Addons.

 

Here is a Screenshot of my healing setup. mods are:

1. Bartender4: This is my main bar with my healing on my 2nd page that I get to by hitting shift 4
2. Bartender4: An extra bar for my incidentals like cooking, mounts, rezzing
3. Bartender4: My macros for my totems. I have 5 sets up totems written up as macros to use in different types of groups. One for melee, one for spell casters, melee protection, pvp that kinda thing. Will list each one here when I get back online.
4. Bartender4: My consumables bar, buff food, bandages, pots and my trinkets. I used to use bartender but it was a major memory hog so I switched to this way.
5. Carbonite: Switched to this from Questhelper, I find it much easier to work with and I minimize when in combat so it is out of the way when I don't need it.
6. Minimap button frame: Gets most of minimap buttons off the ring so that I don't see em when I don't need em.
7. Recount: Always need the stats to see how people are doing in raids and instances
8: Omen: Can't see it because it only comes up when in combat. aggro management, nuff said.
9. Totemtimers: Easy to cast my totems when flipping through in case of changes for what I am running. need a poison cleansing totem hit it. need a mana spring totem and then healing stream totem np.
10. SmartDebuff: use it to cleanse, remove curses whatever is needed to keep the tank and group up.
11. Grid: Main interface for healing, most of my macros are mouseover for targetting and I keep this close to my center of attention. Can keep track of who has riptide, earthshield and when I have tidal waves. Also track who has incoming heals on that.

Keybindings on 1:

1. Nature's swiftness
2. Macro for Chain Heal
3. Macro for Lesser Healing Wave
4. Macro for Riptide
5. Totemic Recall
6. Macro for Healing Wave
7. Wind Shock
8. Tidal Force
9. Riptide
0. Heroism
=. Purge

In the background I run:
Visual Heal: so that the tank knows when they have an incoming heal and how far out it is.
ratingsbuster: to compare how good my equipment is to what I am picking to see if it is worthwhile having.
Deadly Boss Mods: Tell me when to get out of the way of a problem
CTmod: To move my tooltips from default.
FreeRefills: Refill my Anhks when they get low along with water and food if I need it.
OmniCC: to see cool downs on my buttons
Quartz: To see latency issues to know when I can cast again.
Smoothdurability: To see how my armor is and automatically repair it.
TekJunkSeller: Sell all my greys
Talented: For when I switch specs. Easy to manage

When raiding time comes:
Headcount: Be able to post here who gets what armor
Healorganizer: Easy to transmit healling assignments
ORA2: For watching tanks and main dps
SRaidFrames: easier interface to work with, thinking about making this a raid requirement so leaders can see who has combat rez available or Reincarnation, soulStone.

Chain Heal Macro:
#showtooltip
/stopcasting
/cast [target=mouseover, help][help][target=targettarget, help][target=focus, help][target=player] Chain Heal

Lesser Healing Wave Macro:
#showtooltip
/stopcasting
/cast [target=mouseover, help][help][target=targettarget, help][target=focus, help][target=player]Lesser Healing Wave

Riptide Macro:
#showtooltip
/stopcasting
/cast [target=mouseover, help][help][target=targettarget, help][target=focus, help][target=player] riptide

Healing Wave Macro:
#showtooltip
/stopcasting
/cast [target=mouseover, help][help][target=targettarget, help][target=focus, help][target=player]Healing Wave

Tradeskills

I haven't been focused much on leveling my DK, mostly because of real world things. I have, however, recently gotten my herbalism up to 300 and my enchanting to 226. Enchanting is harder to level. I have been using this guide I found. I will link it once I make sure that there aren't any questionable words or links. I didn't notice bad language, but with my lack of sleep, I could have overlooked something.

Another thing I have noticed being an Unholy specced DK...sometimes I have a hard time keeping aggro. I really have to figure out the best way to do so. Of course, it would help if my fellow DK's that I am leveling up with would quit TRYING to take the aggro from me...they do it on purpose just to irk me. It is kind of funny, but not when it happens...later, I can laugh.

Have a Merry Christmas, everyone, just in case I don't get back before then. I really need to be more active on this blog.

Apologies for the AFK

Sorry for having been AFK for the past week or so but we had our baby on the 12th so have a bouncing baby girl to add to the family. I hope things will balance out soon so that I can get on more often but for now it is for about an hr or so if that.

Have a merry Christmas if I don't get back before then.

Azjol'Nerub

Skarrde:

Went into here for the second time in a row. Not a bad instance all in all, pretty quick to run and has a chance to give you some good loot. I replace my Virtuous Shard, though I was lothe to do so with Life-Staff of the Web Lair. Not exactly what I wanted but seems to do good to replace what I had. Will get more into this tmoro when I have time. Just thought I would give a bit of a heads up.

There's Gold in Them There Hills!!

Skarrde:

Ah finally broke the 5000g mark. Not quite ready to pick up the epic mount for Piqued yet but will do so soon. I have taken a bit of a break from leveling him until my wife has the baby as we don't have as much time to play together as I would like. I have pulled my mage out of retirement for a little while. Working my way through Howling Fjord with him and the quests are quite interesting. I am beginning to despise the shoveltusks, they seem more prevelant than the Rhinos and Mammoths in Borean. Ah well still enjoying leveling my mage, nothing says fun quite like "Nuke em all, let God sort em out."

