Its weird not knowing what to do

Having been MT for quite some time I used to do a lot of research and practice runs and all kinds of things so that I would try to know what was going to happen before it actually happened. Well, as I have not entered a dungeon in a couple months and have run the Cata ones 1-3 times at most I have no bloomin idea whats going on or whats happening during any of the fights now. In a way its kind of refreshing and as I was in as damage I just did what I was told. Its also a little annoying though, because I expect better from myself. I like to be able to perform my role to the best of my ability no matter my gear level. I am sure they will all become easy and repetitive soon enough but for now its a fascinating look at how I am playing the game from this new perspective.

I've been trying to finish Reg Halls Of Reflection on my warlock

He doesn't have good enough gear to get in heroic according to lfg so I was trying to do it on regular to finish the quest chain. I got in a group we killed the first 2 bosses easily enough and the shield didn't drop so of course the tank bailed so he could re-queue. a couple of us waited 10 minutes or so, but when we didn't get anyone it fell apart. So I re-queued. I got the same tank with a whole different group. Blow through the first 2 bosses, no shield, he drops group again. Now this time I was with a very patient group. Everyone waited 35 minutes and we didn't get another tank, so everyone said thanks but I've got other things to do. I really appreciated that and they were great we talked about a bunch of stuff while we were waiting, they were a great group. I understand why the tank did it. but I would just like to put this out there. Its only another 10 minutes max, you really could help out everyone else and maybe get some good karma points for yourself towards getting the shield to drop.
/endrant
K Out!

It's not that easy to gear up your alts.

Well it is but trying to do the heroic grind on some of my alts just makes me not want to play. I did a little math and to get the 4 piece t9 and the triumph helm it would take you 59 heroic dungeons to get that done. I can barely do one or two before I start losing my marbles I've done them all so many times. Normally this leads me to playing my alts but now that they are all in Northrend its more of the same dungeons I've run so many times I just can't do them anymore and quests I've done 5 or 6 times that don't interest me right now. I have 4 71-76 alts I don't really feel like playing much and 8 80's 3 who don't really need gear and 5 that need so much it gets frustrating thinking about grinding out more. So yes epics may be falling from the sky but just because they are doesn't make getting them really that fast or very much fun. I almost feel like I should start an arena team like I did in BC but I haven't been doing any pvp so I don't have any pvp gear and thinking about grinding for it well see above lol. I do miss bg's a little bit so maybe I will do a little pvp and see if that feels more fun.

Back again

Did my daily random on my shammy and got in a VH hold run. Easy right? well when someone starts it and the tank is dc'ed it gets sorta rough. Well we had a DK so he kinda tanked through wave 6. I say kinda because he wouldn't switch to frost presence so the Boomkin and I kept pulling aggro. halfway through the core-hound boss the Boomkin died and I had all the ag so I dropped my rock guy and started healing him and we beat it. We had voted to kick the dc'ed tank at wave four so we were in queue but no reinforcements showed and the DK bailed right after the boss. well our holy pally healer started tanking then (held ag way better than the DK too lol). After wave 7 the boomkin bailed so it was just me and Toz of Alexstraza. An awesome Holy paladin if there ever was one we 2-manned wave 7-10 until reinforcements arrived. I kept rooting them with my earthbind totem and doing damage whenever I could we were healing each other and just kept working away at them. So here's to you Toz, I wish you many good drops and easy pugs.

I am going to do better this time

I just thought I would post that I am in between contracts with my employer right now. During the summer when I wasn't working I really didn't post at all and I don't want to do that this time. I don't expect to not be working nearly as long this time but I can't say for sure. I have been playing sporadically. I played a ton right as the new year kicked off. I was on all the time for almost a week. I kind of burned myself out. I took a couple days away from WOW and it was good, reading and watching movies. I even downloaded the trial to Fallen Earth. It has some really entertaining parts and I can see that it is a pretty fun game. Its nowhere near as polished as WOW but how could it be being a new game and WOW has been out for 5+ years. It is easy to get into the storyline. I felt the controls were a little goofy but I changed some of the key binds and that made it a lot more familiar. I don't know if I'll play it much beyond the trial if at all but it was definitely interesting to play a different game since I barely play anything besides WOW anymore. The only thing I turn my xbox on for is instant view Netflix movies, which is awesome but I used to play a ton of console games, I have barely played any of them at all in the last 2 years. Mostly in WOW I've just been leveling alts. I am just so tired of dailies and I ran a ton of the random heroics I was just looking for something different. I do like running the low level dungeons with my alts although its probably 50-50 on whether you'll finish the dungeon or not.Well this got longer than I thought it would but I hadn't been on for a while so I guess that makes sense.
K Out!

