Moramor's WoW

WoW and Windows 7

2009-10-22T22:25:00.002-04:00

Today Windows 7 became publicly available. I just wanted to say a few words about Windows 7 and WoW. Here it is- they work great together, perhaps even better then ever.

I've been running Windows XP on my main computer for many many years. I've been playing wow for over 3 years now and will say that they ran together well enough.

Recently I got my hands on the Windows 7's final release build. I've been using it for over a month now, and wow has never worked better and smoother with Windows 7. In addition, I specifically installed the 64 bit version of Windows 7 on my PC since I have AMD 64 Athlon ( finally taking advantage of the 64 bit architecture). Through all of this, wow works great, just as smooth if not smoother as it was under Windows XP.

Just remember - you don't have to reinstall wow when you install Windows 7. Just back the whole wow folder to another drive, then just copy it back and run wow - no installation hassle.

To Raid or not to Raid

2009-10-22T22:07:00.002-04:00

I haven't raided in a while, almost a month now. I've been busy with things in my life, and those things don't fit into the neat raiding schedule of my guild. And to a degree it's been OK. I've been just leveling my alliance toon on anouther server.

I think some of the reasoning behind it was also I did not enjoy the new Trial of the Crusader raid. I didn't get enough of a chance to raid Ulduar, and also present Ulduar runs are always falling on my school nights, so TotC became the raid to shoot for, but I don't like it. I like a bit more trash and scenery then just baam-waam type of boss killing. I guess I miss Nax, it was such an Experience. TotC is just boring.

By the way I think the 5 man Trial of the Champion is equaly boring. I think back to BC and the last 5 man there - Magisters Terrace - that was awesome. % man ToC is just epics farm.

Anouther one to Northrend and why I dropped Leatherworking.

2009-10-19T23:14:00.006-04:00

Well anouther toon reaches level 68, this time my shaman - Ruadia. She's off to Northrend. I first went to Houling Fjorge, got slautered a few times and then decided to go to Borean Tundra instead. So far did a few quests.

What I'm really working on right now is Mining and Jewelcrafting. Yes, I've droped my level 370 leatherworking and my 375 skinning. I did not find leatherworking that exiciting or reawarding in outlands. It was just a pain, and then I found market flooded with other leatherworking pieces other people were leveling with. Just not much market. When I leveled BlackSmithing on my paladin there

was tons of market for plate. Leather/Mail is just not the same :(

So I went back to level one of Mining/Jewelcrafting. And after a weekend of nonstop mining (pain) I got my mining over 300 and JC is at 285. Now the pain of mining in outlands.

One key i found when you get over 260 in JC is don't smelt all your thorium, keeping in ore and prospect it for gems.

Oh and here is a pic or two of me mining. Notice Khorium vein. I found three of them in low level zones withing 15 mins. Why is it you always find a rare vein when you can't mine it!.

Shaman in Outland

2009-10-12T15:10:00.000-04:00

Well Ruadia is running in Outland leveling as elemental. It's a change from my previous enchancement spec, but it's cool, although a bit blant. Lightning bolt lightning bolt etc.... I'm also working on my leatherworking, will see how much I like it.

Oh and i got the dual spec, and have healed a few instances. It's actually a lot of fun, and I get to use Chain heal, my favorite spell in all the world :D. About blue gear in outland all I got to say is - wow there are so many holes, I mean sockets LOL.

Enetering Outland!

2009-10-06T08:30:00.004-04:00

Entering Outland! Ruadia is 58 and ready to go to outland!

Running around with alliance

2009-10-06T08:16:00.004-04:00

I've started school, and with my crazy classes I don't feel like I have enough time to raid with my guild anymore. So I've been leveling my shaman on the alliance side. It's kind of quiet since I'm not part of any guild with my Ruadai.

Now as far as leveling Shamans, they become really fun once you get dual specking for enchancement. I leveled enchancement all the way to level 58 when I went to Outland. Here I switched to elemental and never looked back. I'd say both specs are fun and very powerful to DPS with. But elemental provided a nice switch to something different. The other big advantage of Outland is there is gear for every spec. In vanilla wow most of the gear you'll find would be more for enchancement spec.

Finally I've also picked up and leveled leather working to the level appropriate for the outland (300). So far so good. Although I have to learn what to make that sells well. Unlike my blacksmithing where almost everything sold, this one is a bit less certain. Still I think I'll be able to recuperate and make money even before northrend. Just to note I bought very few leather, most of the leather I used I saved up my self from skinning. Now the key is to make things people would want to buy.

TotC - No mistakes

2009-09-18T13:38:00.003-04:00

My guild is hitting the new raid instance TotC 10 man. I ran it once with my guild mates on my healer. What I found is that in this instance there is very little room for mistakes. Everything has to be precise. You've go to move out of the fire right away. You've got to jump on the tank spamming really big heals when the first beast boss is below 20%.

I found the cobolts to be very annoying and yet an interesting twist. Those little buggers not only through around the fire bombs, but they also jump on you and can spell lock you for a while - BAD for a healer. It's an interesting dynamic that DPS has to go now and knock them off you. Now if they through a fire bomb on you while other dps is knocking them down, you've tons of AOE damage for the raid.

I don't know, I think I would rather run Ulduar on 10 man or even 25 man then to do this TotC raid on 10 man. I think I miss trash :(, and Nax ( and Kara, but don't tell anyone about this one).

Some resent acomplishments

2009-08-31T11:55:00.003-04:00

Just an update on some of the resent acomplishments for Moralight, my main character a Healadin.

I've finally aquired the flying mount from the CoS timed run :D.

In Ulduar 10 with my guild I've gotten up to Hodir twice, killing him once so far, although we skipped Ignis the Furnace Master and The Assembly of Iron. I think the thinking behind my guild leaders is to get as further down as possible.

In Ulduar 25 we killed first boss with two towers up.

Pics coming soon (as soon as I get home)

Pawnage like us! LOL

2009-08-28T12:31:00.000-04:00

Tired tank wants to DPS

2009-08-28T09:18:00.002-04:00

I've decided to give up on tanking being my off spec. It seems that tanking is something you have to constantly do or you lose your skill. My recent tanking adventures with my paladin were disastrous. I would forget to put up the buff to increase my agro, mess up buttons etc... With more DPS being better and better geared, it's harder to keep agro.

So since I've not been tanking lately, only healing and playing with my alts my taking skills have been waining. So I've switched to retribution tree and now happily DPSing heroics and doing daily quests. Now the key is to build a dps set that is decent enough to do higher end raids. Tanking set is always easier simply because when doing raids there is a lot of tank gear for offspec once our tanks are geared. When it comes to DPS competition is much higher.

Still there is something very satisfying when you play with a melee class when your weapon hits and abilities hit with a cool sound and crit for tons of damage and your two shot a mob. Very satisfying! :)

Leveling Discipline Priest - Revisited

2009-08-13T14:50:00.001-04:00

Well it has been a month since I last wrote. I've been lazy, even though there are plenty of things to blog about that are going on in WoW. One thing I do want to note today is about leveling your priest with a Discipline spec.

My long forgotten Troll Priest - Holybush has been collecting dust at a ripe level 38 for a while. Since I'm only raiding with my paladin, and my dear warlock is gathering dust, it's time to focuson a new alt.

Having all those extra left over badges and tokens Holy bush got a whole 3 pieces of heirloom loot for him. The PVE shoulders, the PVE robe as well as the PVP mace. While it is nice to have the gear, I've also tried to go shadow at level 40 after getting there with a Discipline spec. Well after I played with the shadow for a while I went right back to the discipline. Here is why:

Mana, mana mana. Mana regeneration is so fast with Discipline, just remember to put three points into the Spirit Tap and you almost never need to drink. With shadow I was doing a lot of damage but had to drink all the time.

You don't get hit. The bauble is amazing. You almost never get hit or take damage. As appose to shadow where you get beat up but regenerate all your life by end of the fight.

Holy Fire - I love this spell! This is my second favorite spell in the game after the shammy'schain heal. I love how now it has lower cast time and can be gliphed to go along with the smite.

Holy Shadow combo - This is a very strong point, you don't maximize either one but you have both available. Around level 40 there are tons of mobs who knock you and prevent you from casting in the same school of magic for like 6 seconds ( eternity). So having both schools available helps.

Well I think this is all I can think of. I'm going to keep leveling discipline for now and will see how well it goes.

Of Paladins...

2009-05-15T16:44:00.006-04:00

I've been lately only playing with my paladin. Trying to heal and DPS as my pally, i found that it was much more enjoyable to heal then to DPS. It could be due to the fact that is so much easier to get healing gear (especially spell plate which noone wants) then to build a dps set. My dps in heroics and Nax on the bosses has been in 1000s range, compare that to the 3500 minimum on my lock, that just did not fly.

So after some thoght I've instead decided to give tanking a try as my "secondary spec". I still want to heal and that was my primary reason to level my pally. But since i got a bit of tanking gear accumulated from here and there, and there is always a shortage of tank or healer I'll be the perfect utility toon.

I've also used the renaming character service to rename Elirias to Moralight. I found that just like my paladin's name - Elirias was WoW generated, there are tons and tons of other paladins with names that start with El or AL. I found especially in pug raids it can be a nightmare try to figure our who's who when they refer to you in vent.

Finally, I am enjoying playing with pally's in general. I created a new pally toon a female draenei on my alliance server Terrokar, and I am really enjoying just running around and doing quests with the pally. I have to say it is clear to see why pally's are some of the most popular chars out there. They are tough to kill, easy to dps with, easy to level, and have three different specs they can bring to raid.

Updates to my neglected blog

2009-04-29T17:14:00.002-04:00

I just realized how long it has been since I've posted here. Last post I see talks about trying to use a holy spec to quest and heal. Well I'm happy to report that I've quested and healed my self to level 80 before 3.1 came out on my pally. The holy spec was a lot of fun to heal in instances, and also not back questing either. I would not recommend it now since with dueal specking you can have retributions, and blow mobs away when you quest. But if money is tight, you can definetelly quest as holly in Nothred especially when you run some instances and get some nice spell plate which noone will want anyways.

Elirias, my paladin is 80 now, and I'm healing level 80 instances as well as trying to heal heroics. While on Moramor, i've finally killed Saph and KT in Nax 25 this weekend, which was awesome!

I wonder when my guildies will start venturing into Ulduar, I hope soon :)

WoW porn - LOL

2009-04-02T15:13:00.003-04:00

Leveling as Holy Paladin in Nothrend - some ideas

2009-03-25T10:05:00.006-04:00

Well I'm back to the dilemma of wanting to heal instances in Northrend while I'm leveling, but not wanting to have a spec that does poor damage when I'm questing. Being Protection specked is awesome for grinding speed and completing quests where you just go to kill a bunch of mobs. But my heart still wants to heal :(. I tried a hybrid holy/retro build and did not like it at the end.

So the other night I downloaded the PTR and copied my paladin there. I then proceeded to respect into holy. I then went around killing mobs of my level to see my damage output. I tried it without using the exorcism since you can use it on all mobs now, not just the undead. Well after experimenting with different gear, that is trying the spell damage/intellect gear that I would use for healing, then trying my protection gear with the mace and shield. I finally found the best combination - I've put my prot/dps gear with a two handed weapon, and left a few pices to increase my intellect ( mostly rings and neck). And boom, there is a build you can level with.

Unlike all the other people who recommend for the holy build to rely on spell damage for the DPS, I say not so! It may be true for some great holly pally who is coming geared up epics from BC. I unfortunately only have the questing gear and stuff I can make with my Blacksmithing. So what i found is I don't need to buff my spell damage, it's going to be there automatically. If I add 600 spell damage the spell damaging spells will increase very slightly, but if I put my DPS gear with lots of strength and put my big two hand ax on, I got nice spell damage and a nice white damage from the ax. So it worked well on the PTR. I think today I'll try it on the life and see how well I can still quest with it. Here is the build I'll take, note that I'm putting 5 points into the strength talent so I can do more white damage.