NEWS UPDATE!!!! WARNING!!!

Rumors are abound that curse client and possibly wowmatrix have a possible keylogger problem. Not sure what addons are causing it but it has been advised at a number of the sites I have been to that we should all manually update addons if you need to.

Personally I would advise not updating for a while unless the addon is absolutely needed and is broken. For me I use wowmatrix because it only downloads updates to my computer, curse client has a profiler that it uploads to their server to update their databases.

THE MAIN THING TO REMEMBER, DON'T USE THE SAME PASSWORD FOR YOUR WOW ACCOUNT AS FOR YOUR ADDON FAVORITES OR DOWNLOADS.

We now return you to your regularly schedule play time.

A Night of Relaxation

Piqued:

Took the day off from leveling for the most part, at least in reference to questing. Did some herb picking to get the wife's inscriptionist up, spent about an hr to an hr and a half on that. Then went and got her to Dalaran and showed her the sites there. She then proceeded to pick up her gryphon and picked a few more herbs. I went to the sea and found some fish. Side note got my fishing to 433, yeah me and my Herbalism to 404, woot. Gonna try and generate the cash needed to get my mount as well but til then I will just choke on her dust when we are in Outlands.

Osirri Introduction

Skarrde, my guild leader, has been kind enough to give me a forum to post my thoughts and experiences as a Death Knight (DK) on his blog. I have never tanked before rolling my Death Knight. I am normally used to being a dps spec as a hunter, so I am thinking that there will be a lot of trial and error while I learn how to be a valuable member of a party as a tank or off-tank.

Currently, I am specced unholy. Here is the link for my spec...please keep in mind that I am still learning the class, and I realize that I have to clean it up. I am still doing research and experimenting with the talents.
Arcindinia's Unholy Spec

Thanks for reading and I will update again later with some experiences I have had with being a new DK tank.

Shared Topic Idea: Children of Wrath: Dawn of a new Era

Piqued: Starman of Casual Raid Leader asked:

We've talked about the concept of a BC Baby and the world that they grew up in. What things will the Children of Wrath never see? What aspects of the world will they miss? What aspects will have changed so dramatically that they have no concept of things we speak of?

Interesting idea:

1. What it was like to only have paladins on alliance and shamans on horde.
2. 5 min buffs for paladins that had to be cast on every single person in the group. (Hence the name buffbot)
3. taking 9 mos to lvl from 1-60.
4. BRD, LBRS, UBRS, Scholo, Strat all being 10 man instances.
5. The epicness of BRD.
6. Fighting Onyxia in SW Keep.
7. Sailing from Menethil to get to Auburdine.
8. Trade chat not going across every cities channel.
9. LFG being the busiest channel in game but not a single person actually LFG.
10. Having to run to every instance since summoning stones were non existent.
11. No organized PvP, aka battle grounds or arenas. PvP was chosen by either flagging yourself or fighting in arena by Booty Bay.
12. taking 3 mos to pick up 10 lvls after 60.
13. When Illidan and Arthas were just a piece of lore.
14. Taking down Baron for the first time.

Tank #2

Piqued: I have asked a fellow guildie that is leveling up a DK as a tank to give her input in any way she wants. Please be kind and welcome her to the board, hopefully you can find her as informative as I have. :)

RL vs. WoW: The Coninuing Battle

I am currently having a bit of a dillema battling between the two of these. My wife  is pregnant with our 2nd child and is due the beginning of next month, with this comes the difficulty for her to sit in her computer chair for long periods of time. We have always leveled all of our toons together and so have had an equal number of high level toons to play with. Now with her being unable to play as much as I am this has dug into my time with playing as well. I don't want to disappoint her and level my shaman but I am missing the moving through the zones and reading the quests. I have been leveling my different skills, skinning is at 450, cooking is up to 416, fishing is now at 418 and rising and my herbalism is over 400, not sure how high. I am enjoying the time that I get to quest with my wife and look forward to every time we get to do it but I just wish it was more.

Martyr that I am and feeling sry for myself over this whole thing I should probably just level up my mage since I can solo that pretty easily.

Well ttfn and have a good nite.

2 steps forward or is it back?

Finished the quest chain for the key frags for Kara for Piqued. Will try and get into BM before the end of the week. The really fun part of this is that I have my mom running along with us on her first 70, a feral cat druid. She seems to be enjoying it so far I just hope she isn't overwhelmed with it. Mom doesn't plan on getting LK for a bit yet but we will see what happens, I did tell her to continue questing to make some extra gold especially since she hasn't gotten her epic ground mount yet.

In Northrend been mostly fishing due to RL issues going on this week and all. Other than that has been spending about an hr working on the Kara key quests, so a pretty slow week thus far.

Bleh why does work have to interrupt wow life huh?

Utgarde Keep

Went into my first instance in Northrend last nite after finishing off Kara and it is amazing the differences in the instances. Karazhan which was an interesting fight before 3.0 has become rather bland and easy to run through. Utgarde on the other hand was awesome with the visual detail they went into with this low level instance. The fights were pretty even, especially since we had a fellow guildie who had been there before. We made it through most of the instance without problems, it wasn't until we hit the last boss that we had some major problems. Healing was pretty straightforward and I kept my riptides running on the tank for the most part and then filling everyone else up with Lesser Healing Wave. The one thing I did notice is that there is a mana shortage for Shamans but I think this is more my fault than the games. I had been basing my gear on a different model than what was actually in Northrend. With the way it was in BC post 3.0 we could afford to lose mp5 for crit, right now I don't believe that is the case. Since we have no real way of generating mana through talents or crits like all the other classes we are going to have to continue using the fall back of mp5.