LFD: Tank vs. Dps

Last night I logged on long enough to do a random dungeon for some emblems and thought since I was still in my dps spec I'd just queue up as dps. Well if you have done this already you know there is a huge difference in wait times for a tank vs. a dps. Its not like it took forever or anything and I did get to do a little mining during the wait which was good as I hadn't done any for a while. I also was in a run with some uber geared dps, it doesn't take much to knock you down a few pegs when you think your doing alright and thought you pulled some good numbers on a fight and look at yourself in third on recount. I was pushing between 3.5 to 4k on some pulls and these guys were way ahead of me like 5-6k every fight. I really tried to buckle down and push it as hard as I could and I may have done some of my best dps ever but those guys just stomped me. so any illusions of me being super dps went away real quick. Thankfully I do a pretty good job of tanking and don't need to worry about it. I did get to see how other people handle certain pulls and groups so that was definitely a valuable experience to have. I hope we get a good weekly raid quest tonight and can push into some other stuff afterwards. This post has a lot of random thoughts, sorry.

OK tonight we go into Icecrown

Well I know we were going to go Tuesday but that didn't work out with the servers not being friendly to everyone. I am in the Midwest and have been dealing with the blizzard here so I didn't have work yesterday and got to play a lot more WOW than normal. I have gotten into the new 5 mans and I like them but as a tank I think there are way to many casters (We may unretire crowd control on a couple of pulls). I also think they may get a little tedious with the monologues but other than that some fun and interesting fights. I am pretty happy with everything I've seen from the new patch I even got rid of some of my addons (mainly Cartographer and Questhelper) because now the game covers what I wanted from them. I didn't really have any issues with my other addons although I did have to adjust some of my game settings which was weird why was my camera control changed and my loot window location was different too, just kind of odd. So anyways tonight we are going to go into ICC and take our first shot at the new raid. I have watched the vids and read the strats and I feel like we are going to do great. I am really looking forward to it. I hope everyone else is having as much fun as I am with all the new stuff.

Looks like I'll be tanking Lord Marrowgar tonight!!

Well as long as the servers are up anyways :). I am hopeful though and I have been doing my research and I think I am ready for the fight. As long as we can work together I think we stand a good chance at taking him down. I do want to try out the new 5mans too sometime soon so if the raid doesn't work out maybe we'll jump in those. Also have to do the random dungeon daily and find out what the raid weekly quest is. Wow there is a lot of stuff to do. I am really looking forward to this and I think we are going to have a blast tonight. I hope everyone else is as excited as I am to try out all the new stuff and good luck on whatever you are working on.

I gave up on a group last night

I am kind of ashamed of it and I kind of wish I hadn't but after 2 wipes on the snake boss in Gun'Drak I hearthed out and logged off. I was just not in the mood to deal with people and decided to level my shaman instead. I know 2 times isn't very much and I probably sound like an elitist douche bag but it was just a bad experience and I wasn't ready to deal with it at the time. I had a pally healer who had dual-specced and was in his tanking gear when he started the group and with 33k health I figured he at least had an idea about what he was doing. Well, both tries on the snake boss he ran right next to me and got blown up by the poison nova. I thought it was a fluke the first time because I didn't really position the boss away from the group, so the second time I positioned him away from everyone and the healer and one of the hunters ran right by me and got blown up by the snake boss again. This after the first wipe where they went in the back door to get there bodies, I should have known they had never been there before and maybe worked it out but I just got fed up and bailed. I feel bad about it now, but I just couldn't deal with it then. I guess I am too spoiled by my new guild that I forgot what its like out there.

