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 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 :)

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.

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

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! :)

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.

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


The Craft of War: BLIND from percula on Vimeo.

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'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.

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.

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.

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.

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

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!

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.

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:

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.

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