Gryphon. I popped the video recorder on for the big event and will be putting it to some music. I flew around for a while and completed a couple of quests by dropping down onto locations and logged for the… morning.

Also, Growl put my ding 70 video to some music. Thanks man! Let me know if this plugin works, because I’m limited at work.

[quicktime]https://gitrknowswow.com/images/Ding70.mov[/quicktime]

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?

Growl’s Ding 70 Post

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Yeah – my first 70 – go figure. Sure, most of you have had them for a while now – hell – I have friends that are on their 3rd or 4th. I guess what makes my first 70 so odd and yet so entirely gratifying is that he came from such humble and unexpected origins.

The Story of Skychaser

/cue dramatic music

::sound of needle dragging across a record::

Right – none of that. First off – Skychaser for anyone that knows his history was an accident – an experiment in level 19 shaman twinking – and a potion vendor for my more *serious* toons. The homely white cow started life out on Thorium Brotherhood as “Remember” and what I tend to “remember” from those days was that being a level 19 shaman in a warsong gulch full of twinked rogues and hunters was a pretty painful experience. So it’s probably not surprising that I put him away in favor of my more easily accessible twinks. He languished like this for a long time – churning out speed and free action pots for my main of the month and letting dust build up on his Twisted Chanters Staff. It wasn’t until I migrated off of Thorium B. and onto the newer RP server Moon Guard that Remember (renamed Skychaser after the server move) saw the light of day again.

I dusted Sky’ off and put him to work initially because I needed better potions. The surprising thing was that I really started to enjoy playing him. Like all good things, Sky required time and patience to really learn. Shammy – like druids – are hybrids and not quite as easily accessible as the average primary color toons that make up the most played classes in the game. One thing lead to another though and the levels really started to fly by. Once the great leveling patch came along, adding extra 30’s and 40’s quests and reducing the required experience to level and pumping up quest and mob-rewards things went even faster. In no time, Sky caught up with and passed – my name sake toon (Growl) and all of my original alliance characters.

At 60 – Sky emptied the banks of all my other characters and picked up epic mount training. A long Alterac Valley grind later brought him a Frost Wolf Howler and a Warlord’s Bludgeon. As a strict dps character, Sky’ was free from having to do anything in instances other than watch his aggro and support his tank. I started running instances with abandon and in no time I was absolutely hooked on the whole “progression” thing.

Over the Xmas holidays I found myself with more game time than usual and Mrs. Growl much more pleasant about me tromping off into Azeroth for hours at a time. Skychaser pounded his way through Hellfire Peninsula and Zangamarsh – grabbed up his heroic keys for both locations and moved on to Nagrand, Terrorkar and the Bone Wastes. Over a few particularly great gaming days, Sky’ cleared the Crypts, Mana-Tombs, and even Setthek Halls – picking up his Shadow Labyrinth key and swaddling himself in loot.

Around 67 and the Blades Edge Mountains, things started to get hard. I was enjoying the questing and enjoying my character, but I learned during the holidays that I was gaming on borrowed time. As an Army Reservist, I’m slotted to deploy early in the spring and this news cast a haze of immediacy over everything I did. While my guildies continued to play alts and cruise through levels on relaxed mode, I lit my afterburners and ground on. Finally – a day or so after Xmas, Sky was burning through one of the many kill quests in Shadowmoon Valley. I was burnt – toast – the drag from 68 to 69 had truly been a long one and I was getting tired. I literally dinged 70 on some random mob and didn’t even realize it for a few moments. It wasn’t until a guild-mate who had just logged on popped open her social interface panel and noticed.

“Wow Sky’ – grats on 70!” She said. I blinked a couple times and looked up to my unit frame…well I’ll be damned. A chorus of congratulatory “woots” rolled across my chat pane. I thanked everyone and promptly let myself get caught up in the excitement. The guild had a new 70 – the level grind was over – now for a taste of this vaunted “new” end game. Arena’s – more instances – the flying mount thing.