Healing strategy for Utgarde Keep

The main thing as always is keep your tank up and for this riptide and chain heal work the best. It is also nice when your chain heal bounces to the other melee in the group and keeps them alive. For totems I threw down Flametongue, Mana, Stoneskin and Windfury, the last one because I had more melee than casters in my group. I usually try to keep my air totem applicable to the group. I did find myself really enjoying Tidal waves for the haste factor for Lesser Healing wave. The first boss isn't too bad, he brings in four guys at beginning so you have to watch the aggro, try to make sure that the tank is between you and the door they come through, this is especially helpful when running with a paladin tank. After you kill them off the boss will rez the four guys again and once again watch the aggro. If it is possible move around to opposite side of the tank so that they have to come past him to get to you.

The second boss consists of 2 mobs, one is a caster and the other is melee. The fun thing about these 2 is that your party has to kill them at about the same time. We got lucky going in there so I can't give you a definite time limit but I believe it was within 5-10 secs of each other. If you don't do this then the one will rez the other and you have to start again. We had the tank move right in and I put my totems close by. We were then able to burn them down without a problem and continued on.

Time for the last boss. This guy is was very difficult for us and we wiped twice on him. Nice thing is that we had a hunter to help us run through the whole instance after we got back in, it is a very long walk. There are 2 phases to this guy. The first one was pretty simple, the only thing the melee had to watch for was his shield bash which was an aoe that affected anyone within 20 or so yds of him. He is easy to burn down since he had next to no Hit Points. The next phase he gets rezzed by a Valkyrie and he starts dealing out shadow damage. You want to burn him down as fast as you can because he does a shout that puts a debuff on the party that increases shadow dmg done to you. Watch out for his shield bash aoe because this dmg is generated though shadow so can be very wicked. Burn him down as fast as possible, we made it through 5 shouts and then he took care of everyone in mail along with the tank and then the warrior and druid in bear form.

GL :)

Northrend Ho!

My wife picked up our two copies that we had reserved at Gamestop, would have prefered getting at midnite last nite but oh well. Started installing around 9 cst and it is now 930, I am in the process of installing the patches and she is still working on getting the LK disk installed. Hope this gets done soon so we can head in.

Wrath Preorder.

Shazbot! I went to the Gamestop website and preordered the 2 copies of Wrath for my wife and myself thinking "Hey I will get it at midnite. Cool." Then I called em to make sure they are having a midnite opening and low and behold no such luck. So gonna have my wife head out during the day and pick up the copies and install them. Hopefully when I get home I can head into Northrend with Piqued and work on getting to 80 as fast as possible.

Moral of the story? Check with the store before you preorder. You may not have one around that will be open at midnite.

Side note about glyphs. You can only have one of each in your glyph page. I picked up an extra minor glyph of watershield to try and get an extra orb and couldn't put it on. Guess I will just have to wait and see what we get above 375.

Spell Power> Crit> Int> MP5

So been working with my Shaman quite a bit lately and have been working on the healing end of it and have found that Crit has been making things a little better for mana generation. Since I consume a globe of water shield every time I get a crit on Riptide, LHW or  HW. While I don't use LHW or HW much I do find myself using Riptide quite often, it is a wonderful HoT and makes CH easy to work with. I did get the minor glyph for extra globe of water, I think I might even invest in another just to have it available so that I am not casting it all the time.

Re-Rethinking Resto Talents

Thought I would throw up my thoughts of where the points for resto-shaman in rebuttal to Hoof n Healz. Personally I went with 0/10/51 to get the crits from Thundering Strikes and since I use Riptide and Chain Heal for most of my heals I enhance CH. I don't use LHW or HW but when I do I like to have Tidal Waves proccing. I am so waiting for the Glyph to improve CH, at least there is only a wk left for that.

But hey that is just my opinion. :)

A dirge to the weapon buffs!

Was doing some reading in my blog roll and came across this article from Wow Insider, and I must admit I was quite shocked over it. Why in the world would Blizzard go ahead with this idea when it has always been a core for me when customizing myself for raids. Some people like to go for the Superior Mana Oil for the mana regen while others go for Brilliant to get the extra heals and the regen, and then there are those that go for the Wizard Oil to get the extra heals or hits. Personally I was running the Brilliant on my druid just to keep up the mana regen tho with 2.4 I did fall back on Superior when it was available. And now? We either won't be able to use any new ones or people will be farming the mats to make the old ones still. Personally I hope they just don't improve them so that people will still need to visit some of the old world places to get the things they need for it. And it will also make it possible for people to sell items on the auction houses.

