Having mostly finished my last set of goals, I've had a new set running for a while. These are my "complete this character, at least until WotLK" goals.
Misc:
Max out fishing, cooking (stuck on 374!) and weapon skills (Axes, Maces, Staves, Unarmed)
Recipe: Fel Mana Potion
Complete the Hero of the Mag'har quest chain
Gear:
Torn-heart Axe of Battle (every orc should have a big axe)
Attumen bracers. My bracers are my worst piece of healing gear at the moment
One piece of tier 4. Irritatingly I've got to Exhalted with the Violet Eye, and never once seen the Curator drop the shaman glove token. However, I do have Gloves of Centering so I don't really need the gloves.
Wednesday, 14 November 2007
Goals Revisited - part 1
It seems it's time I revised my goals from July. Especially since the first item on the list is pre-Kara healing gear...
Remaining items from the list -
Complete Tidefury set (for the looks): 1/5
Not so sure about this one now. I'd still like it, perhaps 4 pieces plus the head from the Big Bad Wolf. A set of some kind would still be nice. I've killed the bosses necessary enough times to have at least 1 more piece, but not farmed them in a properly dedicated way.
Netherdrake (to make the stepsons happy)
The big problem with this one is getting 5000g together to start the process. I recently spent 700g on Recipe: Elixir of Major Mageblood, otherwise I'd have 750g... Still nice to have.
Revered with Sporeggar (Transmute recipe): Honoured
I'm 1/4 of the way through Honoured still. Not really a priority at the moment, but it'd be nice to complete the set of elemental transmutes.
Revered with Keepers of Time (key): Friendly
Just one instance run short of revered. Once the patch comes out I won't actually need this anymore, but again it'd be nice to complete this goal.
Heroic Keys: Caverns of Time. See above
Get 355 Fishing skill (so I can catch Zangarian Sporefish).
I'm up to 312 fishing, so with my Horde-only fishing rod and some lures I generally fish pretty well
Remaining items from the list -
Complete Tidefury set (for the looks): 1/5
Not so sure about this one now. I'd still like it, perhaps 4 pieces plus the head from the Big Bad Wolf. A set of some kind would still be nice. I've killed the bosses necessary enough times to have at least 1 more piece, but not farmed them in a properly dedicated way.
Netherdrake (to make the stepsons happy)
The big problem with this one is getting 5000g together to start the process. I recently spent 700g on Recipe: Elixir of Major Mageblood, otherwise I'd have 750g... Still nice to have.
Revered with Sporeggar (Transmute recipe): Honoured
I'm 1/4 of the way through Honoured still. Not really a priority at the moment, but it'd be nice to complete the set of elemental transmutes.
Revered with Keepers of Time (key): Friendly
Just one instance run short of revered. Once the patch comes out I won't actually need this anymore, but again it'd be nice to complete this goal.
Heroic Keys: Caverns of Time. See above
Get 355 Fishing skill (so I can catch Zangarian Sporefish).
I'm up to 312 fishing, so with my Horde-only fishing rod and some lures I generally fish pretty well
Done with Kara - for now
Last night was my last visit to Karazhan for a while. I've not got everything I need from there yet, so no doubt I'll be back, but real life is taking over for a while.
A frustrating night in some ways - we'd cleared the Curator on night 1, but night 2 had 3 wipes on Aran before we eventually downed him, so we only had 2 attempts on the Prince. It'd have been good to down him with Team 3 before Zul'Aman opened, but not to be.
Highlight of the night was our rogue (in good Arena gear) taking Aran's arcane explosion in the face and (just about) living to tell the tale. We'd lost all but 4 of the raid not by this stage, mostly lost between the pyroblast and the elementals, so there were 6 spectators in Vent telling him to run. He didn't, and we were pretty much resigned to another wipe as he flew through the air. Neither the explosion nor the landing killed him, and our paladin did an amazing job of keeping the rogue, himself and the other 2 survivers alive just long enough...
And I got the rather lovely Pendant of the Violet Eye
A frustrating night in some ways - we'd cleared the Curator on night 1, but night 2 had 3 wipes on Aran before we eventually downed him, so we only had 2 attempts on the Prince. It'd have been good to down him with Team 3 before Zul'Aman opened, but not to be.
Highlight of the night was our rogue (in good Arena gear) taking Aran's arcane explosion in the face and (just about) living to tell the tale. We'd lost all but 4 of the raid not by this stage, mostly lost between the pyroblast and the elementals, so there were 6 spectators in Vent telling him to run. He didn't, and we were pretty much resigned to another wipe as he flew through the air. Neither the explosion nor the landing killed him, and our paladin did an amazing job of keeping the rogue, himself and the other 2 survivers alive just long enough...