Proposed holly build for questing/healing:

http://www.wowhead.com/?talent=sEA0x0zhVuzxRx0xZVd

Of Damnation and getting to Sapphirion on 25 man

2009-03-18T17:01:00.004-04:00

I wanted to mention some significant achievements for myself and my guild that happened past weekend. We finally cleared the Military quarter and completed all the others to unlock the Sapphirion on 25 man raid. I got the beatiful Damnation from the 4 horsemen. I have to admit that it was just a bit selfish for me to roll on it since it was a small upgrade from the Staff of Restraint. But it was the only piece I got from that run, and I had my eye on that staff for a long time and only two other people rolled on it.

The Damnation is a really cool staff, and presently is the second best two handler for a warlock in the game. Now there are a lot of people who will argue that one hander and an off hand is better then the two hander. And I agree with them foolheartedly. Unfortunately I still don't have a better combination for the one hand/off hand that is better then this staff. Presently my best combo is Blade of Dormant Memories and Ward of the Violet Citadel. Which I do use when I switch gear for the Sapphirion fight and need more hit. For now just run around with this awesome staff. Pics coming soon by the way.

My Pally is 70 and he's roaming in Nothrend

2009-03-16T15:31:00.003-04:00

Well Elirias is 70 and happily continuing to level in Borean Tundra in Northrend. I've remained specked into the protection tree, after trying a retro/holy build. I still like taking a hole bunch of mobs down at the same time.

I've also leveled up my Blackminthing quickly to make the items for level 70 out of the new cobalt sets. They look pretty good and have some nice stamina, strength and defense stats, which are exactly what I'm looking for for my protection spec.

In addition, all the plate pieces I've been making as well as weapons from adamantine and cobalt have been selling quite well at a good premium at the AH. I guess death knights and other plate weathers keep buying them, which is great and will pay for the huge money sink blacksmithing was to get it to 300. It also helps that both adamantine and cobalt were all mined by Moramor and stored in the bank, so I did not have to buy them off the AH.

I've also try to tank by tanking the Utgrade Keep with a PUG group. That went a bit rocky because our healer was a druid, and even though he was healing specked, i don't belive he knew well how to heal. Specifically any burst damage was the end of me. I do have to say that it is quite a lot of work to tank, and I think at 80 I will try to heal instead.

Level 80 Quests and heroics

2009-03-05T14:34:00.005-05:00

I've been doing some of the Level 78-80 quests, including finishing up my Sons of Hodir chain quets. I also ran some Heroics with my guildies, which was fun and quick. What I'm fininding and quite to my surprise is that you can get pretty well geared by doing those two things to get you ready for raiding.

Since I've had a lot of rest experience, and combine that with a lot of dailies I did while leveling, I got to 80 without doing a lot of the higher end quests. So most of my gearing came from crafting and raiding. My guild was already in full swing with the raids, so it made sense to do that. On the other hand if you got your character who is not part of a raiding guild or if it's an a lot who's not allowed in many guild runs, do the quests. There is some great gear, and you work on your rep (and cash) at the same time.

Also run the heroics. A lot of my initial gear came from there, and a lot of that gear can even compare to some of the gear you get in Nax and OS, especially if it is 10 man versions. In addition you get badges to buy better gear. Example, the other day I got two pieces of gear that were small upgrades for me, while running heroics. Now while small upgrades (a wand and a ring), they were upgrades nonetheless, and I've got most of my gear coming from 25 man raids.

Music Box - LOL

2009-02-27T16:55:00.002-05:00

WoW or Girlfriend?

2009-02-07T13:14:00.002-05:00

Playing with your Warlock's DPS

2009-02-06T15:57:00.004-05:00

I've always loved theorizing with gear and dps options on my lock. I spent countless hours comparing gear and stat choices. And the best tool for that is a Warlock DPS Spreadsheet developed by Leulier. The link to his site is - http://www.leulier.com. This amazing spreadsheet along with the Lootrank.com and the ElitistJerks forums are the best tools for maximizing your DPS and gear choices.

But I digress. The reason I love to play wit this spreadsheet so much is because it is so convenient and comprehensive. You can input you gear and talent builds and then you can play around with all the different option as far as buffs, changing talents changing gear etc. And as soon as you make a change you get a DPS number update. So it is an amazing tool to see how much dps you will get if you make a gear or talent choice. For example, on the ElitistJerks forum there is a great post for Affliction Warlocks - Dots and You. And it has great high level gear upgrades. However, how do these upgrades relate to you?

When it comes to upgrades that drop in the raid and few others want, there is no brainer, you take them and you use them. But what if you decide if you should get some piece of gear with your hard earned badges or PVP honor points. Will the upgrade be worth it? It seems that the item you going to get is better then the one you have now, but how much DPS will you get out of it. Well use the spreadsheet, and boom if it's only 10 points of extra dps them maybe you should save badges and wait for a better drop, but if it's 60 or 80 dps upgrade, then maybe you should buy that piece.

You can also keep a lot of the higher level gear and then compare different combination. Maybe a piece that before only gave you a small upgrade because you needed more hit, and another piece gave you a lot of hit in that place. Well now you got plenty of hit, and this piece you saved can actually give you more dps. This is also a great tool to see how re-gemming will change your dps and stats. So use and abuse this spreadsheet!

One more quick note, the spreadsheet now has amazing feature to pull your talent build and gear right from armory. This is a recent update that makes this spreadsheet better then ever!

Death Knight Frenzy

2009-02-05T08:17:00.004-05:00

I finally completed the starting zone for Death Knights and have my freshly minted Death Knight ready to hit the Outlands.

I do have to say that the quests in the starting zone are excellent. They are fun, give you lore, teach you how to play your new toon and give you awesome gear as rewards.

In fact I see now why so many people created and play with the Death Knights. You get a character who is ready to hit Outlands in full blue level gear with trinkets and sigil complete. Compare that to starting anouther character class, and drudging through 58 levels, scrapping for gear and time, it's no brainier.

My paladin which is also now in Outlands, had really hard time getting any decent gear until he went to outlands. I did not level blacksmithing on him untill the last few levels before outlands, and thus most of hte gear he had was quest gear and maybe some other stuff I found on AH.

All in all, I enjoyed playing with the death knight. A very fun and strong class. I crated my DK on a different server from the rest of my Horde characters. I wanted to have a high level Allies toon, so I made my DK a Drieni. I think she looks pretty cool :). If I like her too much I may just stick to playing with her instead of my paladin :). Or I may create anouther deathknight for the Horde on my regular server.

Moving Blog to a new host

2009-02-03T15:45:00.004-05:00

I'm moving this blog to Blogger.com. I don't feel like paying for the annual hosting with my old provider. So I've kept the domain and moved the blog here. Hopefully it will work out OK.

I hope you like the new theme too, although it may change. Right now working to redirect www.moramorswow.com to here. It's a bit of a challenge.

Pally in Outland

2009-01-28T10:20:00.000-05:00

Well I keep wanting to write something and post a pic of my characters, but as usual i don't write at home where my pics are, and I don't have pics at work where I usually write my posts. So pics can wait I guess.

My paladin is now 61, and happily questing in Outland. I kept him protection, and I love it to no extent. The new spell that is just awesome is Hammer of the Righteous. Armed with that, and the gear upgrades that you get from some of the first quests in Outland, I can take on 5-7 mobs on a time, and they all dead in seconds. If mobs are undead or demons - of which there are plenty here - things go down even faster. So in shorts questing and leveling here for a protection pally is quick, painless and fun.

I've also slowed down and actually read all the quests. Originally, when I level my lock through Outland I felt it was too quick, and I would rarely read quests completely. With my pally there is no rush. I will quests as quickly and efficiently as possible, but I will also take my time to read quest, and perhaps complete some of the quest lines to the end.

Anouther big achievement is getting my Blacksmithing to 300. That was quite a quest. The amount of materials you need to squeeze the last 40 levels of Balcksmithing is amazing. On top of it the fact that ore is now so scarse! It seems all the newly minted Death Knights are all doing something related to ore - black smithing, engineering or jewelcrafting. The places where I would usually be able to mine Thorium and Mithril are now swamped with death knights running around and ninjaing your nodes right from under your nose.

Here are some extra tips I've learned in blacksmithing. When it gets really expencive to make things to get points, make things that are orange. Because it realy sucks when you make something that is yellow skillup color and it reaquired a bit of mats, and it gives you no points. So what's the risk there? Well at some point I was really upset because i crated 8 mithrill pants and got no skill up! That was about 100 mithril bars! So from then on I started to make things that were orange, even if they were alot more mats, at least I knew exactly how much it's going to cost me to make things for each point.

New PVP gear with Wintergrasp Mark

2009-01-21T13:45:00.000-05:00

Well, 3.08 patch is upon us. Besides some of the tweaks in the patch that's going to make my warlock life more enjoyable (can someone say a summoning stone for those lazy guildies?), and make my tailoring a bit cheaper, there was waiting for the WIntergrasp Gear. Sad part is that Wintergrasp itself got a bug in the patch :(

You see, I've spotted this gear on www.lootrank.com a long time ago. There was a helm and boots that were really nice. It's just they were not available in the game yet. The data was from the Test realms. Meanwhile I've been saving my marks from Wintergrasp and crossing my fingers.

The two pieces that caught my eye, the boots and the head pieces come in two varieties - one has hit and the other has haste. Here are the Cloth pieces:

Titan-forged Slippers of Dominance

Titan-forged Slippers of Salvation

Titan-forged Hood of Salvation

Titan-forged Hood of Dominance

The head piece costs 40 winterspring marks, which is pricey. On the other hand boots are only 15 marks. And I badly needed to upgrade my Leiah's Footpads.

I took the boots with the hit Titan-forged Slippers of Dominance, put a nice hit gem into them and I'm now happy about my boot gear. My next prize is the head piece.

I really like these pieces and the fact that you get them with just the Marks from Wintergrasp. I always try to participate in the battle because i find it fun. This reward, which I picked up for my raiding gear, will stay for a while with me as my PVP pices even when I get better boots in raids. So it's something that will go a long way.

Here is a link to the all of the Titan-Forged gear on wowhead:

http://www.wowhead.com/?search=titan+forged#items:0+12+1

Catching up and moving forward.

2009-01-08T16:01:00.000-05:00

To my readers, I am planning to complete the getting my lock to raid at 80 series and will create the part 3 with all the trinkets, rings and etc.

Meanwhile I've been raiding a bit with my guild in Nax, although I've been so far very unlucky with drops. I know that this will change! :)

Also my paladin has hit 50 and I've began to grind in the Western Plagelands. Grinding undead as a paladin is amazing. I can pull 7 or 8 at a time and soon after they are all dead. I've even went to AOE grind undead of 3 levels above me and it was a very pleasurable and rewarding experience.

I've also done a few quests in Azshara. There is a very simple quest you get to pick up four tablets in one area and then deliver three of them into three capitals and fourth to an NPC in Azshara. This is a very rewarding quest since it gave 5k+ experience for the three NPCs that I delivered the tablets, and each NPC in turn gave me a thank you letter to deliver back to the quest originator. Each letter was an additional 5k+ experience. I've never quested before in that zone, and that was a fun and productive quest.

One of the other though that have been spinning in my mind was to pick up a new profession. I have not been using or leveling my engineering for a long time. I've decided to drop it as I don't see any rewards that I like in the endgame. My thoughts were spinning around getting Black Smithing or Jewel Crafting. I gave though to both. They have their own positives.

Jewel Crafting will allow me to get those really nice JC only gems. It is also a service profession where you make pretty consumable things.
Black Smithing would let me have additional sockets, which for a healer or a tank is great.