Tired of Coren Direbrew

I know the mounts are cool and all, but we spent the entire night shuffling in alts killing him. I might not log back in until next week just so I don't have to waste another night killing him over and over again. I just don't think the fight is all that fun and the drop rate on the good stuff is so poor, we have killed him repeatedly on 4 different occasions pulling in everyone's alts probably to the point we have killed him over a 100 times and we have seen 3 rams 1 kodo and 2 remotes. You can't even sell or DE the useless stuff he drops, at least if you could vendor the stuff it would be worth it because then I would be making some cash during this. Maybe I would have a different opinion if I won one of those things hmm, lol. Oh well I'll probably never know.

The new Patch

Well, its been an interesting week to say the least. Emblems of Conquest now rain down like water from the sky. Having 2 max level JC's has been really great for epic gem cuts. I am really of two minds on the new 5man. I like it because its actually kind of challenging, but at the same time its almost to much for some of the people I run with (and they have a habit of being easily frustrated). This new dungeon really displays the skill disparity between some of our guild members and is causing some issues. There were some pretty heavy repair bills on a run I missed. I have tanked and healed it on Heroic and its actually really fun to tank, and annoying to heal but it is a good challenge. Also I have made sure to do the H Daily on my priest everyday and trying on my tank and boomkin as much as I can. I have already gotten some nice upgrades on my pally and he is almost geared with all new epic gems. Also I have been working on my horde server fairly regularly leveling my hunter and DK. Its quite a change from alliance side on the low levels. I will also have my 5th 80 by the end of the week as my warlock hit 79 Saturday. He's a free agent currently and I will be crashing heroics like mad with him when I hit 80, I am thinking about putting him in a different guild from my other mains as kind of a trial run to see if I would want to be in a raiding guild. We'll see hot it goes. Still looking for a job too, the prospects are few and far between right now.

Grouping before 80

I've been seeing alot of people talk about how theres alot of people at 80 that seemed to skip a bunch of the content coming up just to get to 80. I can see some of that going on but I also have seen a ton of people running dungeons from 60 to 80 and I see this as a really good way for them to get used to there class and learn how to work in a group. I have been leveling my Warlock and DK alot lately as I have fun just blowing stuff up and even though I had to tank some runs on my DK to get them going I have been able to get in to both Nexus and UK and both AN and OK and will probably get in VH pretty easily too. I have had alot of fun with it and on my warlock I have had him in all the low level outland dungeons and a Nexus run as he got to 70. Almost all of this was on pug runs with both these guys. I have met a bunch of great people leveling up and have tried to build a small list of healers I can trust leveling up and to help out in dungeons. I have had a great experience grouping as I am leveling up so if you are out there on a lower level than 80 toon don't be afraid to jump in LFG and see what can be found. One note, dungeons in the old world besides Stocks, VC, and ZF are usually pretty hard to get runs for and the dungeons themselves are very long and will be less worth it to try to pug. If you want to try please go ahead but you might have an easier time getting a runthrough from your guild if you have found one yet. So go forth and run dungeons and kill bosses and get some nice gear to help speed up that grind to 80.

New one on me

Last night I was trying to do a little bit to level my priest so I figured I'd pug a dungeon run for some quick xp. I got in LFG saw there was a tank and a dps in for VH and grabbed them figuring 2 dps no problem. HA! The dps didn't want to head back to Dalaran and bailed (after being in LFG for VH.. that's a whole other issue). So I was sitting there trying to find dps for VH, and I got noone. Its Violet Hold!!, you don't even have to leave Dalaran and it takes 15 minutes. But no, I had to pull 3 80's from my guild to bail me out and get it done since I had found this tank already. I know everybody is in Ulduar but come on.

Altitis in full swing

I have been switching between toons pretty furiously lately. I got my mage to 50 last night, been pushing my warlock to 58 to work with some of the folks new to outland. I have been doing a few dailies between my priest, pally, and boomkin, also spending time working the auction house(mostly trying to liquidate gems I made while leveling up jewelcrafting) We have run a few things here and there. I do love it when Nexus is the heroic daily because it is an easy 7 emblems(I know!). Really just working on getting some emblems and I have been watching strat videos on bosses to get ready to start pugging some raids. Wish me luck!

