Nice cup of tea

It was a great weekend in the World of Warcraft. I did some useful PvP, worked hard on my tradeskills, earnt a nice chunk of gold playing the Auction House (a game within a game), and levelled confidently towards sixty.



I started off by being instrumental in a rare and much-needed Alliance WSG victory. It was only a group of PUG randoms, but we all pulled together to run interference in the Horde's base, and once I grabbed the flag I got great support on the run back. One cap by Knockout-Arathor and two captures by me later, the Horde was broken and WSG was safely in the hands of the Silverwing Sentinels. For the Alliance!

Then Wandawench and I continued our work in Winterspring and the Eastern and Western Plaguelands. I love the Plaguelands. I'm looking forward to facing more Scourge when WotLK is released -- for some reason I love fighting against skelingtons and zombogs. As well as the experience, the [Runecloth] from the Scourge came in handy for Wanda's Tailoring, and the [Rugged Leather] from skinning Plaguehounds helped my Leatherworking along.

On a trip to Ironforge to rest and resupply, I noticed a quest urging us to help out the effort in Silithus, so we decided to take a trip there. It's hot, windy, covered in sandstorms and the mindlessly evil Sithid, so it's not a great holiday destination. I did get a weapon upgrade though -- my beloved [Hurricane] was starting to show it's age, and I was able to swap it for a quest reward, [Sandstrider's Mark]. Plus, all the insect killing allowed us to reach level 59, with just half a level to go until we reach 60!

By this point, it was Sunday evening, and Wanda had retired for the night, but I really wanted to round my Leatherworking out to 300. I had to do some research. I needed to get enough [Rugged Leather] to make three items, to bring me from 297 to 300, and I needed to get it without spending any money, or gaining any experience, as Wanda and I are sticking together on the levelling curve.

WowWiki and WowHead to the rescue! First, I looked up the highest level mobs I could kill without gaining any experience using this chart on the wiki. Then, by using a couple of WowHead filters, I got a list of all the mobs no higher than that level that I could skin [Rugged Leather] from, which lead me to the Rage Scar Yeti cave in Ferelas.

Several runs through the cave and a great many Yetis later -- they mainly drop [Thick Leather], which can be turned into [Rugged Leather] at a ratio of 6:1 -- I had the required 36 pieces I needed, so now I have my 300 Leatherworking skill! This means I have 300 in my "big three" of Skinning, Leatherworking and First Aid, so I'm ready to tackle the portal as soon as Wanda is. She just needs to catch her Tailoring and Enchanting up a little, and now all my attention can now be aimed at helping her!

Labels: equipment, leatherworking, pvp, stala, tailoring

I've read a few good posts on making money recently, and I've started to put some of their suggestions into practice. I have to buy my epic mount in a few short levels, so I've decided to keep a closer eye on my finances. Which, as a sucker for a spreadsheet and pointless maths, means keeping a log and making pretty graphs:



I'll expand on this post shortly.

Labels: money, stala

I listened to an episode of the Epic Dolls Podcast today (number #23 I think) and was very impressed. They're so sweet and adorable :) So they will be staying as a regular subscription and I'll be working my way back through the archives.

Podcasts are a major part of my World of Warcraft experience. I always have iTunes playing one while I'm playing -- unless I'm on vent and really need to concentrate. So I thought I'd give you a little run down of the podcasts I listen to most often:

• Distorted View Daily. This is disgusting and disturbing and really not safe for work or home or anywhere. No one with any sense of decency (or ears) should listen to it. It's great.
• Gamers With Jobs Conference Call. An excellent gaming-related podcast from the Gamers With Jobs, who are also a great forum community. They play WoW on the US servers, but being a EU player I sadly don't get to play with them.
• Adam and Joe. A weekly collection of the best bits from their radio show. Hilarious and bizarre. I've been a fan of A&J for a long time so I love this podcast.
• The Underground Shortbus. Another NSFW podcast, this time mainly about music and being drunk and manly. Black out, man.
• Webcomics Weekly. I don't have a webcomic -- I just read a lot of them -- but these guys just crack me up. Plus there's a lot of good art and life tips that you can apply to blogging and web design as a whole.

There's a whole bunch more (2 Guys, 1 Brain, Sick and Wrong, The Flatus Show, Coverville, Friday Night Comedy, ...) but that's enough for now. Suffice to say I like to listen and loot...

Labels: podcasts, stala

If anyone has seen Wandawench doing any of these things: randomly running in circles, running in circles and pulling six mobs, or running onto the stationary boat in Menethil Harbor, I can reasure you now that I am not a bot!

In the beginning when I became a little over run with adds I just ran away. On one occasion in Westfall, whilst running away from three knolls and shouting to my poor other half, we then heard the infamous call of a Murloc. Yes, I ran all the way through a field of Knolls to the coast and discovered my first herd of Murlocs. I did not survive long!