I finally decided to just save my ore for now and see what future recipes will bring. For now I've picked up skinning, and will continue to save all the ore and gems I mine.

Getting My Lock ready to Raid at 80 part 2

2008-12-30T14:48:00.000-05:00

Well continuing my previous post Getting My Lock ready to Raid at 80 an lets cover some of the other pieces of gear and weaponry.

Just a quick note. You may have items from BC that you got from heroics/dungeons/pvp. Those items may be superior to these if they have lots of sockets and you can gem them right. So always compare and shot around. And don't vendor gear until you are certain that it is inferior to something else.

Shoulders:

Frostsavage Shoulders - Part of the base cloth PVP set this easiest and by far a nice piece. These are tailored and if you're not a tailor most of tailors will be happy to make these for you to get a skill up.

Mantle of the Flesh Giant and Mantle of Thwarted Evil are two pieces you can get from questing.

Mantle of the Underhalls - This is a bit weak on stamina, however it has +hit and a socket. You can get this from a quest.

Runecaster's Mantle and Dark Runic Mantle may drop in dungeons off the trash mobs, or they may drop from the friendly auctioneer, since they are not BoP. These are superior to all the others i listed since they are nice and have a socket. However they may be too expensive or unattainable.

Exquisite Sunderseer Mantle and Tattered Dreadmist Mantle two heirloom items. One bought with Stone Keeper's shards or Emblems of Heroism. If you can splurge these are nice because they can pass on to other toons once you get something better.

There are numerous other shoulders that are similar to the ones listed that drop in regular and heroic versions of Level 80 dungeons.

Wrists:

I'll start off with the two easy ones that are not brainers, and go up to the more challenging ones.

Frostsavage Bracers and Black Duskweave Wristwraps are two craftable pieces and are both nice. I would go for the Frostsavage Bracers simply because i will use them when PVPing.

Ancestral Sinew Wristguards - requires reveared with the Wyrmrest Accord. Hopefully you've done all the quests related to the dragons and are also doing the daily. So should not be too hard to get the rep. These are nice and have a socket.

Wraps of the Astral Traveler has hit on it. So nice pieces. Heroics may just pay off.

Verdisa's Cuffs of Dreaming and Azure Cloth Bindings are great, but drop from heroics. I actually got the Azure Cloth Bindings in one of the runs.

Feet:

When it comes to feet there are tons of options as well. Many heroics have nice cloth feet gear. I'm going to list some of the non heroic pieces you can get:

Sandals of Crimson Fury - Here is anouther rep reward from Wyrmrest Acccord. You have to be revered. So get to those dailies and wear that tabard.

Silky Iceshard Boots and Frostsavage Boots are two craftable pieces. Although I would lean towards the Frostsavage Boots for more atractive stats, cheaper mats and more usage.

I still have my Boots of Incantations from BC and also Frozen Shadoweave Boots in the bank. Both could be used until you can get something better. Just use uncommon gems.

Leiah's Footpads - is the final piece I'll mention. This is from a quest. As you can see though it got some nice hit rating and a red socket.

One Hand Weapon:

Well I think I can leave off some of the gear for the final article. For now let's talk about the one hand weapon.

Flameheart Spell Scalpel - this is the piece I'm working towards right now. It's got lots of spell power, and hit. You need to be Revered wit the Dalaran faction. Very, very nice :).

Ritualist's Bloodletter - this is a nice quest reward and got good hit on it.

Cursed Lich Blade and Netherbreath Spellblade drop from heroics. Good pieces, but no hit thouhg :(.

Jeweled Coronation Sword - Non heroic Utgarde Pinnacle, not a bad piece either.

Off-Hand:

One hand weapon is never complete by itself. It need's it's other half, the off hand.

Ward of the Violet Citadel and Handbook of Obscure Remedies are bought with Emblems of Heroism. Ward of the Violet Citadel is my preference with all that nice hit.

Iron-bound Tome and Faces of Doom- are Inscription made and are BoP so you can buy them off someone else.

Bonecaster's Endgame and Lantern of Enchanted Flame are quest rewards. There are numerous others that are less appealing that are also quest rewards.

Fetish of the Primal Gods - my favorite from BC. If you got this still or got some Badges of Justice, this is still a great piece.

There are plenty of nice off hand pieces in Level 80 dungeons both heroic and non heroic, so you may get something in between as well. I'll be saving my badges to get Ward of the Violet Citadel

Well this is it for now. In the final article we'll cover the remaining pieces and will get your and my warlock ready for raiding.

Blinded by Light Video

2008-12-30T09:57:00.000-05:00

I saw this on wowhead.com, great video. Want to make you play a rogue :).

The Craft of War: BLIND from percula on Vimeo.

Getting My Lock ready to Raid at 80 part 1

2008-12-29T16:35:00.000-05:00

Well I've hit level 80 over Christmas. It was a great achievement. Now I can begin raiding and doing heroics. Some of my favorite things to do in WoW, especially with my guild.

First and the most important thing though is gear. The guild may be ready to do Nax, but I may not be. My philosophy on gear is:

Get things that are not too valuable, since they will be replaced. Don't overspend on gear that may be replaced on the first drop in that heroic/first raid run.

Get gemmed and enchanted, but once again don't go overboard, you will replace things. Go for the cheaper versions for starting gear.

Get as close to your Hit Cap as possible - with three points into talents into destro and affliction hit talents you need 365 Hit to be hitcapped. Who cares how much spell power you have if your Dots are not landing where they supposed to and your shadowbolts are flying off to the side.

Balance your gear. I don't believe glass cannon locks. You're mana should be OK to cast a few things, your stamina should give you enough points to life tap occasionally and also to survive a tough fight or pull where healer may be overtaxed. A lock is not a mage, and thus should not be bust damage then dead (no offense to our mage counterparts I hope).

I will start off with some easy items that I found so far and like. Please note this is not an extensive list, and far from the "best list". Any suggestions are helpful. Also please not that this is the starting to raid gear set. All of things here are coming from easy rep, quests and tailoring ( which is no longer BOP). Although I would not buy expensive tailoring pieces if you're not a tailor.

So this is also a cheat sheet for me of things to get -

Head:

Hat of Wintry Doom - I really like this piece. It has a lot of spell hit which is great! A meta socket and a red socket. Non meta socket can get a + spell gem, a + spell/hit gem or a + hit gem. The bonus is not too impressive for a lock so use any gem that is needed.

The Argent Skullcap - This piece is also nice. I got it from a quest, and it's sitting in the bank. No gem slots though, so less DPS. But nice hit.

Mildred's Cowl - This is an OK piece from a quest. No intellect, but good stamina, and a gem slot. DPS is good and lots of Hit.

Frostsavage Cowl - Final piece. Tailored and is OK for dps. No sockets though and no hit, so last choice.

Chest:

Ebonweave Robe - This is the goal if you have tailoring. Nice stats, great DPS and lots of Hit.

Robes of Lightning - This is a nice piece. I am planning to get that before Ebonweave Robe, since Ebonweave takes some days to make. Nice hit ans spell damage as well as stats.

Water-Drenched Robe - This drops in Heroic Violet hold and is a great piece if you're lucky to get it.

Frostsavage Robe - This is a nice alternative that's easy to get, but no spell hit.

Turtle-Minders Robe - This is a final piece I'm going to mention. Easy rep from the Kalu'ak. A lower spell power, but a nice hit rating. May start you off in the right direction.

Legs:

There are a lot of great great legs that drop in heroics. I'm will mention some of them last simply because it is more time consuming to run a heroic, then a non heroic. Although if you need rep, heroics are the best way to gain it while you're wearing an appropriate tabard. So first I'll list easier things to get:

Trousers of the Arakkoa - I got these in the regular Violet hold. I think Violet hold overall is a great instance. It's not too difficult to master, it's quick and great loot for casters drops there in both regular and heroic. These are nice because of the DPS and a socket. Also you can get these early.

Frostsavage Leggings - Tailored, base PVP leggings, which also got nice dps stats.

Leggings of the Frozen Wastes - Quest pants. Got a socket to put in that dps or a hit gem.

Black Duskweave Leggings - alternative tailor crafted.

Leggings of the Ruins Dweller or Breeches of the Caller are both from heroics and got two sockets in them. The heroics are the easier ones so these are more accessible.

Two hand weapon:

Chilly Slobberknocker - I like this staff. I got it from doing the new "Ring of Blood" quest line available from the Amphitheater of Anguish in Zul'Drak. This piece got 50 hit on it and nice spell power. Enchant with a decent +spell power ( not the most expensive, remember you'll replace it), and it's ready for raiding.

Tower of the Infinite Mind - a bit weak on DPS, but got some hit on it. Quest reward though.

Staff of Redeemed Souls - also a quest rewards. Weak DPS, but got a socket for extra DPS or Hit.

Stave of Youthful Sorrow - OK DPS staff from a quest.

There are also plenty of staffs that drop from heroics. However, none of them I see have any hit, so Chilly Slobberknocker is still my favorite out of the two handers.

You can also go for Grand Staff of Jordan if you got enough Stone Keeper Shards. And this one will not go to waist its bind to account - pass it on! :)

Well enough for this post. Next post we'll take care of other gear pieces. I will aslo tell you the one hander that I'm working towards. It's awsome! Check it out - Getting My Lock ready to Raid at 80 part 2

Power of a Goal

2008-12-24T14:01:00.000-05:00

I've always read in many books that setting goals will drive you to achieve better and faster. Here is an interesting true story on having a burning goal. -

This happened in wintergrasp. My first time there. I'm runnig around exploring when I notice saronite nodes here and there. Mind you this is the first time i mined saronite. Even then my mining was in the upper 430's from mining the cobalt. So i am just running around and my mining is at 442. Suddenly I run into a Titanium node. My thoughts - OH MY GOD! I run up to mine it only to find out that I'm too low, need 450 mining. I panic, then I decide to quickly run around and mine the saronite nodes, I only need 8.

So I'm running around, and getting the saronite. There is tons of it in that zone. And guess what, I fin anouther node of Titanium. OH MY GOD. So I pray pray noone ( especially some alliance toon) will find it before I get to 450.

Well to make the longs torry short, I did not get the titanium nodes :(. I got to 450 and right at that moment anouther horde player got to them. I walked away from there with 450 mning though, and 3 stacks of saronite.

Almost 80

2008-12-24T13:55:00.000-05:00

Well my warlock is almost 80. Can't wait to get there. Not because I want to rush to 80 but simply most of my guild mates are at 80 and are constantly running heroics and beginning to raid. I really enjoy running instances with my guild and thus feel left out. So I will focus on doing quests and focusing on leveling that last level ASAP. Then i can slow down and continue doing quests to get more lore and help my reputations.

I really enjoy questing in Northrend. The quests are beautifully tied into the lore that you get to explore. Plus the mechanics of operating machines, guns, flying dragons etc are really cool. My next toon to get into Northrend will start off in the other entry level zone so I can do all the quests there.

As far as my other two favorite alts, my AOE mage and paladin, I also want to get back to play them. I think my goal is to get my mage to 50 so that I can level my enchanting for DE purposes. Then I will work on the paladin. I do want to havea healer class in end game. However, I did get tired oh my druid, who is now 49. Druid healer was my original goal, but I think i might go with a paladin instead. I love AOE grinding and questing. It's just too much fun to pass up.

AOE and your Alts Part 2

2008-12-15T10:16:00.000-05:00

This is a follow up post to my previous entry regarding AOE and your Alts. I've been AOE grinding with my frost mage and my protection paladin, and all I have to say is that AOE grinding is better then ever. The Frost Mage is a lot of fun with the fact that Blizard now crits. With correct talent (here is the talent build I am using), and the glyph that allows for extra damage to the MOB before they break out of frost nova, that blizzard will crit quite a few times. In fact looking at some videos from the past of a mage a bout my level (mid 40s) grinding with AOE and Blizzard I can say that my blizzard does double if not triple damage now, thus killing the MOBs on the second wave.