I could be wrong in this but it seems that they are taking a lot of the staples that Alchemists make and cutting down on what is needed for raids. No longer are we able to drink more than one potion during an encounter which means that people won't be buying as many health or mana potions. No longer will people be using oils or sharpening stones so Alchemists won't be able to sell their potions and Smiths won't be able to sell their stones. How are people going to make their money anymore? Are they going to have to charge more for the other items to keep generating the income that they would have lost otherwise? Seems that Blizzard will actually make things harder for Raiders if you think about it. Instead of picking up a Healing Potion Injector or a Mana Potion Injector which used the business of an Alchemist and a Engineer, and may not have cost as much per potion, people will spend the same amount on 5 potions that they will carry and have to try and balance out when to use them. And then think of the wipes that will ensue from choosing the wrong potion. Oops sorry for the wipe I clicked on Mana potion instead of Health potion and died.

Free Character moves

So I went to look into this for the guild of sorts. Seems Blizz has opened a number of servers for those who are hi pop but I looked into it further and it seems that most of the servers are hosted in.....Latin America! I mean why would I want to transfer to a server that is going to be populated by people who mostly speak spanish. Nothing against them since I can speak a smattering of it from being an MK in Honduras but I don't know enough to be able to find a group and do raids and stuff like that. Seems that Blizz is planning for an epic Fail with this one.

Wow Calendar

It seems that WoW has finally come up with an ingame calendar which was released with the 3.0 patch. While I find it understandable that we need one what I don't understand is what they were thinking when they came up with it. I mean why have the calendar character based? And why have the invitation system so difficult? Why oh Why didn't they look at the 2 major mods that were out there for calendars? I find the interface to be almost comical in how difficult it would actually be to use. All one has to do is look at GEM or Groupcalendar to see how it could be setup, and if they were to setup a database instead of using a channel for communication this would make things that much easier.

Ah well one step they made in the right direction was to have it possible to join and decline invitations using the wowarmory.com site.

/raise cup. Here's to Blizzard that they may pull their heads out of the sand and come up with a calendar that is easier to use.

System Requirements

Via Wow-insider I have found out that Blizzard has released the system requirements. Thankfully I don't have to worry too much because my machine hits the minimums and most of the recommended for it.

• PC:
  • Windows XP SP3 or Vista SP1 (Windows 2000 no longer supported)
  • Pentium 4 1.3 GHz or AMD Athlon XP 1.5 GHz (up from 800 MHz Intel/AMD). Dual-core recommended.
  • RAM: 512 MB/1 GB for Vista, doubled from previous. 1 GB/2 GB recommended.
  • Video: GPU with hardware transform and lighting and 32 MB VRAM, same as before. Recommended 128 MB VRAM.
• Mac:
  • Mac OS X 10.4.11 (10.3 no longer supported)
  • PowerPC G5 1.6 GHz or Intel Core Duo. Big change here: G4s are no longer supported. This one actually affects me, since I do have some G4 machines hanging around the house. Intel 1.8 GHz recommended.
  • RAM: 1 GB, up from 512 MB. 2 GB recommended.
  • Video: Hardware transform and lighting, 64 MB VRAM. On the face of it, this rules out the integrated graphics found on MacBooks and Mac Minis, but there's been no official word on it yet. 128 MB VRAM recommended.

Resto Spec to try.

Hoof n Healz switch'd to elemental to try it out and low behold I switch to resto so I don't have to pay quite as much for respeccing for instances. We are still taking down the mobs pretty easy and have been working our way through the quests. I probably won't switch back unless I have to start leveling on my own again. Maybe when I have to do some end game quests for the money but wait and see.

Things are running smoothly with the guild tho a number of people are anxious for the patch and the expansion. I can see myself standing outside yet at 1130 to pick up my copy and midnite, question is where will I be standing?

Resto Spec for now Resto.

Alive?

Yup still here. Just haven't had a lot of time to myself lately. Been workin hard on lvling my shammy and have him at 61 almost 62. By the end of the week we will be out of Hellfire and into Zangarmarsh.

Fishing is at 336 now and have been working in Zangarmarsh just outside of the Cenarian Circle area. Fishing is pretty good and I have sold my Blackened Sporefish on the AH for a decent amount. Keep a stack on me all the time to use while lvling. I have been getting a lot of spell dmg mail lately and am thinking of respeccing to Elemental to try it out. Might even go resto early but have to wait and see.

Did some reading and it seems that Blizz is talking about 3.0 coming out around the 14th. This coincides with what happened with BC in that they released the bridge about 30 days before BC hit the stands and the 14th is 30 days before Wrath hits the stores. I can actually picture myself standing outside of either Walmart or Gamestop to get my 2 copies of  Wrath so I can install it that night. One for myself and one for my wife.

Personal note only have about 2 months left til we have a bouncing baby on our hands again. Wife is getting anxious to be done with it but that is about normal I guess. She felt the same way when we had our first one.

OUTLANDS!

My Shaman moved into Outlands on Saturday I believe it was. We have started some quests and are working our way through slowly. Still 60 but with Brewfest goin on leveling has kinda stalled out. We have been doing the Brewfest quests every nite so far and have had each of the trinkets fall for the toons that need em. Warrior has the +block and my druid has the +heal. We also had the remote drop and one of our guildies got it. Had one person in the guild get the Kodo, surprisingly enough his fiance didn't slaughter him over winning it (she collects mounts.)

Goin into Kara tmoro with my mage and see how the other tanks work out along with our main pally healer and a well geared Tree.

Kara Down!! On to ZA?

