Smelly Wet Bear

The grass is not greener

2009-10-27T13:20:00.004-05:00

I play on a west coast server - i.e. pacific time zone. I live in Minnesota so it isn't always a bad thing but there are times when I think long and hard about changing.

See, most of my wow friends, with the exception of those I personally know, live somewhere in the PDT/PST time zone. They range from British Columbia to Central Kalif. (yes, the K is intentional).

I have a few friends in Colo and a few more in Mo, Minn, NY and even soem from Austrailia, but for the most part our playing group is west coast. I had such an itch to play another server that I rolled a DK, leveled it to 80, geared it out to start off in like naxx 10/25 and I even went so far as to find a guild on a central time zone server. I had to log my mains on my home server to prove I knew raiding tho.. call that a little strange eh?

The old saying goes, "The grass is always greener ..." but trust me - it AIN'T. Wow what a mess. I'm in what I think of as crappy gear and I'm doing mediocre dmg in any given raid but also finding I'm clear and away the highest dps. But most of the ones I can get into (apparently DK hatred goes far and wide) couldn't clear their way out of a wet paper sack. I found myself teaching basics to noobs. Not such a bad thing but when every single person you run into has very little idea of how the game it played it wears on ya.

Add to that the economy was totally screwy. People were charging 100g for epic gems and 90g for blues. Fish feasts were selling 300g a stack and PEOPLE WERE PAYING THAT! Wow. I made a ton of money off incredibly stupid people - saronite ore alone selling for 100g a stack for example. But even that wasn't enough to convince me my real home wasn't better.

I'm sure there's good players there, I'm sure there are great raiding guilds, but I spent 3 months looking and couldn't find one. I once got yelled at in a 5man heroic UK. Me, another dk in better gear and some casters and a well geared pally tank were all doing fine. The last boss comes up and the leather belt drops. It's nothing special but was a clear upgrade over my green. Pally passes, casters pass, I roll need, DK waits like 2 mins - I'm thinking he's considering it though why I don't know - he had okay plate. I win, put it on, say thanks for the run all but I gotta get dinner goin and start for the door. Fair enough ya? Apparently no. DK starts whispering me - Yer a ninja! yer a ninja! Goes on in trade chat - calling me a ninja. So I can either ignore or fight. I'm new - bad rep not a good thing when yer far from home and friends. I took the high road - wrote out I'm using the item - you're using XYZ, I rolled BEFORE you - please tell me how this constitutes stealing?

Then to top it off - I get whispers from my guild officers. You shouldn't ninja - you're on probation. This after I'd spent a ton of time helping - farming - showing newer ppl tricks - generally being a good guy etc. Would they hear me out? nope - didn't wanna hear it. Didn't seem to worry bout anything but the label. I was a little steamed but I held my tongue. Mom always says count 10 right?

I think it was a day or so later I gave my bankroll mats, my money and my boe's to a lvl 10. Said to the guild officers sorry guys but that's just plain wrong and if you can't recognize that there are decent people and there are also QQr's then I don't want any part of your world - adios. log out, Delete character.

PS
A few days later I get an email from the guild leader - nice words nothing of substance. He mentioned he noticed my char was gone and asked if I'd transferred it back to my home server - I think they expected this.

I said no - go armory my name - I deleted it. Besides, I have a DK on that server and it is better geared than the one I deleted. I even mentioned that if he could recall 6 weeks earlier I showed him my DK as part of my "proof test." I added that I was looking for a new possible home - someplace that fit my schedule better. Turns out the headache was bigger than I thought and the effort isn't worth the pain.

A year later...

2009-10-21T11:58:00.004-05:00

It's been a year since I posted last.. wonder why

Well, not that I really expect many people to read this, but I've begun dabbling in this blog space again. I don't know why I lost interest in the first place but I still seem to be a bit apathetic over the idea of blogging, I guess my Minnesota upbringing still tells me it sounds like whining - too emo. But I'll give this another shot and we'll see if it takes off.

I'm probably going to go through and clean out some of the older posts - who cares about how to do Kara bosses anymore right? Like, if you can't go in there and 2man most things then do yourself a favor and turn off your computer and go sell your game back to Blizzard.

I'll take this renewed post to describe the flavor of Wotlk and my experience in it to date. I love Northrend, loved the quests so much I leveled 10 alts. Yes you did in fact read that correctly. I have 8 80s and 2 at 75-76 which could be 80 in a matter of days if I didn't bother to raid or do dailies - or... that stupid Hallow's End thing. (Why did blizz have to make it 20 masks???)