Paladins are even in a better situation. It is easier to manage seals and judgements, and do additional DPS. Plus the change to Blessing of Sanctuary to move it from DPS to mana regenaration is great, I no longer run out of mana while I'm AOE grindnign and can use more DPS abilities that relie on mana. Here is my build for paladin.

AOE and your alts

2008-12-09T17:17:00.000-05:00

The conventional wisdom with all the recent patches is that it's much more productive to quest then to grind. Even when it comes to AOE grinds, it's still better to just do the quest. Perhaps that is true. But what if you have an alt who you just use to DE things. He's level 44 and you don't feel like doing quests which you've already done recently with two other alts.
Well if he's a mage, why not AOE grind. I've tried this with my mage when I was in my level 20's. At that point I did not like it at all. In fact I hated the whole frost things. Now at 44 and with tons and tons of rested XP, why not AOE a bit now and then and get to level 50, while I keep leveling my main through the Northrend, and take my time there to enjoy the quests.

So I've specked my mage frost AOE, and some initial AOEing proved to be quite fun. It's soooo nice to have the ice barrier. Before it, it was always a very close call when I did AOE. Now it's much more practical and safer. I will tweak the spec tonight, and will do some more murlock killing.

At the same time, it gives me an idea to about my other alts. My paladin can also gain a few levels this way. In fact he was my first AOE successful experiement, I leveled him and did most of the questing using a proteciton spec. My biggest question is can I do the same with my druid. I've read some posts, and it may be possible to grind him as AOE. I should try feral, and balance perhaps to see which is more viable.

New Nyhm video

2008-11-18T11:07:00.000-05:00

I've got my Wrath!

2008-11-13T12:06:00.000-05:00

Well, Amazon got it right, I've got my Wrath of the Lich King Collectors Edition today. Can't wait to get home and play! :D

Wrath comes out tomorow

2008-11-12T23:42:00.000-05:00

Well, it's been a rocky week for WoW. After all the issues with the servers, they all died after maintenance and pretty much were out for the whole day on 11/11/08. Sad, but true.

Wrath is out tomorow. I'm crossing my fingures it will be smooth playing. I ordered a collectors edition from Amazon.com and I'm praying I get it tomorow :D!

Wrath is out in a couple of days!

2008-11-10T12:06:00.000-05:00

I can't wait for Thursday to be here. Wrath is coming out and I'm very exited to begin leveling my main in the new zone. I've had the beta key for quite a while, but I've avoided playing the starter zones with the copy of my main - Moramor. Instead I've experimented with the Blizzard premade level 80 copies. So I've purposely missed all the content in the begging of Northrend to enjoy it better when expansion comes out.
For now, I've been doing a bit of raiding with the guild. We've downed first three bosses in Mt. Hijal, that was fun. I've also been leveling my druid a bit. I just enjoy playing with him. He's also has inscription that I'm leveling along with him. I've been also trying to get rid of all of my stuff I've been hoarding in my banks. So far so good. The only thing I can't to be able to get rid of is the spell cloth. Nobody wants it. Primal mooncloth went well, and I'm making the 28 slot soulshard bags from the shadowweave cloth and they are selling as well.

Inscription prices are dropping like the Stock Market. Now that there are tons of people who do inscription, there are too many glyphs in the market. The herb prices are still high though since demand for them is now easing up at this point. If you want to have a good bundle of cash for the Wrath, drop one of your professions and pick up herbalism and just leveling it to max. All the herbs you gather in the process will make you rich.

As far as my copy of Wrath, i've ordered a collector's edition from Amazon.com. It should be delivered on the release day. I hope it is, since I took the next day off, and would have to drive to work to pick it up if it comes late. Cross my fingers :D.

Affliction Lock's tips for Zul'Aman

2008-11-05T12:23:00.000-05:00

The wrath of the Leach King is only a week away (I'm very exited). Meanwhile, since all the raid bosses got really nerfed in the patch 3.02 my guild has been running ZA in the way we've ran Kara before - like all the time :D. I've so far completed ZA 3 times. Here are some tips I can give to others in regards to things I've learned. Most of these things are beyond the basic strategy, and will be more specific to warlocks and perhaps other spell ranged DPS:

Soulstone the healer/rezzer. Now that druids can ressurect SS one since he/she can battle res someone else. Keep the SS up. It's a simple advice, but easily overlooked especially when you're running the timed event.

Get the Deadly Boss Mods or some other raid boss add on. The eagle boss' (Akil'zon) storm is harder to spot now, so if you have DBM you're less likely wipe.

I still find Imp the best bet to run with as Affliction Lock. Extra Stamina is always welcome.

On the dragonhawk boss (Jan'alai) - whatch the bombs. The main thing is to survive this fight. Drain life him when he hits you with his fire breath. Obviously if he hits you with the fire breath run out, don't just stand there and take it. Healers will be busy keeping tanks up or drain life him when you can, and death coil for the extra life. When you AOE the hatchlings wait till the tank has some agro. Although the hatchlings got really nerfed and now go down with a couple of SoC. ( that is realy good, cause i use to die alot by pulling agro when I AOE the hatchlings)

Once again on the dragonhawk boss, whatch the bombs. Stop DPS for a sec and focus on avoiding them. You can't do any dps if you're dead.

On the Lynx boss( Hallazi) , make sure you've got a macro to target the totem( will post macro when I get home). Taking out the totem has got to be your #1 priority, since it will wipe everyone if it's not down. Keep hitting the macro to target the totem, if totem not on, it will keep targeting the boss.

Hex Lord is probably the toughest fight. If there is an elemental keep it banished either until people are ready for it or until Hex Lord is down, it's up to your group as far as the preference. Also put up the curse of elements first on the elemental and then banish. That way it's less likely to resist. If you can also though a curse of elements on anything that is getting sheeped, mage will love you for it.

The new wow interface allows you to have a visual for your focus target. This is great, as before you could not. I prefer x-pearl since I can make the debuffs look big and with seconds countdown. You don't need a complex focus banish macro as long as you put the elemental on focus before fight starts and click on your focus frame when you're ready to re-banish.

If you have a priest in the group ask for shadow protection, it will help! If you got a pally, ask for the concentration aura. And remember to use you're shadow ward. It's a huge help during the spirit bolts. It will finish it's cool down before every spirit bolts attach ( which i think is every 45 sec), so you will help your healers a lot if you pop it every time spirit bolts begin to rain on you.

If possible, place a couple of dots on the hex lord to take down some of his health while you're still dealing with adds. I would not recomend the CoD since it may pull aggro.

Zul'Jin is not a dificult fight, and the main thing to remember as a Lock especially if you're affliction is don't use you're instant cast spells during the eagle phase. During the eagle phase you get hit 1000 damage everytime you cast a spell, so if you cast 5 or 6 DoTs you're gonna die very quickly especially if the AOE hits you ar the same time. Use you're long casting spells, shadow bolts, haunt, and even ( oh my god!) soul fire. I think this was the first time in the game where I actually used soul fire.

The big casting spell goes for all the other casters. Druid cast moonfire, Mages cast firebolts or even preblast. Go with the longer casting spells with highest coeficients.

So there you go. Some of my personal tips for your ZA runs. Have fun, and hope you get the drop you want.

WoW players reflection on Warhammer online

2008-10-28T15:07:00.000-04:00

I'd like to write a few words regarding my opinion of Warhammer online. I've purchased the game last month, and played it for about two weeks. There are many things I liked and some things I did not like.

Here are some things worth mentioning:

Public quests - this was a very cool idea. You get into an area, most likely because another quest sent you there and suddenly you're killing of monsters is contributing the the overall quest goal. Everyone in that area contributes to that goal, without needing to be in the group. There are stages, where the last stage is usually a boss that needs to be put down by at least 5-7 players. Everyone participating gets to roll for the loot, with the once who participated more will then get a bonus added to the roll before final numbers are determined. This is alot of fun when there are alot of people in the area. However, if there are no other people in that area during that time, or you're playing off peak hours, these quests are undoable by your self.

Achievements - something that wow picked up successfully now. However, i think achievements are much more fun as a new player, rather then my 70 lock trying to catch up on achievements. It was kind of cool to get an achievement that listed you as a victim of a Black Orc for example.

PVP battle grounds - the battle grounds were nothing special. What was great is that you could cue for them from anywhere, at any time. First you could only cue for the battle ground of the "zone", since there are three "zones" you would have to the other zone to cue for the battle ground there. Withing weeks micro patches made cueing for any one of the three battle grounds available. In additional every tier has it's own three battle grounds. In addition, you get regular XP and loot drops for killing enemy players. This is in addition to the PVP Xp. The PVP Xp gives you access to purchase level appropriate gear for your character for very reasonable prices.

The gear purchase is very appropriate since each class has class only gear. Most of the gear drops I got were not usable since they were never for my class. Crafting professions are more of a hobby then really professions. You must collaborate to get reagents since every crafting profession requires regents from at least 2 if not 3 gathering professions, and you can only have one gathering profession at a time.

World PVP is very fun as well. There are many objectives around the world where you can run into and become PVP flagged and attack other players. If you got to a pvp area or a PVP cue, you get raised to a minimum level which is 8 before level 12. ( however you don't get all the spells with the higher levels until you actually level there) All of PVP is also supported with regular Xp quests to help you gain levels even if you don't quest.

This brings me to questing. After a few beginning quests to level 7 or 8, quests become very boring and an afterthought in my opinion. Half the quests you pick up are for PVP. So I leveled two characters to 10 and got bored with each around that time.

One of the thing that I was not happy with was the graphical performance and lag. I could only play decently if I really down-turned all of my graphical options. There were notes that there was a big patch cumming that would fix a lot of these performance issues. I might give this game anouther try in a few months once all things would be hashed out. I do have to say that I did begin to enjoy PVP in Warhammer. I hope that WoW picks up the idea of cuing for the battle gorunds from anywhere. I would definitelly do more battle grounds.

Change of blog style.

2008-10-28T14:43:00.000-04:00

I've decided to switch my WoW Blog Theme to reflect my playing with my Druid.

Medivh is down. I'm PVPing in Beta

2008-10-19T23:40:00.000-04:00

Today Medivh server has been down all day long. Very dissapointing since I wanted to level my druid more. Meanwhile I've been playing on the beta server. I've been doing some PVP in the battle grounds as well as some PVE agains level 80 mobs. Here is what I found:

Druid - Love PVP, PVE is also cool. I've respecked heavy balance and a bit of healing. Moonkin for PVE and Moonking/Healer for PVP. I like the PVE, but PVP is wicked. The Hot Healing is soo cool in PVP.

Mage - Love PVE. I specked fire so far, but it's awsome. I can two shot a mob easily. However in PVP i did not enjoy it. Probably because for PVP i need to spec frost. Next time I'll try that.

Shaman - Tried all three specs, not very successfull in PVP, and PVE is kinda boring. Shamans are too confusing with all the totems and spells. Not my cup of tea.
Hopefully my regular server will be up tomorow to play my druid.

Oh by they way, cleared out ZA for the first time with my lock. It was cool. Great group with my guildies.

I've picked up Inscription

2008-10-17T12:00:00.000-04:00

I've decided to pick up inscription on my druid. My druid, who's my newest favorite Alt. is the second character I've created when I originally began playing WoW. He fell out of my favor, and became my main banking and AH toon. Originally he was herbalist/alchemist. However, I've droped alchemy and leveled enchanting on him to DE my unneeded greens and do DE arbitrage in AH.