Well just got done with my first full Kara clear with my Druid as healer. We managed to do it in about 5 hrs give or take a bit due to having to setup raid 3 times on different days. We got up to Opera on the first day, then Prince on the 2nd day and finished off Nightbane and Netherspite on the last day. I managed to pick up this nifty little neck piece, Shining Chain of the Afterworld and we had a number of drops for our first timers that went in too. I think we will have quite a few tanks that will be ready to work on Kara again but will be an uphill trip. Always frustrating when you have people drop away due to RL or wanting something different in game.

Release!

Hmm a few things to say for today. Blizzard released the date that Wrath is coming out which I am sure all of you know. November 13th 2008 will be a day that many a business will be shut down due to people taking the day off so that they can install LK and start leveling to 80. Hmm I wonder how long it will take? I remember seeing a Draenei Shaman at lvl 70 in IF by the end of the 2nd week after BC came out so can't imagine it will take all that long. And the DK's? Well they will probably have Northrend flooded with them before Sunday I imagine.

Onto a slightly personal note. The guild has been in a bit of a flux of late. Seems that I had 3 officers pull their mains out of the guild so that they could see End game content before November. This is really frustrating for me because I thought I could count on these guys. I thought they would be there to help the guild no matter what. I guess I thought they had the same feelings for the game as I did in that it isn't the content that you see it is who you see it with. For me personally it is all about having fun with my friends whether that is running Deadmines to help out a lowbie or getting into Kara to see if we can take down Netherspite( which I did for the first time last nite on my druid.) Sure I wouldn't mind seeing ZA and getting into SSC or TK but to be honest if I am not running with my friends and the people I have spent the last 2 yrs with it just isn't worth it.

The other frustrating part about this is they were officers and they want to come back when Wrath comes out. I have no problem with this but how do I treat them? Do reinstate them to the level they were before they left? Do I have them start from one of the low lvls and have them earn their way back up? Also a few of the other officers have alts that they have in the progression guilds as well. Do I treat these guys any differently? Always hard questions when you are the GM of a casual guild and have people who want more.

I guess I will just have to try and stay true to the basic rules that we have in the guild and since these people are spending more time in the other guilds they will then have to get bumped down to a lower rank. While I am sure I can call on them when the time comes for Wrath it will be a little harder to accept them in the leading roll since I will always wonder if they will do the exact same thing when they have reached 80 and want to get to see some of the content that we aren't capable of doing.

Also I hit 58 on my shaman along with my wife on her pally. We are going to stay in Vanilla until we hit 60 then move on to Outlands and work on quests there.

PTR live?

Looks like they opened the PTR now. At least as far as I can tell from my launcher it is open. Don't think I will start on it tho, will wait til it goes live and have some more time to work on my shaman with. GL to those who take advantage of it. :)

Fishing and Cooking

Hit level 55 with my Shaman last nite and ran Sunken Temple a few times, once to help people get some quests done and then after I got my quest from Western Plague Lands we went again with my wife and a few others. It was and interesting run and pretty quick since we had a 70 each time to help out. Interesting enough both times were Shamans one an Elemental and other was Enhanced. The Enhanced I think had an easier time with it since most of the dragon mobs were immune to Nature damage and Chain Lightning just didn't do the trick.

Side note decided to work on my fishing and cooking for once. I have never actually taken the time to level these up and surprisingly enough I don't mind doing it this time. Granted I am doing my cooking off the fish that I pick up but that is besides the point. Have found El's Extreme Anglin' - WoW Fishing Guide to be very helpful. If you are looking to level up your fishing check this out.

Also I am working with an addon called Talented and Talented Loader and would advise this for anyone who is running 2 or more different specs. Makes it less likely for you to make mistakes when speccing, also you can use it to experiment with specs without having to leave game and use a talent calculator. It hasn't been updated yet for Wrath but hope it will be.

Something to look forward to.

Came across this, courtesy of Wow Insider. Seems that when 3.0 hits the leveling from 60-70 will be much quicker due to Wrath's leveling being implemented. They will be decreasing needed xp for each level by 30% and each mobs xp will be increased by 20%. So all those like myself who are lvling up an alt should be able to get their toon ready for Wrath before it comes out.

Huzzah!!

Wordle :)

Anna from Too Many Annas put this up a while back and I also saw that a number of other bloggers have tried it out. Thought I would give it a whirl too. It comes from Wordle.

Badges of Justice=DKP

So I was doing some thinking at work the other day about ways that guilds use to get people to run instances that they don't need gear from anymore. Some use DKP and others use mandatory signups, which then got me thinking what if Blizzard came up with a way to do it. Then I realized that is what the Badge of Justice is for. What better way to get people to continue raiding than to give them a reward even if there are no official rewards in that instance for them? I hear of people who right about how they hate them but to be honest I think it is a great idea. This is a system that allows people to get "DKP" even when they are pugging and it keeps some of the non raiding guilds geared to go beyond what they technically are able to do.

Now there is one draw back. What happens when people have the best gear they can get from Badge gear and yet aren't getting into end game content? This is where people can get really bored with the game because they really don't have a challenge with the instances that they are running. I mean technically they are overgeared for anything they can run in terms of Kara or Heroics since the gear practically equals tier 6 items. I did some reading around through various other blogs and when the new items came out that you can get from the Isle are sometimes even better than some of the tier 6 gear. When a dps that is wearing T6 gear and running a heroic with a tank that is just in blue they really have to watch their aggro since they are way over powered. Or when you have a healer that is geared to the teeth they can easily get bored with the instance in that they hardly have to worry about heals.