No. I didn't do them last year - pfft who knew you'd have to do these all for a new mount?

Back to my story.

In terms of the expansion, I liked pretty much everything I saw. DK's were fun to play, quests were fun, instances were vibrant and I had a great time. But I have to admit - once I'd played all the quests a few times and had done all the instances I got a little bored. My server is super full, so it is sometimes a pain to get anything done, instances are full etc. Not bad when needing a group but terribad when looking to run instances and you cant due to server instability or whatnot.

So now my focus is my druid once again. My perennial favorite, my muse. I'd worked the DK and shaman, hunter, lock, rogue (gotta love a good rogue) working on warrior (MAN arms is fun!) and mage. The mage is an accident, I have this friend Rachel who's new to wow. Not in terms of newly bought but she doesnt often play and isn't a hardcore idiot like me so I'm leveling a mage along with her so she doesn't have to wander the landscape wondering what to do next.

I can't go as often as she'd probably like but we get in 2-3 nights a week - probably good for most ppl right?

What will I do with all these? probably not a lot. I'm really cutting down my interest in other characters at the moment simply because it's too much even for someone who's got a lot of time. My pally is well geared for what I can get into short of the new craftables so that's in reserve for now. But sheesh - how many paladins are there these days? Seems like everyone has one. Same goes for druids too - I saw a literal forest the last time I went to a 25.

Bears now... you see em - sometimes they are okay - rarely are they great. There's the rub though. It's hard to be good if you're not in 25s. So much seems to depend on gear and with the reduction of itemization you're fighting for gear with everyone who can wear leathers. Our little guild only does 10mans. As one of our newest officers so clearly pointed out recently - we just don't have what it takes to field our own 25 - we've tried - many many times - but we suck balls at it. Why? well a combination of things really but to be nice let's just say we have all the coodination of a dysfunctional family.

So we stick to 10s to keep stress levels low. And the 25s we've been pugging into are - uhm.. how to say this - they okay but they changed and I think I was one of the first to recognize it. WARNING: Emo Coming!

Every 25 progression raid was more interested in gearing their own guild first - in some cases understandable but think about this for a minute. If you don't allow regulars who aren't in your guild to get gear, what incentive do they have to remain? That was more or less my problem. I went to an uld 25 ToC 25 for 3 months and got like 2 pieces of offset gear and had to buy a boe tank ring from the raid leader for 1000g. Apparently that bugged someone in their guild after I did that the first time so that only happened the one time.

Then they didn't like everyone from my guild who were regulars and did their raids (we had 7 ppl in Absolution running with them) - they only liked 3 ppl really well. We started doing 10mans with them as well - nice easy runs that everyone loved and we cleared quickly. About that time the 25man raid leader decided it looked a bit tooooo easy and further decided that their own guildies could benefit from the gear we helped the few doing the 10s with us get... so they booted everyone who wasn't in their guild from the 10s.... sound emo? It is.

NOTE: this sort of thing is partially why I quit blogging a year ago. The attitudes are the same all over - if you have gear you can come if you don't you're on yer own. I'm tired of this sort of nonsense. I pug everything now - if I suck too bad replace me - I don't tho :) But it's hard to stand out when all you do is 10mans.

Now.. I'm not interested at all in helping other guilds. I have my own and its really centralized/localized - i think blizzard wants this - the whole guild achieves etc coming in the new expansion - I mean why announce that now if you aren't going to drive people to that?

So today, we do 10s, we fart around and piss off only our own people and we have fun. I'll have to be contented that wow has changed so much that I'm never going to be as good or as well geared as I was in BC - but it's only a game.

Right? I mean ... it IS only a game ... RIGHT? C'MON! WHY WON'T YOU ANSWER ME?!!

Anyway this is getting too long as it is.

Patch 3.0, the New Bear, the guild

2008-10-19T15:09:00.003-05:00

The title is slightly inaccurate, I'm not a new bear. This old bear decided to try a new trick tho.

The way things were going bear tanking was getting to be sort of a drag. Then I got sorta bored one day and realized I probably had enough crap in my bank to try Boomkin spec, something I'd always intended to do but with leveling 10 alts I got a little sidetracked. Well, the pally got to 70, got all his new toys and could effortlessly tank KZ and the early 25s, I even did okay in TK, though I felt like a newb the first few times I did Alar.