I was playing around with the idea of picking up inscription on my druid, since he had herbalism already. The other day I was scanning the AH for the glyphs for sale, and after buying a couple, my decision was sealed. Today I've droped enchanting ( I'll level it back up to a needed level to DE on anouther alt), and began my journey to gather some lower level herbs and level inscription.

The two glyphs I've picked up were:

Glyph of Rake

Glyph of Rejuvenation

Both glyphs are great and pretty useful for my leveling as a druid. One will help with the runners when I'm in cat form ( most of the time), the other will help me during those times when you're almost dead, and throw a Rejuvenations on yourself before going back into cat/bear form to finish the mob off.

Right now people are making a lot of money with inscription, simply because it's new and market is not yet saturated. People can charge what ever they want. Also, the minor glyphs are not trainable, you have to discover them. They are selling for ridiculous prices right now. In the future Inscription may not be as profitable as it is right now. However, at this stage of WoW, i have plenty of ways to make Gold in WoW even without a crafting profession. So inscription will definitely will be useful in playing and leveling.

I hope that in the later game there will be glyphs that are discovery only or reputation, that will make this profession profitable as well. So far, back to gathering peace blooms and silverleafs :).

Druids are cool and I've survived Patch 3.1 and Warhammer

2008-10-15T23:48:00.000-04:00

I have not blogged lateley. Mainly because of not palying as much, as well as playing Warhammer Online. I'll write about Warhammer in anouther post.

Playing Beta, I'm beggining to really enjoy PVP with a premaid level 80 Restro Druid. Resto Druids are a lot of fun. It's almost like playing an afliction warlock only in reverse. Hot Hot Hot.

I've began to level my druid, who has been my bank, and I'm actually enjoing it. Druids are weared. Either you love them or you hate them. I'm starting to love mine. Maybe my next alt. But hey, they never survive past 45. LOL

Well see.

My paladin is over 40

2008-09-14T15:22:00.000-04:00

[caption id="attachment_72" align="alignnone" width="364" caption="My Pally at 41"][/caption]

My paladin is over 40. I've been having a lot of fun gridning 2 to 3 mobs at a time in the Stranglehorn Valey. Paley AOE is a lot of fun. Now that I've got the Holy Shield and a new shield with a mithril spike on it, this will be even more fun. Mobs drop like stones. :)

I've been actually realy enjoing playing with my pally. I think I will try to get him to 70 before expancion comes out. Get's me invovled while we are all waiting for wrath to comes out.

The new patch 3.0 will come out soon, and i'd like to see how it will change my gameplay since it will have a lot of changes to pallies.

Now my goal is to outfit him with plate. It seems that at level 40 many other paladings and warriors rush into the AH to get their plate, only to find out prices in the 20 and 30 gold range for basic plate green. Just got to watch out for bargains and snatch them up.

I got a Beta Key! :)

2008-09-14T15:11:00.000-04:00

I was checking my email when I noticed - AN EMAIL WITH MY WRATH BETA KEY! :D

This is really cool. I was getting tired of WoW, becaues my guild's scheduled raids have not been happening due to lack of attendance. So this will give me something to do. This is especially cool since I'll be able to play around with some of the classes I always wanted to have in the end game. Now I can see if I really do want them.

What do you do when there is no WoW?

2008-09-10T10:05:00.000-04:00

I am starting to get bored with WoW. I feel that it's like a relationship that is beginning to go stale. Last night our 25 man raid for either Gruul or Mag did not happened again due to the lack of people/interest. When someone offered to go do Kara instead, I declined. There is only so many times you can do Kara before it becomes a bore. This is especially since I'm fully in my T4 set with Moramor, and there are only two things that I actually could use as and upgrade from that dungeon, the bracers from Maden and the dagger from Prince.

So, here comes the challenge. What do you do with your time if you stop playing WoW. I was mulling over to pre-ordering Warhammer Online and trying the open Beta. Besides that, there are not many other things that can be as wholesome and entertaining as WoW for the low price. At least none that come to my mind right now. What to do?

What do you do with all the free time in your life if you eliminate WoW completely. WoW took up a lot of that free time in the past. If I would eliminate WoW form my life, I would either have to find anouther hobby that would require as much time and commitment, or I would have to come up with multple smaller hobbies or activities.

One of the challenges I had with multiple hobbies/activities, is that I take on too many and get burned out. With wow, you can scale back or intensify your time or effort commitment. With smaller hobbies/activities you would have to drop one or two. The drama that sometimes entales leaving something is never pleasant. I guess this is a new era, and an interesting turning point.

Your WoW Life vs Your Real Life

2008-09-02T15:18:00.000-04:00

While clearing out the mail boxes on my bank alts, I was thinking to my self - Wow! What a mess. It seems that it never goes away. The more I try to organize it the more it seems to become more disorganized. Then I through back to my room, my office space, my clothes in the closet. Here is the thing, they are all in the same "state".

So when it comes to my organizational skills in WoW, whether it would be the mailboxes, or the my character's bank space it's all as disorganized as the real space in my life. I usually stick things somewhere, to get them out of sigh and out of mind. I do that for a while until I need to find something.

Just to clarify, I hope you know that you can use an alt as a "bank". Just mail a bunch of stuff to your other character, and it will sit there for 30 days in the mail box.

I do try to clean up and get organized. however, I do it in batches. So in between those batches of cleaning, chaos slowly seeps back into my "organizational system".

So, my virtual life can mimic my real life, is it possible to acquire new and better habits in the virtual world, and then apply them to the real world? Can I learn to organize my bank space and keep it organized and them apply that to my closet? I certainly picked up some understanding about economy observing the AH and trade skills in WoW.

Meanwhile, it's back to orgnizing my mailboxes. Let my mantra be - eliminate, eliminte, eliminate. I have a habit of holding on tho things just in case I might need it, or just in case I might sell it in AH. No more! Some crap that noone wants anyways will be vendored, along with all the armor that I've been keeping for nostalgic reasons.

Spring cleaning is due before the expansion comes out! Oh yea, and I guess I got to go pull fall and winter clothes out in my real closet as well. Sheesh, whey there is only 24 hours in a day?

AOE Paladin at level 30

2008-08-27T13:37:00.000-04:00

My paladin, which is right now my favorite alt, recently hit 30. Besides getting my cool free mount, I've also decided to give AOE grinding a try. Up to level 30 I was leveling as Retribution. Having some nice gear from Shadowfang keep, which I ran with my level 70 friend, was decently fun. But, I was really curious about AOE after I hit level 30.

My previous AOE experience was not very pleasant. It was with my mage, around levels 26-28 and of course it involved frost. I hated it. My mage was so fragile, and I started to hate frost in general. So I was very skeptical of paladin AOE grinding.

In addition, most of websites I've read will recommend that you don't start at least 35 when you got 5 points into reckoning. Many others tell you to wait until 40. Well, following some advice on wowwiki.com, I respecked into it at 30, attached a basic shield spike to my SFK blue shield, and pulled my one hander sword (also from SFK). I have to say, i've never had so much fun! I can also survive better now, which of course is the whole point of protection.

I began grinding in the . This place in general is very annoying since there are numerous random mobs clustered around all roads, so when you run around you always pull a hyena, a tiger and something else. I could easily handle two or three mobs of the same level. A bit more mobs I would sometimes had to chug a potion or bubble heal and then continue. However, it was still a lot of fun, and very effective.

Now at level 32, i have a little more experience, a couple points into reckoning, and also a new weapon that has a fast speed on it. The faster the weapon, the better since you then get more healing pocs. I can also handle any single mob without even flinching. Where before, as a retribution pally i would finish the fight quickly but had to heal a bit, now the fight takes a bit more time, but i finish with full mana and health. I'd compare this build to my priest when i was leveling discipline, and would finish every fight with full mana and health.

Why I love Paladins more and more

2008-08-21T12:06:00.000-04:00

I've been leveling my Paladin a bit, and I'm quite enjoying him. He's already at level 28, and I can't wait to get my mount at 30. However, in this post I'd like to mention why I love pallys when I group with them.

Salvation - Can you say shoot without worrying about threat? As a decently T4 geared warlock I get spoiled with this pally buff. If I'm in a 5 man, or god forbid Kara without a pally, not having this buff really rally gimps my DPS because just by casting all my DoTs my threat jumps a lot. You should see me begging for this buff all the time.

Tough love heals - There are some situations where pally's high armor and also their bubble ability really shines. We were doing the first boss of Mount Hijal and a pally was the last healer standing because he was able to bubble out of the frost spell first boss shoots at non-tanking mobs.

Paladin tank is the best thing ever doing heroics. It makes CC less needed, and also makes mistakes less lethal. And did I mention salvation? Plus you can bring a druid to heal, since you can soul stone paladin for the wipe protection.

These are just a few awesome things a paladin brings to the group. It makes me so much more exited to level my own paladin and have an opportunity to be a healer or a tank or dps that's different from my Lock. Plus I find that I can solo many things that I could not solo with my druid or mage. I am looking forward getting him to 70 and then to play with all the changes in Wrath to 80.

The state of my WoW.

2008-08-05T17:30:00.000-04:00

Well, I don't have much to post on that comes to mind and does not involve too much time :). Presently I've got into a nice guild that raids a lot (by my standards). I've been doing Mag and Grull, and we even did some trash and got to first boss on Mt. Hijal. So it was fun and I got a nice clock from trash mob drop.

I've been also leveling my druid, who is my bank/enchanter. I want to get him to level 35 because i want to disenchant all those greens over 64 that i accumulated. They are becoming annoying in my mailbox "bank". I'm too lazy to find anouther Dissenchanter to DE them. Too many at this point.

I toyed with the idea of leveling my druid to 70. I respecked feral and was breezing through the mobs. My goal is that I want a end game healer. However, I don't know if I want to play my priest to 70 (currently in his high 30's). I find Druid Tree healing is really cool, but I don't find leveling druid pleasurable.

I've created a Pally and I think I will play with that character and level to 70. I find Pallys to be very self sufficient, and at the end of the game they can Heal or Tank. I think they will also benefit a lot from all the additional Plate gear with caster attributes that they will share with Death Knights. I find leveling them interesting - a new challenge.

My Mage who I finally learned how to play is gathering dust at level 41. I think I got to a point where it was too easy to play him now that he's a fire specked. I guess I want something different Endgame, and Mage is too similar to a warlock as far as gear/damage etc. Paladin offers different dynamics to learn. Plus I can Heal (I guess I'm a closeted healer).

You know you play too much WoW part 4

2008-08-01T11:53:00.000-04:00

So here is anouther one. I work for JetBlue Airways in NY. JetBlue is soon opening up a new terminal at JFK airport - terminal 5 aka T5. So the other day when my coworker started to talk about the T5 what do you think I started to think about. If you don't know, then yo don't play enough! ;).

M.A.G.E - I like this one even better

2008-07-30T17:31:00.000-04:00

Here another video from Madcow Studios. I like this one even more :D:

Back to Windows for WoW, but linux is almost there.

2008-07-23T12:40:00.000-04:00

Well a few days into WoW on linux (Ubuntu-8 ) only, and I broke down and installed Windows XP on my machine. Here are two biggest reasons:

1. In linux, my mouse pointer is software rendered, since we are emulating a windows program in linux. This is fine and dandy when I was playing by my self, but when I grouped up with 25 other people to do Mag and Grul, I saw the challenge with the software rendering of my mouse. When we hit a lot of visual lag due to everyone casting spells, the mouse pointer would move in slow motion or I would sometimes completely lose it on the screen. I had to quickly relearn how to use hot keys. This I think was a decisive point to play WoW under windows, where even though frame rate might be low, mouse pointer would move smoothly anyways since it is hardware controlled.

2. The second piece in linux that did not work was Vent. When i was in WoW i could hear vent, but could not hit a key to speak. This i suspect could have been fixed if I did some more research.