So then is there a point for people to keep playing the toon that they love so much but are beginning to get bored with?

Haels FTW!!

Woot got to run my first instance as a resto shammy was real sweet. Went into ZF with a lvl 49 feral druid, 48 ret pally, 50 ice mage, 45 fury warrior and myself at 49. As we were getting ready for the instance we were looking for people from the guild and had everyone sign up except a healer so off I ran to IF to respec for 15g. Got respec'd with http://www.wowhead.com/?talent=hZZE0xtAcop0b and hearthed back to Gadge and headed into the instance. Had my lovely wife share the quests that she could with me and it was off to the races.

I was using grid along with the healing macro:

#showtooltip
/cast [target=mouseover, help][help][target=targettarget, help][target=player] Spellname

to cast my heals. I think I might put in there at /stopcasting to interrupt my casts incase I find I need something better. I was using this along with Grid which was just an easy UI to keep an eye on people's health bars and such. Also I love Nature's Swiftness for those OH Noes!! situations.

ZF is a lot easier now with the gimping from Blizzard but hey I can work with that. Was nice to be able to finish the whole thing in under 2 hrs with only 1 death.

The only thing I am trying figure out why I am getting some kinda lag spike. I think I will try running once without any addons and see if I still get the spikes or not.

Epic Fail

Went into Naxxramas tnite just to get an idea on how it is before Wrath comes out and was it miserable. We went in with 13 lvl 70s and a couple 6x. We went down the construct hallway and made it up to the 3rd room. The first 2 weren't too bad but that 3rd room just couldn't quite get the timing down so then we decided to move onto a different Old World Raid.

Went into Nax with my tank Skarrde, a feral tank and another tankadin who was having severe problems with being d/c'd all the time. Also only had 2 healers along, a lvl 70 holy paladin and a 70 Holy priest. They were pretty good at keeping up with the splash heals that we had along with keeping the tanks up. First pull was interesting but we managed to survive it and the next few were typical tank and spank pulls. Wasn't until we pulled the 3rd room that was full of slimes that we wiped. After the wipe we came back into the instance and managed to take down the room but had some big slimes spawn in the room that we were trying to rez and ended up wiping us. We get back take down the big slimes and low and behold the little guys had respawned, so back at it again and they wipe us out one more time. After we got back from that we questioned ourselves if we really had what it took to work this instance and decided better not. We then decided to run over to ZG and see if we could get the mounts off the 2 bosses in their. Took them down without any problem and had a few purples drop but nothing worth noting, and no the mounts did not drop.

In some ways I am a little frustrated that we gave up so early on Naxx and I honestly felt we could have worked something out but we were kinda limited in who showed up. Maybe if there had been enough people that were able to come we could have made some head way but we will never know. I know that not everyone in the guild really wanted to run that since it has nothing for them loot wise and they felt it was content that wasn't important. I also know that if it had been Gruul's or even Kara the same people would have asked to go again and again til we beat it even if we had been short a few people.

Maybe try MC or something next time. One other note, you can't summon people into Naxx who aren't attuned for it.

Naxx on Saturday :)

So the guild is going to be running Naxx comin up on Saturday. Lookin forward to a chance to do some farming with the guild of this Old World/New World instance. I wanted to get into it before the expansion just to see how it is for now and see if it changes after Wrath hits stores. So far we have 20 people signed up but may have a few more show up last minute depending on schedules, just one more problem with a casual guild.

Anyways been farming Strat:Undead for rep to get attuned for Naxx and I picked up the attunement with 1 nexus crystal and 2 arcane crystals. Had some interesting drops tho nothing to write home about, was nice to get back there and remember the old days. I remember when that was a 10 man raid that you could do, this was before they gimped it and then put in the 45 min run for upgrading your gear but ah well. That was also when BRD was a nice 10 man as well. Then again that was the days when there were no Greater Blessing either and as a pally you were constantly casting buffs on people that would last for 5 min at a time. That was the time when all pallies were wanted for was their buffbot ability, /shudder. Glad things have changed in that part for sure.

Also the new trailer for Wrath came out today here it is below, hope you enjoy. :)


Wrath of the Litch King Cinematic Intro HD from DrkSnpr14 on Vimeo.

WoW Insider: Defining mains and alts

So what does define a main and an alt? Is it the one you play the most or is it the one you started with? This is a tough question and can be different for each person as they play. For me personally I think it is the one that you enjoying playing the most. Your "main" can move from each of your toons in your arsenal since this is a game you should be playing the way you enjoy. The main thing people seem to forget is that this game is supposed to be enjoyable. I hear over and over about how people can't handle the pressure of having to fill roles, or aren't enjoying the characters they are playing or the spec they are playing. I have always had the stance in our guild that each person plays the character they enjoy the way they enjoy. I don't pay their $15/mo and neither does anyone else in the game so they shouldn't have to play the way that other people want them to play.