Well, it’s been a couple weeks since I dinged and things are…odd. First off – I think I pushed a bit too hard over the holiday to hit 70. All the play time and the sudden burning need to progress toasted me up a bit on the whole enhancement shammy thing. The bad part was that I figured this out after heading (under geared of course) into the 70’s battlegrounds. Wow. What a wake up call. After destroying all comers from 40-60 (the peak of enhancement shamanic power apparently) – I rolled into my first BG’s and watched as my vaunted crit % and old-ass 60 dps maces whiffed off of gladiator geared 70’s with more resilience than Sky had INT. I was target #1 for everyone – hit with every CC imaginable and dropped in seconds. Determined to do better (and tired of questing) I dedicated myself to the battlegrounds again and in a few days had my first piece of S1 gear. A few days later I had another piece – an expensive one too – the Gladiator’s Pummeler. Things were still going poorly though and the thought of getting drubbed for days on end to get even more gear just wasn’t all that appealing.

So I blew 5G and respecced.

To resto. What the hell – I was pretty much reduced to healing my way through BG’s anyway – I might as well be *good* at it. The respec went off just fine and the added heal-ly power (in crap-tastic gear I should add) was welcome. I put away all of my considerable enhancement goodies and built a lousy resto +healing set that had me sitting around +450 healing. Back into the BG’s I went.

Lasted about a week.

Don’t get me wrong – resto shammy rock. I healed my ass off. I saved countless lives. But I also got focus fired and annihilated over and over and over. I also got zero thanks – or damn near. Finally – after being abandoned to die by one too many noob rogues in a late night Eye of the Storm – I filled my guild chat with venom and headed off to Ogrimmar to respec. To hell with healing and to hell with my team-mates. It was time to nuke something.

Reality sinks in…Dude – your gear *sucks*. Even if you *do* respec you’re still going to be a gimped ass shaman in a mix of enhancement S1 epics and left over quest rewards from level 65. Either get back to instances and hope for some good drops…(more fighting with hunters for the odd mail piece that works for us both.) Or stay resto. Or try being a caster.

Ugh.

Kinless once said that he felt it was really obvious that Blizzard wanted Shaman to be either resto or elemental based on the quest rewards and drops they’d made available for them post 60. I have to agree with this. Short of the Aldor/Scryer stuff that is spec specific – the rest of the drops are full of +mp5 and spell damage and +healing. Still burnt on enhancement I did some reading and walked away with a 40/0/21 elemental pvp build. I’ve never been a caster folks – so this was serious weird water for me to be wading in. I shuffled some gear around – changed some basic enchants and queued up. It was different I have to say. Used to playing a melee class for so long – I went back to my hunter roots and remembered to get some stand-off distance and nuke. Kiting became important and I spent a few uncomfortable Arathi Basins getting my macros in place.

Things finally came together as my crew and I hit the Alliance flag room in Warsong Gulch. I rolled in at the back of the pack to see my team-mates already mixing it up heavy. Epic weapons were hacking out great carnage while our kick-ass paladins and healing priests kept the warrior up and the rogues from blowing away in red mist. I hit my cast cycle macro for the first chain lightning – a second later it arcs downrange and chains a series of lightning overload crits as it arcs from target to target – almost on top of it another lightning bolt fires downrange and crits the same plate-wearer – I get hit and suddenly clearcasting procs. I pop natures swiftness and elemental mastery and an instant cast chain-lightning rips into the mass of alliance, lightning overload procs again suddenly my screen is filled with “Killing Blow” – “Killing Blow” – two heavy targets drop to the ground – one of our pallies grab the flag and we’re back out the door, hauling ass for the horde side of the field.

I don’t remember much of that run – suffice it to say I healed a lot and dropped a lot of annoying totems to slow down pursuit and nuke the odd-passerby. We won the game (of course) and I logged off that night with the realization that spell damage truly does rock when it comes to dealing with nasty plate wearing brutes. Sure – the lightning overload crits were a bit of happy chance – but nothing quite lights my eyes up like scrolling combat text tossing those big numbers up in bright orange for me. I was hooked.

So – tonight I’m back at it. I have two full pieces of elemental gear so far and a third piece is on the way soon. I doubt I’ll be fully kitted out before I deploy – but I’m having fun and trying something new.

70 is cool – I wish it hadn’t taken me so long to get here.