To sum up my experience with WoW in linux, is that it has been very impressive. Besides the raid experience, soloing or grouping with a small group worked very well under linux. This may be due to the recent release of the Wine 1.0 version. About 6 months ago, wow was almost unplayable in Linux with decent graphical settings and resolution set to my native 20 inch flat panel. It is very good now, where when I solo I get almost the same performance I would get in Windows XP.

I think it is important to note that it would be great if Blizzard can release a native linux WoW client. Until then, WindowsXP for me as far as WoW. Although I will continue to mess around with Ubuntu linux and maybe find more tweaks for WoW in linux.

Windows is dead - WoW on Linux

2008-07-20T22:59:00.000-04:00

Well, my windows died on me, again! I think it has something to do with the NFTS system. When i try to access the windows partition under Linux the C: drive can't be read, and Linux says it is still "in use".

So since I don't really feel like reinstalling Windows XP, or buying the new Vista, I decided to go with Ubuntu 8 linux that I had installed on my machine earlier. My computer use is not that demanding as far as variety of things. I play WoW and browse the Internet. The net is easy on Linux. How about WoW?

Well I'm happy to report that with the latest ubunty release (8) and the newest Wine emulator software WoW runs as well as it does under Windows. So thus begins my biggest experiment of all - life without Windows!

If you are interested in running your WoW under Linux here is a great post on how to do it in Ubuntu (which is very easy to use once you learn where to pull a document or two from the net):

https://help.ubuntu.com/community/WorldofWarcraft

By the way, I did not install WoW under linux. I simply copied the whole WoW folder from windows into linux, that's the easier way. Just edit your config file in WTF folder to openGL and you're good to go!

I like this video! :D

2008-07-18T09:43:00.000-04:00

Is Lock a Lock, or is Lock a Mage

2008-07-09T13:56:00.000-04:00

My life as a lock is full of ups and downs. I though that I finally found a cool guild I can raid with, only for the guild mates to be nonexistent online as soon as summer began. :(

Out of boredom and desperation and also because I've been enjoying my fire specked mage I resepecked my warlock destro (20/0/41). I have to say that the play style becomes very similar to a mage. But it did not feel like a lock anymore.

From my personal opinion Warlocks have their biggest and unique strengths in the demonology and affliction trees. Destruction is fun, but it's very short lived. You cannot do tings with destro you can do with demonology or affliction, such as non stop grinding or taking down an elite mob by your self. Plus if you want to blast things, you can always go mage, but only lock can have a unique DoTs and or pet/blast. I'm back to affliction and I love it!

Mage playing with Fire

2008-06-26T23:13:00.000-04:00

I've been suffereing with my mage for a long time, trying to pick up playing with him only to get frustrated. From the very beggining I named him Moroz, which means frost in Russian. I inteded for him to be frost from the beggining. I've tried so many time to respec him into pure frost frost and arcane and frost for AOE gridning. Yet even after I started to have fun with the frost AOE, i got bored of that, and still got owned by a mob a few levels above me.

Finally, finally at level 30 i've specked into pure fire. Boy-oh-boy. Things are pretty easy now. I don't run out of mana, and mob goes down pretty quickly. Perhaps fire is the way to level a mage after all. :)

You know you play too much WoW when ... p3

2008-06-16T11:48:00.000-04:00

When someone who does not play wow, for some reason say - "Jack of all trades. Master of non!". You automatically say to your self - "A Shaman".

Fishing for Fun and Profit

2008-06-10T16:53:00.000-04:00

I've rediscovered Fishing. Now my fishing previously was at about 295, which I got there to get my cooking above 350. Then i kinda stopped fishing. I did not feel like going back to Azeroth to fish, and yet I found fishing in Outland a bit tedious since it would take 8-9 fish to go to the next level. Well the other day I wanted a different experience form WoW, so i logged in as Moramor, went to Cenarion Expedition's outpost in Zangarmarsh, bought some lure and began fishing. I actually found it fun.

After catching about 30 fish in open water, I started to run around and fishing in the pools that are sprinkled all around the water in that area. Well, let me tell you, it was actually fun, and profitable. I was catching trunks from the floating debris pools, including the Golden Darter, which sells very very well in AH in raw form or in the fish sticks, which grant +healing bonus. There is also a fish which is gray in quality, but sells for 6 gold!

Finally, I was also pulling out motes of water. These darn motes which when I was making my frozen set I needed so much. I used to kill tons of Water Elementals for those motes. I could have just fished, and got motes, fishing experience and fish for my troubles. Oh well. I am going to try now to fish the pure water pools to see how many motes I get there. Motes from fish and wreckage pools are uncommon, but still come pretty well.

It seems fishing is not something people level or bother with. Well from my recent experience, I would say that you should level it, and use it to get cools stuff and profit at the same time.

Here is a cool site I found related to fishing in WoW: El's Extreme Anglin' - WoW Fishing Guide

Gem Shortage on Medivh!

2008-06-05T13:56:00.000-04:00

Something terrible is happenning on my server! There is a shortage of the basic JC cut Gems. I recently got a new pair of Pants in Kara with Three yellow sockets. When I ran to the AH to pick up some nice +6 hit yello gems, to my horror there are none. There are also not too many rare gems in the AH either. I usually don't look too much at those, since I careful what money I spend. However, I've noticed there are not many of cut rare gems either. I've also see tons of uncut undommong gems in AH.

I brought this horrible chain of event to my guild mates. A few of them laughed and said that they guy who used to be the main Horde Gem cutter on our server quick and went to play Age of Connan! This is terrible. Othrer Jewelcrafter have to step up, or we will be gemless :(.

If you are a Jewelrafter on Medivh Horde server, step up and start cutting gems and making money and help us socket our gear!

WoW and you internet provider or Why Verizon Sux

2008-06-03T14:11:00.000-04:00

This is not specifically WoW related, but it still touches on it a bit. I've been recently having some chellenges with my DSL provider - Verizon. These challenges resulted in either me having rediculous lag or disconects in WoW or no connection at all. I'm happy to say, I got RoadRunner yestaday, here is why, or as you can say why Verizon Sucks. I'm putting all the rant behind the more line, so you don't have to read it if you don't want to.

When you call Verizon, it sends you to an outsourced Indian techs who tell you to reset your modem, and then schedule appointments, sometimes without your knowledge. I had a tech guy call me because he was coming to my house, when he was supposed to come next week. Oh, and if you ask for the supervisor when you call they disconnect you.

Then you get a call from a network tech who apologizes and says that they are upgrading hardware and too many people were on the same router, he will switch you and you will be fine. That goes on for a bout three days. Internet works fine when he calls ( early in the morning), but then in the evening when you need to play WoW it's messed up again and you are back to your Indian based friends.

They dispute the idea that the problem may be related to the three Verizon trucks doing something next to a big hall in the ground that causes you to be late for work for a bout a week. Yet as soon as those trucks dissappier, internet works fine again.

You can also get a US based tech who for two hours will have you do all kinds of tests and configurations to then tell you that in the end it's all your fault. It probably you old computer you have on which you got a virus probably from your video game and it ate away at your telephone cord. When you confront him that if it was hardware related then it would not work all the time, why does it work fine in the morning. He calls the network tech who once again fixes everything, until the next day.

Verizon keeps being surprised that you don't have FIOS, and why don't you switch to FIOS. You begin suspecting they are doing all of this BS to get you to switch to their new pet project. The only thing is its still unavailable in your neighborhood ( maybe those trucks a few weeks ago were working on putting it in, and screwing up the DSL for you to switch). Plus, with such horrible customer service and no customer commitment why would i want to pay for installation and be switch for two years with Verizon.

So after all of this, I simply went to the local mall and visit the Time Warner Cable store. Since I already have cable, they game me a mode, and said it will work as soon as I hooked it up. Tonight, I hope I will get to raid without worrying about lag or disconnecting. So if you considering Verizon for your internet or FIOS, be warned!

Success in WoW - why keep playing

2008-05-29T13:55:00.000-04:00

I've once heard a quote that said - Success is gradual progress towards a worthy ideal, or goal. In World of Warcraft, when you level you character, you leveling is that measured gradual progress to a goal. The goal can be the next level, level 58 to go hit Outland, or even level 70. Either way with every quest and every Mob you are progressing. Once you hit level 70, that stops, at least for now. So what measures your success now?

Well after you hit level 70, now it's time to go for gear, reputation, heroics, flying mount etc... Wait. Where should you start? Here is where things break down. There are too many things to pursue, and unless you begin to define specific goals you can get overwhelmed. That is what happened to me. I did a bit of everything, but didn't focus on anything specific. OK, one thing I did do was to max out my tailoring and create my Frozen Weave set. But besides that, not much else.

So I've stoped and began to think of things I want, be it gear or content, and how I can get it. For example - I would like to replace my Bringer of Death staff with a main hand and a nice off hand. I've looked around and noted that there is a couple of Heroic Badge rewards I can use for off hand, as well as a really nice main hand. One of the other things I am considering is how I will get the pieces. Badge Gear is easier to plan for, just get the badges. To plan for a drop is a different story. My plan is to get Badge gear for things that are too hard to get from dungeon/raid drops, and wait for easier drops to replace those pieces. I will mean while plug in the holes with other gear.

So the off hand I can have for 25 to 35 badges, and my choice are Fetish of the Primal Gods or the Orb of the Soul-Eater. Of which I think I'll go for the Fetish since I already have the required 35 Badges.

For my main hand, the really nice Scryer's Blade of Focus is a bit too expensive at 150 BoJ. I will probably save up for it or wait for a drop of Nathrezim Mindblade in Kara. Mean while I noticed that there are a few reputation one hnadlers that can serve me as a nice main hand piece with the BoJ offhand:

Stormcaller

Archmage's Guile

Continuum Blade

The Stormcaller being the best piece, but the hardes to get, since my rept with Thrallmar is not close to the Revered status required. The other two are more accessable, Continuum Blade being an Exalted reward from Keepers of Time and Archmage's Guile being an Exalted reward from the Shattered Sun. Both blades are very simmilar. However Continuum Blade has +hit, a stat I need since I'm not hitcaped. In the end I might get both, since I am a day's worth of dailies from Exalted with Shattered sun, and a dungeon run away from same rep with KoT. However, dailies might be easier to fit in since you don't have to hunt for a group.

Being focused on specific goals can help you do more specific things in WoW instead of getting bored and switching to your alts, who, let's face it, take the planning out of your hands.

You know You play too much WoW when... p2

2008-05-28T13:26:00.000-04:00

Ok, so here is another one:

You know you play to much WoW when you tell you're friend while he's driving that you have to go Bio. Thank God he aslo plays WoW and undestands what you mean. :0

Kara cleared - first time for me!

2008-05-28T13:24:00.000-04:00

Last night I played with my new guild and we cleared almost the entire Karazhan, including NightBane, but excluding the Netherspite and I've got my Helm of the Falen Champion and 20 Badges of justice. Although I've ran the top portion of this raid before, this was my first full one. Pictures to come.

Kara was fun. I think what also made it fun was a great group. My new guild is very cool.

Popular and unpopular races in WoW

2008-05-23T15:15:00.000-04:00

I was looking over the statistics on www.warcraftrealms.com and I noticed how some races are more popular then others. Just recently I've decided to level a new horde priest, and I've picked Troll as the race of my new priest. Well trolls is one of the realy underplayed races. It seems that the races that people neglect to play are the Trolls, Orcs, Draeni, and dwarves. The Horde side is also more balanced then the alliance. On the alliance majority of players are either human or nigh elf.

This made me think of the saying how people usually pick the pretty races to play with more then the ugly ones. And if you think it through, the underplayed races are not the best looking in the game.

I am actually glad that I picked troll as my character. A new experience, and a unique character to level with. They may not be the best looking toons around, but the capoeira dance just gets me. Plus I think it's important to not be like everyone else right?