I first started WoW having never played a PC game. I rolled an undead rogue first -- what a mistake that was! As I found moving and fighting difficult, sneaking up on things was a little tricky for me. I found it hard playing a rogue and nearly gave up.

Eventually I rolled a priest and in the early days I was specced completely holy and I loved it. I thought it was fantastic watching those health bars go up before my eyes was great fun. I still like healing and when I was in a group as the healer for the first time, no one died which I took to mean I was doing OK!

I am now specced shadow due to one incident that opened my eyes a little to the shadow side of the tree. I saw another priest fighting with what looked like lighting to me but horizontal -- Mind Flay. I asked for help with talent points and as I was going to be soloing or in a small group I chose to spec shadow. I still heal a little though and enjoy sheilding Stala and her cat when needed, but mostly I just help with the furbolg killing!

This weekend, I have been re-organised a bit better thanks to the help of my other half. I think he may have been a little shocked that at level 54 I still had a [Package for Stormpike] in my bag and a few seasonal rewards. What can I say? Even in game I am a hoarder!

Labels: introduction, wandawench

Not a particularly exciting weekend. Wandawench and I are now level 55, thanks to killing hundreds of furbolgs for their little thongs -- next time you loot cloth from a Furbolg or Ogre, think about where that [Mageweave Cloth] is actually located on their body.

Along the way, we also got our first epic world drop: [Edgemaster's Handguards]. Sadly not very useful for either of us, but thanks to the auction house some fury warrior or enhancement shaman is happy, and we're ever so slightly richer.

Labels: stala

Everyone else is doing it, so why not me? My thoughts on the PTR Patch 2.4.0 notes.

The Sunwell Isle

• The Sunwell Isle is now available for play. This area includes a new quest hub and 5-player and 25-player instances. Join the Shattered Sun Offensive in shutting down Kael’thas’ nefarious operations. This new force is comprised by both the Aldor and Scryers and is led by the Naaru. Players will take part in claiming Sun’s Reach and setting up a larger base of operation to stop Kael’thas and the Legion.
• The combined forces of Shattrath have launched an attack on the Isle of Quel’Danas, to confront Kael’thas and the Legion at the Sunwell and surrounding areas. Players will now be able to gain reputation with the Shattered Sun Offensive and participate in a new set of daily quests.

This might be interesting, particularly as a quest hub. As a mainly duo-player (one more than a solo player!) I doubt I'll do the 5-man instances very often, and the 25-man instances are almost certainly never going to get a look in, but the daily quests might be interesting. A new faction to grind is always welcome, I just hope there is a way to do it without running lots of instances. I also hear from Ratshag's blog that the daily quest reward packages may contain a [Badge of Justice]. If this is true, and the droprate isn't hideous, then this is really, really great news for people such as myself, who aren't running instances.

General

• Characters will now retain talented spell ranks so when they retalent they do not have to relearn the spells from trainers.
• Weapon Skill: Points will be gained faster in weapon skills for levels 1 through 59.

I approve of both of these changes. It's getting so easy to level to 60 now! I'm so jealous of all the people starting their first character, everything is so polished and easy now.

Hunter

• Equipping a thrown weapon while in the middle of an Auto-Shot will no longer cause animation issues.
• Casting Flare while in any way not visible, will no longer cause your flare to be invisible to other players.
• Hunter’s Mark: Hunters with Improved Hunter’s Mark will now properly overwrite Hunter’s Mark cast by Hunters without the talent.
• The stamina tooltip for hunter pets will now display the proper health increase.

Hmm... I really don't see anything to get really excited about here. The Hunter's Mark fix is appreciated, as is the stamina tooltip issue, but that's about it. Still, I feel very happy with my class as things stand, so I'm not disappointed.

PvP

• Diminishing returns on honor for kills is being eliminated.
• If a player dies 50 times or more in a battleground, they will no longer be worth honor for the remainder of that battle.

Mixed feelings about this one. On the one hand, the extra honor is welcome. On the other, people hanging around in the middle of WSG and at the choke points in AV and fighting instead of concentrating on objectives is common enough, without further rewarding this behaviour.

• Honor will now be instantly calculated, and available for player use.
• Players will now be able to purchase level 70 Superior quality PvP items from reputation vendors.
• Players that have the resurrection sickness debuff will be worth no honor.

All sound good. Being able to spend honor as soon as you earn it could be a nice perk for the serious PvP'er, and more ways to gear up (especially for PvP) are always welcome. I predict most of my level 70 equipment will be PvP derived. Not sure that the resurrection sickness change will do much though -- no one would do any organised PvP with the sickness, and lack of honor rarely dissuades the determined ganker.

Warsong Gulch

• When both flags are held, the flag carriers will receive 50% increased damage done to them after approximately 10 minutes and 100% increased damage after approximately 15 minutes.
• Flag carriers can now be tracked 45 seconds after picking up the flag.