I got my lock up to 70, got his gear going, mage as well. I even dusted off the huntard for a few runs, but really I was hitting the skids in terms of interest in the game. Then 3.0 hit and I won the game. Literally.

With the new changes to 3.0 KZ takes an hour now, rather than 2-3. SSC is 90 mins and any heroic is super easy to clear in 20-30 mins. It feels like cheating, but the badges are nice.

But I digress. Ever try AoE grinding dailies? That was the single reason I leveled a mage, I may have to delete that toon cause boomkin grinding with starfall is Teh Shit!

But everyone knows the patch is fun. The other news is the guild, Absolution. We took on the 40-man Naxx before it went bye bye forever. Fully pugged and usually cleared - tho not always. We went back to our regular routine once the patch hit and naxx left. Now we're actively recruiting for the expac, tho not in the usual method.

We recruit via reputation, not by asking ppl to join. So far it's been fairly good. I think we've picked up something like 15 members this week. Time will tell if they turn out to be decent raiders - I have confidence they'll be fine.

Anyway - that's it for the moment. I'll post updates as we go. :D

The Decline and Fall of the Empire

2008-06-10T13:53:00.002-05:00

It’s a good title. Taken of course from Gibbon’s Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire but still, it conveys the sense that something doth smell most foul in the state of Denmark.

Titles are important. Labeling has become such a negative thing but I say if we don’t mark our passage through events then we have no reference points. I only say this because it seems relevant to what I see in-game, at least recently. The infrastructure of many raiding guilds and established raids is crumbling. I don’t know what life is like on other servers but Feathermoon seems to be showing signs of wear and tear.

I’ve heard of the disbanding of several world leading raiding guilds – even more are closing down around me. I’m sure pre-TBC the same happened but then I was insulated from the changes due to my membership in a quiet little casual guild. I’m still there but even we are feeling the effects of boredom, routine, grinding etc.

I’ve been challenging myself to find alternatives to being bored, leveling several alts at once etc. I’ve seen others do this as well. I know of at least 3 players who are taking multi-boxing to new limits – mostly they are shaman with 5 accts – running around with extremely similar names vivsi, vivsa, vivsw etc. It’s impressive and just a little crazy, which only makes it more impressive. But aside from that I’ve also noticed a sharp decline in quality of players, but that might be elitism on my part.

I pug a lot of instances when I’m leveling. When I was first leveling up I didn’t notice quality so much but I do remember what it was like – it wasn’t THAT long ago. Lately I’m surrounded by people who not only don’t know their classes (not uncommon) but refuse to listen, even to gentle advice. And I do mean gentle. I’ve been around long enough to know how not to rub the fur the wrong way – but man, what a mess I’ve seen. Tanks that won’t listen to the correct pull order even after wiping 3-4 times, gearing selections for hunters, stuff like that. The other day, I ran across a hunter wearing green cloth …. Come on folks, there’s plenty of gear out there that you don’t have to be running around in another classes clothes.

But again, that’s me and I’ve been somewhat spoiled since I started taking raiding more seriously. I’m used to tanks that can perform outright miracles, holding aggro on 5 mobs, pally tanks that can sweep up 30 mobs at once and simply laugh as they kill themselves hitting him, healers that can single-handedly bring a T6 tank from 2 hp to full health, etc. Yes there are a lot of great players, and sooo many people who want to be great but are missing the basics. I just wanna help ‘em all, ya know? Then again, there’re plenty of people who think they are God’s gift and make pugging even harder. I’ve seen a lot of this recently as well.

There’s a great lesson there for anyone looking. I ran with a geared MM hunter the other day. He was mid-60s and kept reminding the group that he had to go to Black Temple soon (presumably on an alt). But his style of play in a 5-man was terrible. He tried to tank everything in the Mana Tombs, leaving our tank – nice player but still learning – with the unhappy job of trying to keep up and control errant mobs. As luck would have it we had another hunter in the group – slightly lower in gear, less confident in his abilities, but thankfully quieter … or so I thought. Some friends and I run pre-BC raids on Sat nights, BWL, MC etc. We take everyone on a pug basis and use our own well geared tanks, healers and DPS for key spots and to lead the group. The lower hunter found us, we pugged him in (since I was on the same character presumably he noticed me), and he was as obnoxious as the other we’d been with earlier in the day. I think he figured since my toon was lower than his I must not be as good as he was.