Priests are not the only healers.

2008-05-14T23:46:00.000-04:00

I've been playing WoW for quite some time now. But only recently have I joined the "club" of endgame play. Since now I have a level 70 character I began to "re-learn" the game. It seems that when it comes to traditional roles in this game most of the characters level their toon based on a specific spec or two that allowes for the fastest leveling. This could be most damage or the most resource efficient way to level. However, that all changes once you get to 70 because now characters begin to specialize.

I will reveal my ignorance and will say that for quite some time I though that Priests are the best healers in the game. The other healers had their ability as a nice-to-have. So I never thought of druids, shamans or paladins as "healers". I begin to see my error. Running some of the level 70 dungeons I begin to see the awsome healing powers of the healing specked Druids and Shamans and even Paladins. In fact, I have seen some encounters where Shamans or Druids performed better then Priests. Once again, this was due to my ignorance, but I believe that that ignorance is widespread.

Let's examine the lower levels, and the healers available. Playing a priest I constantly got invited to go and do dungeons out of the blue! Somone would send me a tell and invite me, even though I was not looking for a group. Same experience happend to my friend through his leveling who also has a preist in his late 50s. I never had this experience playing a druid or a shaman. Yet after healing a WC run with my druid, I realize that priests don't have monopoly on healing.

I am still amazed at the shaman and druid healing powers. It seems that when they are specked and geared they are unstoppable, and can sometimes even survive and encounter where priest goes down fast ( like when boss agroes and beats up a shaman before tank regains control of the citation). I've seen them in action, and will have to give them respect. The question is, do they give themselves respec. Do they offer them selves as healers while leveling, or do they also give in to the notion that their fate is to DPS until they are 70 and bring a priest along for healing.

Please don't get me wrong! I love my preist. I love my discipline specked Preist because I enjoy leveling him when I'm by my self, and enjoy the respect I get when it comes to finding a group to play with. I personally did not like leveling Druid, perhaps it is something to level in the future. What I am saying is that we need to change the perspective of the WoW community out there, and get more of the non-Priests classes visible as healers before they reach level 70. That way there are more people to run though the lower level instances, and we get better experienced healers once they reach 70.

What are some of your favorite WoW zones?

2008-05-07T14:19:00.000-04:00

The the "world" in World of Warcraft is really that - it's a world. The game is huge as far as the territories and places it contains. With the addition of Outland and also the new Blood elf island it keeps getting bigger. So what is you favorite zone? What's the least favorite one?

When I just started to play WoW i used to love running around exploring new zone once I got to that level. Since most of this was done pre-mount it took a long time, and was one of the reasons it took me forever to level my first toon to 70. It was just so cool and interesting. I do less of it now, since it's all about leveling quickly and efficiently. Still, there are zones I like more and others that I like less.

Besides the different theme, each zone very often also has it's own theme music and it's own unique feel. One of my favorite zones in Outland, for example, is the Zangarmarsh. I love the colors, the theme, and the music it has. It's very calm and tranquil.

One of the zones that I enjoy looking at, but hate playing in is Ashenvale. Main reason being that is so hard to get around. You look at the map and it seems easy to get from point A to point B. But then you find out that there are all of these terrain obstacles and you got to go around. And usually by running around in that manner you run into tons and tons of Mobs, usually beasts. I get very frustrated in that zone.

What's your experience like?

I've updated commenting options, please comment

2008-05-07T13:48:00.000-04:00

I did not realize that in order to comment on my site you had to register. I've seen that on another site and it is not comfortable to use. I've changed options. It is easier to comment, so please do! :)

Basic PVP Gear Set at level 70

2008-05-06T10:13:00.000-04:00

There was a really cool change in the 2.4 Patch that totally went over my head until about last week. Since it is becoming harder and harder for newly minted level 70 to compete with people who went through three seasons of Arena, something had to be done.

Blizzard made some basic PVP gear set available for purchase from the Outland faction vendors. So, all that grinding for Thrallmar or Cenarion Expedition you have done can now pay off. You have to be honored with the faction, which is the same reputation you need to buy a heroic key. The cost of each piece is also quite minor, on average 10 gold for each piece. At level 70 that's a few daily quests that can be done in 20 mins. There is a set for every class.

This of course is a great way for Blizzard to give more opportunity for more people to do PVP without fruitless and tedious grinding in the battlegrounds just to get some basic gear. You're not very motivated when you go down like a fly in the Battle grounds to repeat them thousand times more. These sets allow more casual players like me to still have occasional fun in the battle grounds or other world PVP events. For more serious PVPers this is the entry gear to get them started. And some of that gear can even replace some of not so great PVE gear until you get something better.

Here are the pieces I got for my warlock. I like the bonus on the gloves the best. Now I can actually cast Fear when I'm getting pounded.

Dreadweave Battlegear

Dreadweave Gloves

Dreadweave Hood

Dreadweave Leggings

Dreadweave Mantle

Dreadweave Robe

So what's so special about leveling Shadow?

2008-04-28T17:15:00.000-04:00

I've finally got my troll priest to the same level as my human priest, that I've shelved for now. And just for kicks I decided to respec him into shadow to get the MindFlay. Well I ran around and tried it out, and I did not like it. I was much more happy with my discipline build, and I went right back to it.

So far I've got 5 talent points in Spirit tap (that's a no brainer)

Then I got Improved Wand, and Improved shield. And boy is a good spec to grind. It realy takes the full advantage of the Spirit tap and the five second mana regeneration rule. I will usually shield, Holly fire ( love that spell), mind blast, SW:P and then just wand away. So by the time mob is dead, it hardly broke though my shield, and now spirit tap kicks in with the five sec after rule, and I'm always full on mana.

How is this great, well if another mob comes by, no problem. Two mobs come at you, no problem. Or grinding tough mobs is also not a problem. I was doing a quest involving the Quelboars and I had to kill things of level 24 and 25 (at level 21). I was too lazy to go do something else, and then come back and finish in that area. So I did some grinding those level 25 mobs without dying once! shield, heal, wand, repeat.

I also realy like the shadow guard racial ability troll priests have. I remember reading about it from someone talking about priest racial abilities and downplayed this one. Well it is very useful while you killing a tough mob. It's like an extra DoT. I love the fact also that for it to trigger you can be shielded, and it also triggers when someone hits you with a ranged attack.

So I am going discipline all the way to level 43. I'll try the shadow spec at that point again, maybe then it would be worth all the hype about Level-Your-Priest-Shadow.

You know you play too much WoW when ...

2008-04-17T14:32:00.000-04:00

You know you play too much WoW when...

I think I'm going to start this category. I just thought of one. You know you play too much WoW when you use emotes instead of smiley faces at your job's interoffice chat client.

YourCoworker: This is ridiculous. I can't believe they give me all this stuff at the last moment. How am I going to get it all done? :(

You: /cry

YourCoworker: What?

You: I mean :(

When is the most fun to do Battle Grounds?

2008-04-16T15:43:00.000-04:00

Do you like to do battle grounds? I'm not a very big fan of them or PVP in general. I am more of a casual quest-by-my-self type of a guy. However, I remember I once got addicted to the Alterac Valey and would play it for weeks non stop. Oh the exhilaration!

I still play it once in a while, but it's not as fun anymore. I was thinking about it recently, why is that?

Well for one thing, they've changed this battle ground three or more times since my "fun days" there. The game is different now, and you play and win differently. Still, that is not it.

It finally hit me recently why it use to be so much more fun. I played it when I was in my 50's. That's when you finally get the access to play in Alterac Valley battle ground, and the levels allowed are 50-59. So even in the days of pre-BC I would play with other players who would be equally geared.

You see, since I don't PVP much, i have PVE gear. A PVP geard player takes me down in a flash. That's why it's not so much fun anymore. My lack of PVP gear makes me an easy target. It was not so in my 50's, since few people had PVP gear.

So when is the most fun to play in battle grounds? I think it would be your upper 50's. The very levels we try to pass as quickly as possible to get to Outlands. Whey 50's? Well for one you have access to three battle grounds. You also don't have much twinks at this level. People will twink at 19,29 and 39, but 59? Come on, that's when you go to Outland. So no more annoing twink caracters that can take you down in a flash. Everyone is more or less equal.

Also people in their 50's will not have a lot of PVP gear. Whey waist your honor buying outdated gear, save it till you're 70, or at least 60, so everyone has PVE gear.

This kind of posts quite a dilemma. Will I level my new priest to level 58 or 59 to then make him a "twink" and do Alterac Valley? Time will only show.

I've given in to the dark side.

2008-04-15T08:18:00.000-04:00

Well my friend finally convinced me to come to the dark side. He is leveling his priest as a blood elf, and kept commenting that we would not be able to play together. So I gave in and created a Horse priest. I've decided to go with the troll because I've never really leveled a troll race, so the starting zone experience would be new to me. And of course the other biggest reason is the cool dance - can't beat Capoeira! Since i did capoeira for a bout a year, I would be doing capoeira vicariously. Hmm... Maybe one day I should actually go play some capoeira in the real world too :D.

I'm also planning to level as shadow. To many that would have been a no brainer. To me it was not. I was leveling my alliance priest as discipline. I've even convince my level 40 priest friend to switch from leveling holy to discipline. He loves it. I'll go shadow to level 40 and try it out. If I don't like it I'll switch to discipline.

Do you play or level you character?

2008-04-11T15:00:00.000-04:00

The other day, I decided to create a brand new undead priest, and quickly level her to the same level as my human priest, who is almost level 20. After spending about an hour and getting the new priest to level 19, I got bored. Combined with being tired, and also Medivh server being extremely laggy, I logged off.

The realization hit me the next day. I love playing WoW, I hate leveling. What is the difference? One you do for enjoyment of the game. You play the game while you increase your experience and level. The other you do as quickly as possible to get to 70.

Well I hate leveling, even to catch to my friend level 40 toon, or to my own toon on opposite faction who's level 19. Leveling sux! Goes back to my post about life before or after 70.

I think I'm done leveling. I'm gonna play from now on, no matter how long it takes me to get to level 70.

Being a Healer is Fun!

2008-04-10T14:22:00.000-04:00

Yestaday was my first day of running and instance as a healer. I ran my human priest Svyatoslav through the Deadmines. We had a cool group, and ran quickly through the instance. Even though I had terrible lag on my computer, I was able to heal just fine.

It was actually fun, to let other people dish out the damage, and my job being only to heal them and pick up the loot. It also gave me a good deal of experience. I think dungeons for a healer is a great way to level and get great gear.

Being a healer I was also the most important part of the party, since we had two tanks. So I think I think it will always be easy to get a group going.

Also, seeing how easy it is to heal low level instance even though I was not specked for healing, I wonder if I can use my shaman, Ruadia to run though instances as a healer, instead of DPS. She has no talents in healing, but at level 34 can she heal well enough in a dungeon? I think I will put that to the test. I think the main challenge will be to deal with agro. Priest has the Fade spell automatically. No such luck with the shamans.

When does life begins in WoW pre or post 70?

2008-04-04T18:10:00.000-04:00

I've been thinking about this topic a lot. When does life begin in WoW? Does it begin when you create your new character or does it begin when that character reaches level 70, or at least 60? Why am I thinking all of this now? Well because I finally got my main Warlock to 70 a few months ago, and now it has been almost like a midlife crisis for me in WoW.

I remember when I just started to play World of Warcraft a few years ago I leveled my character slowly, taking time to run and do all the quests. Sometimes I would run to other zones just to explore them. Needless to say, it took me forever to level. I also made tons of mistakes along the way, and would learn from those mistakes. This was before I discovered how to look up quests on Thottbot or effectively make gold in the game. But I was pretty exited to sit down and explore the WoW universe.