And I got the rather lovely Pendant of the Violet Eye
Friday, 9 November 2007
Do I feel endangered?
No.
This post on The Endangered Shaman over at WoW Insider got me thinking - is there actually a problem, or is it just the usual whinging?
Although I don't PvP, I'm glad the diminishing returns on earth shock change has been reversed. It seems bad that you'd actually ruin things for your team mates by interrupting an enemy caster in an arena.
On the PvE side things seem just fine though - or at least the same as they ever were. Shaman are the least played class, but I'm assuming that is due in a large part to people prefering blood elves to alien blue space squid (as the other formerly-single-faction class, paladins are the second least played).
As some people point out on that WoW Insider thread, levelling a shaman can be slow at times. However I found a paladin at least as problematic. My (now deleted) dwarf paladin I found to be slow and unappealing to level. When I tried again with a blood elf more recently I found things easier, partly due to more experience with the game mechanics. However he's currently retired at level 22, having found the Boulderslide Ravine troggs to be just too much trouble. Shamans have both a ranged pull and a ranged interrupt from low levels - paladin's don't.
When it comes to the end game, a lot of shamans complain about there being only one wanted spec - Restoration. There are two shortcomings to this argument.
In a casual guild like mine it matters more who you are than what spec you have - our two Kara teams have one of each spec between them. On the other hand we're just finishing with Kara and moving on to Gruul.
In a progression guild however only restoration shamans will be wanted, with perhaps an outside chance of an enhancement shaman getting in to buff a melee dps group. This was always the case though, and is true for other classes too. Pre-BC if you wanted to raid as a shaman you'd better be resto, and in that spec were far less viable as a main-healer for a 5 man group or for PvP than is the case post-BC. As with for shamans, a progression guild will want a say how you spec for any other class - a maximum dps spec will be wanted for example, and even though this is less of an issue as you can still farm, your guild is still telling you how to spec.
This post on The Endangered Shaman over at WoW Insider got me thinking - is there actually a problem, or is it just the usual whinging?
Although I don't PvP, I'm glad the diminishing returns on earth shock change has been reversed. It seems bad that you'd actually ruin things for your team mates by interrupting an enemy caster in an arena.
On the PvE side things seem just fine though - or at least the same as they ever were. Shaman are the least played class, but I'm assuming that is due in a large part to people prefering blood elves to alien blue space squid (as the other formerly-single-faction class, paladins are the second least played).
As some people point out on that WoW Insider thread, levelling a shaman can be slow at times. However I found a paladin at least as problematic. My (now deleted) dwarf paladin I found to be slow and unappealing to level. When I tried again with a blood elf more recently I found things easier, partly due to more experience with the game mechanics. However he's currently retired at level 22, having found the Boulderslide Ravine troggs to be just too much trouble. Shamans have both a ranged pull and a ranged interrupt from low levels - paladin's don't.
When it comes to the end game, a lot of shamans complain about there being only one wanted spec - Restoration. There are two shortcomings to this argument.
In a casual guild like mine it matters more who you are than what spec you have - our two Kara teams have one of each spec between them. On the other hand we're just finishing with Kara and moving on to Gruul.
In a progression guild however only restoration shamans will be wanted, with perhaps an outside chance of an enhancement shaman getting in to buff a melee dps group. This was always the case though, and is true for other classes too. Pre-BC if you wanted to raid as a shaman you'd better be resto, and in that spec were far less viable as a main-healer for a 5 man group or for PvP than is the case post-BC. As with for shamans, a progression guild will want a say how you spec for any other class - a maximum dps spec will be wanted for example, and even though this is less of an issue as you can still farm, your guild is still telling you how to spec.
Tuesday, 16 October 2007
Can I be bored of raiding already?
Maybe I am. 20 man raids at level 60 were fun, but perhaps that was because they were new to me then. Certainly Karazhan isn't as interesting as it used to be.
I got the gloves from the Maiden last night so I my healing gear I now consider good, rather than passable. I'm slightly scared I'll get the tier gloves from the Curator tonight, having beggared myself enchanting the new ones yesterday.
The latest on my alt-oholism, I have a level 16 rogue. This week's plan is that my alt is will be a grinding / exploring character (a slightly more stressful way of visiting alliance territory than using my NE hunter, while staying in guild chat!). I've had problems getting my head around rogues before (this is about my 5th), but having figured out MetaHUD things are looking better. I'm looking forward to lots of stealthing and lockpicking, meanwhile I have a standard combat swords levelling build.
I dusted off my shadow priest for the Moroes kill yesterday, and the troll-themed gear from Zul Aman is looking interesting on the test realms, but I don't really want to be a troll. And I'm busy reminding myself that my level 11 warrior should stay that way - the time commitment to gearing up a tank doesn't fit into my life these days.