Now how does this affect the guild? As a guild we need certain people for runs, we need to have healers, tanks, ranged dps and melee dps. And if we want to take on some of the bigger mobs then we need to have a party that is geared for the target and can fill the roll necessary either through spec or through spell rotation. So what we need is people who are willing to fill those rolls and stick with those characters to help out the others who are looking to improve their gear. The biggest problemis trying to balance the desire of people to try something different and not sacrificing the gear that is necessary for some of the core people that are on the run. Now the advantage we have in our guild for this is that anyone who is on the run gets to roll for the gear. So if someone has a toon that is geared and ready for the instance and they have signed up for it then the loot that is for their spec is available to them. By this I mean you don't have a resto druid rolling against gear for a feral druid or a rogue.

So is there really a difference between a main and an alt in our guild? Not really, we have players in our guild and they decide if they want to take that character with them on a run.

Downranking=obsolete?

From reading through my various sources(elitistjerks.com, plusheal.com, toomanyanas.com) I have been noticing that quite a few Shamans will down rank their healing to conserve on mana for the fight. Seems that quite a few people found out that the HPS for Healing Wave rank 4 and Healing Wave rank 5 in reference to amount of mana used for it. Also quite a few people would spam rank 1 to get Healing Way to proc on the target since mana cost was low and and cast time was fast. But it seems that Blizzard has made that obsolete. I was reading throught Resto4life and came across this post about how they are making things a % instead of a base mana amount. This really doesn't pertain to my druid as I am always hitting with the highest rank heal that I can since LB only has rank 1 and the others I use to help out when things go south. But for the shaman it does kind of frustrate a person in knowing that the things people have studied for and worked around are now going out the window. In a sense it is like saying here take all your methods of healing and throw them out the window and start from scratch with it. I was thinking that maybe people would maybe go for the downrank for a faster heal but if you look at Lesser Healing Wave there is less mana used in this and only a 1.5 sec cast while Healing Wave Rank 1 still has the 32% mana used and the 1.5 sec cast time. Just looking at it the lesser is the way to go even if it is rank 9

Well just something to think about. :).

Shared Topic: If I Could Have A Class Flying Mount

Hmm would have to agree with Flameshock on this one for the shammies, Would be totally wicked to fly around on a bit of air as the mount. Then again would be cool to go as a lightning bolt as well, I seem to remember one of the latest books by David and Leigh Eddings that one of the gods in there uses a lightning bolt for getting around.

For Paladins it should be a pegasus to go with the warsteeds that they have been using as a theme. Go with different colors? Hmm would be nice to pick a black one out instead of the white but hey I am not too picky about it.

Druids already have theirs and I think that the form idea was the best way to go with it. Just wish I didn't have to come up with the 5k gold to get it.

With leveling my shaman right now I don't have a lot of income so the idea of paying for an epic mount is a little far fetched. Maybe when I get to 80 on all my toons I can finally settle on one that I can farm and make some money with. Just can't seem to generate enough due to getting bored with the grind.

A spork cousin. Why a spork?

So I showed my age a bit in game tnite. Was waiting on the dock for the boat in Theramore more when I saw a player with the guild name Death by spork. I proceeded to quote the line above which is a bit of an embellishment from the line in Robin Hood: Prince of Thieves. I think it went right over the guy's head because he didn't respond whatsoever.

On a positive note I made it to level 44 and trained up, also put my points into Stormstrike so now I can bonk them on their heads with both my maces at once woot. We also finished in Mudsprocket and are now looking to move into Badlands and work there for a while. I still have a number of green quests in STV that I need to take care of but will do it on my own time this weekend I think.

Some Theory Craft that I cam across in the the plusheal.com site, thought you might be interested in taking a look at it. Good work to RickO for putting it up there. Here is a link to the thread that he put up.

Too Cute!

Can't believe I just said that but after hearing about this pet on http://www.twistednether.net/ I felt it my duty to submit myself to the trials of doing a BG. Well I ran one with my wife and after being in there for about an hr we finally one and.....no luck. So will have to try again tomorrow.

On an RL note CZ to Micheal Phelps for getting his 3rd gold medal for the butterfly. Was watching NBC last nite and saw his relay team totally kick butt against the French and win it by a hair. I swear I saw the French guy's shoulders shaking like he was crying. While I may not be an American yet I still say keep up the good fight guys and hope you come home safe and sound.

Keep it Rollin Rollin Rollin

Keep on truckin thru the lvls, am now at 43 and finished most of the quests that come out of Theramore proper, on to Mudsprocket. :)

Also finished most of the quests from Southshore tho have to kill the Warmongers to finish it off there. Always nice to have the wife helping out and getting the quests done faster. With us bein partially AFK for family reunion last week there wasn't much leveling really going on on her part tho I got in a little playing. Trying to decide if I should bother with Uldaman this time around but hey can figure that out later.

Time for Bed. Later all.

Shared Topic Idea: What will I be Doing...

Blog Azeroth put up this shared topic and I thought I would run with it.

What is the first thing I will be doing when Wrath is made available? Hmm, first thing is going to Storm Wind and checking out the harbor then heading over Northrend from there and getting started leveling. I will probably stay restoratioin and try and the +spell gear that drops and see how that works, if it doesn't then I will try elemental and see how that goes so that I can switch back and forth easily. Main thing will be getting to 80. After I have my shaman leveled it will be my Druid, Paladin and then my mage if I have time. Will be interesting to see how it works out and am looking forward to exploring new areas, then again never explored all of the outlands or all of azeroth either.