Fast forward to BC days. After taking a few breaks from the game, and also playing it very casually, I bout the BC expansion and dove in and got my character to level 58 and went to the Outland. Even though I did not beat any records for leveling, I did everything possible to get to level 70. OK, i did take a bit of time off to level Ruadia, my Alliance Shaman, but that's because I was getting my friend addicted to WoW so he can play with me, and I've succeeded at that.

So back to Moramor leveling to 70. It was a race. When I finally hit 70 I was kinda happy, but then also kinda depressed. What's next. I even wrote a hub, one of the first ones on this blog. Well I can get my Frozen Shadow set (boy was that one expensive), I can get my epic flying mount, I can get ....

Wait. Stop! Too much, too fast, too flavorless. WoW was supposed to be my escape from the real world, why does it feel like my regular life, NY City, constant pressure, constant running, constant inability to enjoy what you already have. I got tired of doing what is easy and convenient. I don't want to do dailies all the time, no matter how much money they make me, it is boring! So if life in WoW was supposed to start after 70, then I don't know if I want it. Maybe that is why I keep making alts.

So then life starts before 70, right? Well, in the last few months leveling to 70 I became a voracious reader of all the information about my class or other classes. What is the fastest way to level? What is the best gear? What's the best spec? So my learning went from exploring the WoW world, to just following other people's advice on how to avoid the majority of WoW and get to the end-game content.

Perhaps it is time to evaluate what I like and don't like about the game, and also begin to do things that will bring me more challenge and experience, rather then quick level and quick loot. I've said it before and I'll say it again. WoW many times mirrors our real selves. We have to be careful not to make it an exact replica. Here we have an opportunity to create an alternate, hopefully better personality. And that is why you've got to live and enjoy every day, and not only the day you finish Kara.

Test Picasa Plug in to steam WoW pics

2008-04-04T11:36:00.000-04:00

Just wanted to test this plug in to show some of my WoW shots stored on Picasa Web Gallery.

[piflasa]http://picasaweb.google.com/data/feed/base/user/emplives/albumid/5185358208808495809?kind=photo&alt=rss&hl=en_US|450[/piflasa]

What to play next?

2008-04-03T23:13:00.000-04:00

So I switched to Alliance to get a fresh start with my WoW. I've been playing horde all this time, and I think I need a change. I've been leveling my Draeni Shaman, Ruadia. She's a lot of fun and already at level 33. But I'm intrigued by the Priest class. So today I made my Human Priest, Svyatoslav.

I've been playing WoW for a few years now. After playing the game for so long you start asking your self why do I play? Well maybe not as much of that, but how do I keep fun and excitement in my game after doing so much of the game already. So I think that is why I am drawn to playing some of the classes that I used to totally avoid before. Healing, playing in groups a lot, not dealing a lot of damage? All of these were a big no-no for me in the past. Being a warlock allowed me to solo most of the quests, and just be in the groups when I really needed to be there, and still be just an DPS, no decisions or responsibilities on my shoulders.

Playing a healing class, or a hybrid class is more of a challenge for me, since it will be a totally different play style. So that is the fun and excitement to learn how to play something completely different. I guess also to learn how to be more social in the game and group more often. And grouping is an art in itself!

This is an AWSOME WoW Machinima

2008-04-03T14:00:00.000-04:00

So I was at work on my lunch break checking out the WoW Machinima clips on WoWInsider, and I found this one. I loved it! Here it is to share with you:

Take two gathering proffessions while leveling! Good/Bad advice?

2008-04-02T15:43:00.000-04:00

When it comes to making money while leveling your WoW character, most of the people will advise to take up two gathering professions until you're way into your 40 and I would even advise to keep it into your 60's. I am actually leveling my Draeni Shaman in this manner, and boy do I have tons and tons of gold :D. But is this a good advice, and is it the best in all cases?

If you chose to start leveling a crafting profession without having another toon to provide you with extra cash you will be a very very poor WoW soul. This I've learned the hard way when I just began my WoW journey. It is possible to enjoy the items you craft while you level, but you will be very tight on money.

So, let's get back to the advice of two gathering professions. Is it valid in every case? Well, as I found out, not in every case. And also we need to look at a bigger picture.

First scenario. There is a small condition that must be present - there must be a healthy population on the server, and a robust economy. Otherwise, all the raw materials will be unsold, or sold for pennies. This I found our a hard way by rolling a toon on a new server. So on a new server, it may be more profitable to gather your materials and craft things. There will be a market for them, since it will not be flooded with tons of world drops and tons of crafted items. But this would go away once the server gathers more population and/or transfers from other realms.

Second scenario or consideration. The system feeds itself. If I want to take up leatherworking at level 70 and "powerlevel" it to level 375, I will most likely buy the majority of leather, or at least the majority of the lower level leather. This means I will drive up the demand and prices for leather. On the other hand, I will craft tons and tons of unneeded items. If I am smart and/or can get them disenchanted, that is great. Unfortunately most of these items will be dropped on the AH for a price that most likely will be lower then the cost to make these. Thus, it drives the price for the people who would want to slowly craft items for profit.

The second scenario then reinforces and creates the conditions where the gathering professions are profitable, and the crafting is not. In fact, we create that system, and reinforce it by the "powerleveling", which raises the prices for raw materials and depresses the prices of finished goods.

Third scenario. Is there an equilibrium that can be reached if hypothetically people stopped powerleveling their crafting professions, and everyone would simply craft as they level? Would that bring the raw resources prices down? Would that raise the prices on the crafted items? One of the things I've noticed with tailoring on my server (US:Medivh), is that there are few blue items you can craft at the lower levels, but usually the raw materials are so overpriced for these items, that the margins are too small to even bother make the items. Most of crafters would only make these items for their own use, but not for the AH.

So at the end I'll say that the economy of WoW is an intricate and interesting creature. It is driven and manipulated by many different psychological factors. At the end of the day two gathering professions is your best bet, but is it the most fun, and will it always be so?

Blizzard comes out with some cute pranks for April fool's day.

2008-04-01T12:21:00.000-04:00

Blizzard came up with two cute pranks on their website today. One is creating a rocking Bard Hero Class for the Wrath of the Lich King expansion, and the other with a console game that reminds us of the 1980's computer video game age.

http://www.worldofwarcraft.com/wrath/features/bard/bardclass.xml

http://www.worldofwarcraft.com/moltencore/

The Shadow Embrace set is awsome! But what do i do with it?

2008-03-25T14:53:00.000-04:00

So I got the set. I pushed really hard for a few days, and sacrificed a bit to push my tailoring to 375, and finally created my robe. The set is pretty cool. All of my curses and shadow bolts return a bit of life back to me. I've also re-socketed all of my pieces to add +hit bonuses for raiding and instance runs.

I will say one thing. It was a lot of work and resources to push my tailoring to 375. Tons and tons of mats. There are many people who say that it for a clothie it is almost a required choice to have tailoring to make one of the epic tailoring sets. I don't know if I agree though. Yes, the set allows you to have great gear without doing much instances or raiding. However, it is not a cheap set, and is very time and effort consuming.

Here is my main dilemma with the set. I've invested so much time and resources into it. What did I get it for? It's not a PVP set, so it's not really for PVPing. It's a PVE and Raiding set. But I am not big on doing instances and raiding. It is so time consuming, and frustrating to get a good group and for everything to go smoothly. Add to that the fact that my family members want immediate attention while I'm in a dungeon, and it equals pretty frustrating experience. So, for regular questing, I would have been fine with stuff I got as quest rewards and stuff tailors desperately sell in AH to help level their tailoring. It now seems almost like a waste to me. Maybe I've been better with an epic flyer? :(

I'm not into Drinkin'

2008-03-21T09:44:00.000-04:00

Recently my friend switched to playing horde, from playing Alliance. He finally saw the light! :) Actually the main reason he switched, was because he likes playing in the battle grounds and he was constantly losing there.

So he rolled a priest, and I rolled a Mage. We went with Undead first, but then rerolled to blood elves, for the aesthetic reasons. Well he's priest is of course at a much higher level then my Mage, since he plays him exclusively and I split my time between the warlock and the Mage.

Well after getting my Mage to level 24, I have to say I don't like playing with him. The nuke nuke nuke drink routine is not me! I am so spoiled with my warlock of grinding with no downtime, this drinking is very annoying. Also, if you get the mob on you, two hits and you're dead! So i can say that I'm dead a lot!

I think I'm rerolling a Shaman. I actually enjoyed levelling my Draeni Shaman, until my friend stoped playing the Alliance, and so did I.

So why shaman, well I like the idea of hitting with spells, but then being able to take the beating if needed, and also healing yourself. Similar to Druid ( which I have at level 22 and still found easier to play with then my Mage), but less switching around from for to form.

Shaman will be my utility character. I am not one of the people who loves to play with others too much, so a character who can take care of himself is what I need. A Warlock was that for me with Voidwalker, and especially once I got my Fellguard. I hope that Shaman can be his own utility knife.

Chasing the Frozen Shadow Tailored Set Vs. Epic Flyer.

2008-03-13T11:06:00.000-04:00

I've been trying really hard to tailor my Frozen Shadoweave set for my Warlock. However, after spending tons and tons of money and time to either farm the primals or to buy them, I start questioning myself - is it worth the effort? It seems that I can probably find a lot of nice upgrades just doing the instances.

So far I got the shoulders and the boots, which are pretty nice. But they cost me a lot! I also made a huge mistake of making the shoulders twice ( i wanted to make the boots the second time). Finally the robe is not only very material intensive, but requires 375 tailoring. My tailoring is about 367. The only decent way to get up to 375 is to make imbued netherweave robe or tunic, which will be expensive to make and don't really sell that well.

So where am I going with all of this money talk? Don't I get enough money from questing? Well yes. However, I've set my eyes on the epic flyer, and I'm on NO BUYING policy until I get it! :( Let's hope that's soon. Until then, robe can wait, and I'll far the cloth to get my tailoring up.

I got my warlock epic!!!

2008-02-07T23:21:00.000-05:00

Well, this is official, today I've got my warlock epic mount. Up to now I gave up on the idea of getting the Warlock epic mount and bought a regular epic skeleton horse. But then came my membership in my new guild, which now goes by the name The Forsaken. I got some very nice guildies and the other day another level 60 Warlock wanted to run thorough the Dire Maul and get his mount. I offered to "help", since I already have all the mats for the quest. Well the Guild Master, a level 70 Shaman and a recently hit 70 healing priest came along, and they also had the key, which is very important.

It took us no time to clear the pieces we needed and whack the boss at the spot for the summoning. Then came a challenge, I usually care a full soulbag full of soulshards. Unfortunately right before we went to Dire Maul, I came out of PVP and was short on Shards. Now, at level 70 I could not get more shards in DM because the Mob is too low for my level. Well my guildmates had to wait for 10 mins while I hearthed back to Terrokar forest and get some shads. They then summoned me back in and we went though the quest.

The summoning of the dreadsteed was very messy. Tons of demons running around, and you've got to keep up the three pieces flowing for the ritual. The shards I needed are for keeping up the three pieces floating in the air, making the summoning circle, and you need about 10 or more shards to keep it going. Thank God my guild mates were experienced, and have done this rituals before. It went like a charm. And now I've got my horse. :D very happy

Picture coming soon ...

So Moramor is level 70, now what?

2008-02-02T22:58:00.000-05:00

I've finally hit level 70 on my main toon - Moramor. This is a tremendous and exiting point in my WoW career. I've got my basic flying mount and all!

However, now comes the question of what to do after level 70. One of the obvious things is to do endgame dungeons and raids. This will be a change for me since I usually prefer to quest alone. Another one would be to get tons of reputation, another would be to get cool gear. Maybe even do some serious PVP? One thing is certain, I've got to get my warlock epic mount! :)