Heroic Achievements

Well howdy, I had a productive weekend in WOW. I got my first heroic dungeon achievement. Snakes

So that was fun, even if we did get it by accident. I am getting a little more confidant in my ability to tank heroics as well. I got a couple upgrades to my kit over the weekend. We had a couple people trying to get the Lunar Festival achievement so I helped them get all the Northrend dungeon ones done. It seems if you want to you can have just a tank and 2 dps and finish Draktheron Keep hahaha. (we didn't finish it but did kill a couple of bosses to see if we could). I almost have my warrior in Northrend as well to help the lower level and alts get into some dungeons here soon. Also GO STEELERS!! What a game, I mean just an amazing finish. I knocked my drink over when Harrison returned that interception for a touchdown.

Heroic Upgrades by Dungeon

This is just kind of a reference post for me, on how many upgrades for my tank I can get out of which heroic 5-mans, in no particular order

* Significant upgrade, ** Minor upgrade

Utgarde Keep: 2 Sword and ring

Utgarde Pinnacle: 2 Sword* and Belt**

Oculus: 3 Ring**, Axe, Pants

Nexus: 0

Azjol Nerub: 2 Trinket*, Belt**

Ahn'kahet: 3 Ring**, Necklace*, Bracer*

Drak'Tharon Keep: 2 Ring, Chest (both last boss)

Violet Hold: 2 Trinket, Pants*

Gundrak: 2 Shoulder, Trinket**, Glove

Halls of Stone: 2 Ring, Chest

Halls of Lightning: 1 Shoulder

Culling of Stratholme: 2 Bracer, Necklace*

I don't have any gear from Heroics but I do have 3 crafted epics, a few rep pieces, and a couple of pieces I have bought to cover the rest of my gear until we get into Naxx

0 FOR 15

Just a quick update on the frustration Loken gives me. I want the tanking trinket, but he doesn't want me to have it. I am not happy about this grrrrr......

Fun with older content

I have been on my tank alot lately but its not what I expected. I have been in LBRS, UBRS (Jenkins for a bunch of guildies!!), and we've been running some Outland heroics, mostly MagT for the pet and mount off of Kael (congrats Pintail and Lafrentz), but we even got a few people that had hung on to there Kara key quests on some alts (When was the last time you wiped in Heroic Steamvaults, try pulling the whole run and find out, lol.) So no new drops, hardly even been in Northrend at all except for porting. I am kind of thinking of making Heroic MagT a normal run for us since we have quite a few alts from 60-low 70's and the drops in there really hold up til the mid to high 70's so a possibility for fun drops for the 80's and gear for our alts, it should be a fun way to keep our lower level toons and upper level toons interacting together with a little something for everyone.

Upgrades for my tank

With my current gear I can tank heroics. I prefer going into these as prepared as I possibly can be and since I have not even run Halls of Stone, Oculus, or Culling of Stratholme yet I would like to run them on regular before going into a heroic so I can have some kind of idea what I'm doing. I also wanted to see if I could get any upgrades from some of these dungeons without spending insane amounts of gold on the auction house for the boe purples that drop in Naxx. I have already mentioned my desire for the trinket from Loken that he doesn't want me to have (0 for 13 so far). I have found a few items that I would like to have from some of the 80 regular dungeons. Wish me luck :)

Girdle Of Obscuring - The Oculus
Dragonflight Great-Ring - The Oculus
Svala's Bloodied Shackles - Utgarde Pinnacle
Reanimated Armor - Utgarde Pinnacle
Amulet of Deflected Blows - Utgarde Pinnacle

So I need to add Oculus and Utgarde Pinnacle to my instance farming rotation. I guess I'll just run Halls of Stone and Culling for fun and to learn the fights a little.

Azjol-Nerub or Spiders eck!

Well we got into Azjol-Nerub today and its actually kind of fun once you get the hang of the fights. Basically the fights all have a sequence you just have to know what it is. With the first boss its just he sends his groups in front of him and there is really no downtime between them he says something about intruders and then they come running at you. After they are all dead he follows suit. The second boss was the trickiest for us but we finally got him down by waiting until he came all the way up and webbed off the tunnels that all the extra spiders kept coming down. Once he did that we just had to keep cleansing the poison off and he went down easy. The last boss is pretty easy you tank and spank he goes in the ground and calls adds and throws spikes up then he comes back out and you tank and spank him again rinse and repeat a couple times and he's down. Now to get into some more instances!