Brilliant. Anything that makes WSG quicker is much appreciated. I hate stalemate matches that drag on far too long. And this change:

• Alterac Valley, Arathi Basin, Warsong Gulch, Blade’s Edge Arena, Lordaeron Arena, and Nagrand Arena: Players who fall below the world in these environments will now die instead of being stuck.

...makes it even better. Take that, terrain glitch exploiters! I can see myself really getting into battlegrounds and the PvP dailys in a big way once I (finally) drag myself to level 70 and start gearing up. I'll need to respec, and get some PvP-centric equipment, and, and...

Fishing

• New Fishing Daily Quests! Visit the mysterious old man fishing at Silmyr Lake outside of Shattrath City to discover what treasures he has to offer.
• Find Fish now correctly tracks Schools of Tastyfish and Muddy Churning Waters.

I have made only a tentative start into the world of fishing, but I really like the idea of daily quests, so this is another good reason to sit down by some water and get my fishing skill up.

Dungeons and Raids

• Non-corporeal Undead and Mechanical creatures are now susceptible to bleed effects.

Doesn't affect me directly -- is this to help rogues do more damage? -- but this change seems very odd. How do ghosts and robots bleed? Weird. I don't spend much time at all in dungeons, so I have no comments on the rest. It sounds as though many things are getting quicker and easier to achieve. I don't know if the hardcore raiders will appreciate that, but hey! Everyone else will.

User Interface

• Weapon enchants are now shown at the character selection screen.

For such a minor issue, this has bugged me for a long time. I'm glad it's been addressed!

• The friends list now has a notes field per friend. Click on the note icon to add a note for a particular friend.
• There is now a UI option to display free bag space. When turned on, your backpack will display the total number of free spaces available in all your bags.
• You can now link quests into the chat log by Shift-Clicking on the quest name in the chat log.
• The names over the heads of nearby players who are on your friends list will appear in a different color now so you can tell when they are nearby.

I'm a sucker for UI addons and improvements, so these all get a thumbs up from me! Free space in bags is always an issue so being able to track it easily is a nice touch. Also, my friends all have lots of alts with shifting specs and tradeskills, so the notes feature will be nice to keep track of who's who and stop me asking embarrassing questions.

Overall? I'm very happy with this patch. Nothing I care about got nerfed, and a bunch of cool stuff got added. GJ Blizzard!

Labels: patches, stala

I’m not ashamed to admit that for me, aesthetics rank pretty highly along with the stats on an item. I’ll take a small-to-medium hit on stats to have a nicer looking item. I should have rolled on a RP server, not a scary PvP one! But don’t worry – I know why a lot of hunters are regarded as idiots. I would never roll on something better suited to someone else. I don’t need a warrior’s sword or a rogue’s dagger.

But not every item in the game needs to be rolled on. So – why don’t hunters use fist weapons (or any quick weapons)? It seems like hunters love big, slow, two handed weapons. Currently I’m rocking [Lord Alexander’s Battle axe] which is a very pretty two-handed axe, but in the past I have used a dagger / sword combination. Why give us the ability to wield almost anything, and the dual-wield ability, if we’re not supposed to?

Assuming, for the sake of argument, that two quicker one-handers have roughly equivalent stats of a slower two-hander, I see two ways of looking at hunter’s melee weapons:

• Hunter’s don’t like to be in melee range, and when they are they want to use either Disengage or Wing Clip as soon as possible, so use a quick one-hander to strike as quickly as possible, then escape.
• Hunter’s aren’t often in melee combat, so you might as well make the most of it when you are, use Wing Clip and also hit hard with a big two-hander.

I honestly don’t know which one is optimal. I suppose by the fact most hunters use a two-hander that this is the way to go, but I’m a very cautious player and like to hit and run to shooting distance sooner rather than later.

The whole thing is only in my mind because I was looking at the ex-arena awards the other night, planning my honor purchases, and I’m guessing that the [Gladiator's Painsaw] is intended for hunters. I think I am right in assuming most polearms are. The problem (for me!) is that the [Gladiator's Right Ripper] and [Gladiator's Left Ripper] look much, much more impressive and have pretty much equivalent stats. I’m not depriving a rogue of his fist weapon by rolling inappropriately, the only person who might be disadvantaged is myself.

The life of a fashion victim, played out in Azeroth. Should I take the polearm and fit right in, or should I get the stabby things that I love the look of so much and suffer the withering looks and mockery? Do I really suck? Am I a huntard for even thinking like this?