Maybe I can center on one toon this time. :)

And Then there was Mail

Hit level 40 last nite and put my talent point into getting dual hand weapons. Totally against my nature to have to find slow weapons but hit the AH and picked up a 1 handed mace and have the axe that I had from Duskwood, its a little fast but work with what I have available to me, and I have never been one to spend a lot on stuff from AH until I hit lvl cap. Also upgraded to mail and finally got my chain heal. Totally looking forward to that when I am finally able to use it in a run, though at this rate it could be a few months. Still on course for hitting 70 before Wrath but will have to wait and see how it goes since wife is preggo and doesn't like to play much.

Macro= Woot

Tried out the macro on Thurs and lovin it. Still use Clique to do Purge on mobs and friends but I think I will use it along with Grid. Also came across this addon Quickhealth that I will add when I get back from vacation. Looks like it is better than Instant Health in that it won't cause problems with the WoW target of target, at least that is what the author claims.

Nothing New under the Sun.

Went into Kara on my Tankadin tnite and finished past Curator, of course nothing great dropped but hey got some badges. Played for about 30 min on my Shaman and got Grid+Clique setup for heals while in party. Also while going thru my forum roll I came across this macro and I plan on trying it out instead of clique.

#showtooltip
/cast [target=mouseover, help][help][target=targettarget, help][target=player] Spellname

Will get back to you as soon as I have tried it. Could be tomoro but have to wait and see if we find the 2 tanks and the healer we need for ZA.

Side note that I had to boo on because of how my Shaman will be healing. According to Wow Insider one of the things Bliz is toying with is call Potion Sickness. Seems this won't allow you to take a 2nd pot after you ahve takin your first in combat. So no chain chugging.

http://www.wowinsider.com/2008/07/29/azeroths-new-plague-potion-sickness/

SM Finished

Helped my sister and her husband out with Black Morass so they decided to help my wife and me with Scarlet Monastery. Picked up http://www.wowhead.com/?item=6830 and http://www.wowhead.com/?item=7756 which I will probably trade in once I hit 40 but these will do til something better comes along. Also hit 37 and just 3 more til mail and dual hand. Woot!

Well, What I never thought would happen was,

Been checking out Blog Azeroth lately and they came up with the above shared topic and it got me to thinking.

1. 25 man content.

While I haven't seen this on my shaman yet I have been through on my druid and had the pleasure of taking down Gruul. We as a guild are currently working on getting Mag down as well and may even look into going into SSC and see how we do. I have never been much of an end game content kind of person, probably the reason I have everyone of my character slots filled along with 3 70s, and so never really thought of getting far enough to get to 25 mans. Well that and never thought the guild would get big enough/geared enough to handle it.

2. Guild Size.

This goes along with the above but I never really thought we would get the Blooded Dragons to a point that they were "self-suficient" and geared enough to make it to 25 mans. When my wife and I started the guild on Uldaman it was more a place for people to get together who had the same idea of play and where they could let their kids play. Well it has become that and so much more, I never thought we would be breaking the 150 account mark, and we have blown that to 200, that are all together to have a safe enviroment to interact and play together.

3. Family in Game

Hmm well seeing as I have my wife 2 sisters, 2 brother in laws, and my mom in the game it kinda of surprised me that we could find an enviroment that we find so entertaining. While I have to give my one sister the credit of getting us into the game still I was able to get them all to be part of our guild. :)

New title

While the one I picked is pretty easy to work with would like to go for something a little more original. Think I will have to play around with some and see what I think.

Need Another Totem
Resto FTW

Hmm will come up with some more later.

Another Prelude courtesy of BananaShoulders

Wetlands to Northrend by Siha of Proudmoore from Siha of Proudmoore on Vimeo.

Half way there

Shazbot. Am on nites now which makes it a little more difficult for playing but managed to hit 35 before crashing this morning. Moved on to Theramore and did some of the new quests there, most of the running around ones at least. Having Water Walking is very handy in that area for cruising around to finish quests and get to the spot you need.

Just watch out for the sharks.

Build thus far.

SW gets a harbor?

Came across this in my blogroll and love the views.
Stormwind to Northrend by Siha of Proudmoore from Siha of Proudmoore on Vimeo.

Helps FTW

My significant other decided to come and help me with her Draenei Paladin. Once again we are working our way through the levels and have hit 33 for me and 34 for her. We just got done with Wetlands and Duskwood and are now trying to figure out where to go next. I am thinking it will be South Shore and Arathi then maybe over to Theramore and try leveling in that new area there. Loving the dps ability that shaman have and with her prot/ret things are going quite well.

Premise

I have wanted to start a blog in quite a while but hadn't really found anything that I was interested in. I have a level 70 tankadin but don't feel I know enough to add to the community, a level 70 frost mage but usually only use him to generate money for my toons thru dailies and a lvl 70 resto druid who I have enjoyed very much but pretty much follow what I feel like and read through various blogs. So here I am with something new for me.

What I am planning to do here is record my progress of leveling a Draenai shaman with the plans of setting him up as a healer at lvl 70 and then helping out with high level raids as I am able. I will be using this plan and leveling as enhanced until I hit 70 and then moving over to resto at that point.