I got the gloves from the Maiden last night so I my healing gear I now consider good, rather than passable. I'm slightly scared I'll get the tier gloves from the Curator tonight, having beggared myself enchanting the new ones yesterday.
The latest on my alt-oholism, I have a level 16 rogue. This week's plan is that my alt is will be a grinding / exploring character (a slightly more stressful way of visiting alliance territory than using my NE hunter, while staying in guild chat!). I've had problems getting my head around rogues before (this is about my 5th), but having figured out MetaHUD things are looking better. I'm looking forward to lots of stealthing and lockpicking, meanwhile I have a standard combat swords levelling build.
I dusted off my shadow priest for the Moroes kill yesterday, and the troll-themed gear from Zul Aman is looking interesting on the test realms, but I don't really want to be a troll. And I'm busy reminding myself that my level 11 warrior should stay that way - the time commitment to gearing up a tank doesn't fit into my life these days.
Wednesday, 10 October 2007
Raid progression
My guild needs some - things are getting stale.
Our team 1 had cleared everthing in Karazhan except Nightbane before real life interfered, and team 2 is still regularly clearing the place. Team 3 - formed of some team 1 veterans, including some on alts, and some newer raiders, sometimes kills Aran, sometimes doesn't. But overall the guild has taken a step backwards.
We've had one "wipe night" attempt at Gruul's Lair which I've written about before. But it's beginning to feel like we need to go back there soon or interest will wane. Meanwhile I'm only in Kara farming gear and rep (I now have the belt from Moroes, and the Revered ring), which isn't really my idea of a good time. While I could do with new bracers (from Attumen) and new gloves (from Maiden or The Curator) to get rid of a couple pieces of sub-par gear I feel my gear is ready for the next step, and I'd certainly rather be wiping on something new than going over old ground again.
Our team 1 had cleared everthing in Karazhan except Nightbane before real life interfered, and team 2 is still regularly clearing the place. Team 3 - formed of some team 1 veterans, including some on alts, and some newer raiders, sometimes kills Aran, sometimes doesn't. But overall the guild has taken a step backwards.
We've had one "wipe night" attempt at Gruul's Lair which I've written about before. But it's beginning to feel like we need to go back there soon or interest will wane. Meanwhile I'm only in Kara farming gear and rep (I now have the belt from Moroes, and the Revered ring), which isn't really my idea of a good time. While I could do with new bracers (from Attumen) and new gloves (from Maiden or The Curator) to get rid of a couple pieces of sub-par gear I feel my gear is ready for the next step, and I'd certainly rather be wiping on something new than going over old ground again.
Monday, 1 October 2007
Shattered...
... Halls - don't go there without crowd control AND a decent tank - you can't just do one or the other it seems! I did two partial runs and one full run there over the weekend, ending up less than 300 points short of revered. Very disappointing, but at least I can complete the rep grind with just two daily quests.
Both partial runs called it a day just after The Gauntlet, with the side groups of Mortal Strike orcs and the big group with the Legionnaire causing us problems. Mortal Strike is a real nightmare to heal through if you're not a priest..
A bigger trauma for the weekend - having deleted my level 6 warrior on Thursday in order to free up a mule slot for my alliance hunter, I then recreated him and levelled him to 11 in my "spare" moments this weekend. Despite all the frustrations I know prot warriors face, the bad tank experience on Friday night had me wanting to tank again. And orcs are just much cooler than my retired undead warrior - I was recently in Shadow Lab with a perfectly good undead warrior but their short, hunched-over look puts me off being one again.
Bizarrely, an article on WoW Insider on the central gripe of the class - tank warriors are the least able of all classes to solo in their instance spec - had actually got me thinking fondly of warriors again before the run that put me over the edge...
Both partial runs called it a day just after The Gauntlet, with the side groups of Mortal Strike orcs and the big group with the Legionnaire causing us problems. Mortal Strike is a real nightmare to heal through if you're not a priest..
A bigger trauma for the weekend - having deleted my level 6 warrior on Thursday in order to free up a mule slot for my alliance hunter, I then recreated him and levelled him to 11 in my "spare" moments this weekend. Despite all the frustrations I know prot warriors face, the bad tank experience on Friday night had me wanting to tank again. And orcs are just much cooler than my retired undead warrior - I was recently in Shadow Lab with a perfectly good undead warrior but their short, hunched-over look puts me off being one again.
Bizarrely, an article on WoW Insider on the central gripe of the class - tank warriors are the least able of all classes to solo in their instance spec - had actually got me thinking fondly of warriors again before the run that put me over the edge...
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