Labels: equipment, pvp, stala

As a largely solo player, I see PvP as the way to best to advance my character. I also really enjoy it – in a battleground context – so I don’t feel any guilt in using PvP as a way to get some epics. I’m not going to be raiding, and I doubt I’ll ever set foot inside Karazhan, so these aren’t welfare epics for me. Along with the crafted ones, they’re probably the only epics I’ll ever achieve. Besides, all the PvP epics have PvP stats that would make them unsuitable for serious PvE play, so it seems someone disingenuous to compare like with like.

Much has been said about the Alliance being bad at PvP, particularly in the battlegrounds, but I never put much stock in the idea. There doesn’t seem to be any reason why one side would be better than the other, as the classes are well balanced, and especially now that both sides have equal access to paladins and shaman. And not having played much PvP, I didn’t feel qualified to comment. But I’ve been playing lot more battlegrounds recently, and I’ve been losing.

At the moment, I am level 52, and progressing at a very leisurely pace to seventy. Once I decided to start a serious PvP career, I set up a spreadsheet to track the token and honor costs of the items I wanted to buy, as well as how many of each BG token I have, the amount of honor I’ve earned, and my progress towards buying everything I want. I aim to hit the ground running when I finally reach seventy, with a few honor-bought ex-arena and PvP reward epics ready to equip.

This has made me notice something about the costs of PvP equipment: the honor requirement seems to be much, much higher than the token requirement. I don’t earn honor at anything like the same rate as I earn battleground tokens. So what I am supposed to do with all the tokens I will have left over? For example, at the moment I have around 25% of the tokens I need to buy the basics of what I want at seventy (armor set, epic weapons, trinket) but only 3% of the honor required. Does honor get much easier to come by in the Eye of the Storm or in higher-level matches?

One of the more interesting things I decided to track in my spreadsheet is my win: loss ratio. After every match, I mark down whether it was a win or a loss for the Alliance, and I’m sad to say the numbers I’ve gathered support the idea that the mighty Alliance royally suck at battlegrounds:

Wins:	3	(13%)
Losses:	21	(87%)

This is a combination of Warsong Gulch, Alterac Valley, and mainly Arathi Basin. I also concede that the only common factor in all of these matches is that I was playing, but that’s a thought too terrible to think about. I like to think that I am a decent player (don’t we all?), and I often fall in the top half to quarter of the scoreboard. I’m also keen on playing as a hunter correctly, which I think means:

• DPSing down anyone and everyone, prioritising cloth and leather wearers;
• Using my Viper Sting to drain mana from mana-sensitive classes such as mages and priests;
• Using Concussive Shot and my pet’s Intimidate to slow down classes that would otherwise like to be nimble: rogues, cat form druids, flag bearers, anyone running amok;
• Having my pet Intimidate and harass as many people as possible;
• Using traps to slow and freeze opponents in strategically important points: near flags, objectives, chokepoints.

Notice I said “I think” this is how I supposed to play my class. Maybe I am wrong, and should concentrate only and whole-heartedly on damage output, or lurking at the back setting traps. This leads me nicely to what I believe is the core of the problem I’m having with PvP, and often with PUG grouping in general: everybody expects everyone else to know what to do, and consequently no one says much of anything. The net result is no tactics or plans are formed, and the Horde steam roll ahead, with us disorganised and dying in silence.

Now, am I part of the problem? Certainly. As an Alliance PvP player, dying in the battlegrounds on the losing side, yes, I am the problem. We all are. I am PvPing in mainly quest greens, with the occasional blue and my beloved epic [Hurricane]. I don’t have any PvP-centic +stamina or +resist gear, so I don’t have thousands of health and warlocks have no trouble DOTting me into the ground. But I’ve got to start somewhere!

Still, there is the nagging thought that if I rolled a horde character on a server in the same battle group, I would be on the winning side 80% of time… But that isn’t the way to improve myself. Time to get back into the battleground queue, and keep practising.

For the Alliance! /salute

Labels: pvp, stala

There's a guild on my server with a name I can appreciate: Get Rich or Die Grinding. I actually quite like grinding and farming -- they're valuable skills for the solo or duo player.



As a leatherworker, I occasionally need [Deeprock Salt], so I've been farming Lesser Rock Elementals in the Badlands. They drop the salt, and also [Elemental Earth] and [Solid Stone], both of which sell fairly well on the Auction House.

It's quite a nice area to farm, as the elementals can be tracked, respawn reasonably quickly, and don't have any really irritating abilities. Plus, the Badlands are easy to get to from Ironforge -- I only wish there was a direct Alliance flight path!

Anyway, as a result of farming these elementals a couple of times, I have a few stacks of [Deeprock Salt] in the bank, and a nice chunk of gold toward my epic mount from auction proceeds.

Labels: farming, leatherworking, stala

Looks like I'm not the only one who had the "pleasure" of doing this quest:


I use a riding talbuk for getting around, as I think it looks much nicer than my mechanostrider, and I can usually blame any droppings on a passing Tauren. Tee hee!

Labels: blume, quests