Constantly questioning why we did things one way vs another, clearly had never been to any raids before, complaining about loot rules – (open loot by class, legendaries reserved for those working the quest chains) yelling and QQing because he lost a roll to a higher player etc. I put him on the ban list. Maybe I was wrong to do so, maybe I should have at least offered to help him out, quietly spoken to him or something.

But, to me anyway, it seemed pretty evident I was one of the 4 ppl leading a 40-man raid, helping to explain fights, pulls etc. My thought is that if you can’t even take the time to show common courtesy, then you’re probably not worth my time/effort. I don’t ask for a lot, you don’t have to be in epics, or even blues, maybe you don’t know your class well. Heck, I play one of almost every class and I’m ALWAYS learning about them, but one thing I need – I need good manners. The rest is gravy. But then again, I’m probably being elitist.

I saw him the next day too – he was in LFG, lvl 65 looking for a higher level raid. By the way, on the miniscule chance the player I’m talking about is reading this, the offer of help stands. I may not be the best on the server, but I know enough to pass along to those willing to learn.

Neglected but not forgotten

2008-06-04T15:14:00.001-05:00

I’ve been somewhat neglecting my blog as of late. Not through disinterest but merely due to an increasingly busy schedule. That and I have been focusing on a few in-game goals. Since I’m bored and have an hour to kill I’ll tell you about a couple of them.

I earned my epic flyer for my druid, not nearly as hard to do as I thought. And since I had the same question everyone is now asking me I’ll just tell you – I earned my money in two ways. Because my bags were always full, and my mail was insane, I finally dropped a 37 lowbie from guild and made a bank alt with him and a friend’s lowbie.

We bought ourselves a couple guild bank tabs and I started storing anything I thought would earn money at the AH. Packrat that I am I still have no room.

I had about 2500g – over the course of a few days. In addition, I have two 70s, so I started doing daily quests on each toon. With what I already had on hand, it took a week to get the needed amount.

I chose to make the expensive purchase for my druid for the simple reason that I mine with him, my hunter is a skinner. The epic flapper has made farming a far more pleasant experience now.

Other goals include leveling at least 2 more characters to 70 – currently 64 mage and 64 pally tank. I’ve been attuning a few alts for some of the raids we do and formalizing some of the raid leader tasks for our legacy raids.

Also there’s recently been a couple of people from a high-end raiding guild who are pug farming the first couple of mobpacks in Sunwell for loot, patterns etc. That’s given me a chance at a couple of nice epic gems for my gear.

I get the feeling WoW is in a kind of holding pattern. The scuttlebutt says the expansion will be out between late Oct and the end of the year so I figure I have time to work most of my remaining alts to 70 so I can chose the one I like the best to make the first run to 80. I’m guessing right now it’ll be a mage. I love tanking but the pew pew is irresistible and there are already enough T4/5 druids running around. We’ll see, 80 is still a long ways off and I’m not as fond of leveling now as I once was.

2008-05-01T15:28:00.002-05:00

A long time ago I found a lore posting on the forums and after reading it I discovered not only a renewed interest in the game, but a sense of completeness. Since then I've directed several newer players to the forum post as a means of enlightening them on certain aspects of their characters or the world around them. However I recently discovered that someone pulled the entire post. I looked about and couldn't find any references to it. Now it may be that Blizz saw this and decided it wasn't good, or perhaps it was inaccurate. It was certainly irreverant but it was a neat way to tie up a lot of loose ends and gave me the chance to understand who some of the guys I was fighting were. Click the link to see the complete post as it appeared on the forums ( yeah - I saved a copy )

Simplified WoW Lore

For all those just starting out, and those who just wonder from time to time what all these quests are about!

(Original Post: By Dawnbow)

Basic storylines:

1. Creation of Azeroth (that's the planet you start on)

~ First there were a bunch of big ugly dudes. By big and ugly, I mean think of lobsters doing it with crabs, centipedes and eyeballs. And add some goo, bugs, snakes, tentacles and acid. They were the "Old Gods" and they had 4 generals, one for each element. They basically rolled around this planet making everyone really miserable. (This is who the Twilight's Hammer worship!)
~ Then came the Titans. They're basically sexy good-looking guys. They killed all the old gods threw all their generals into the ground and made everything pretty and nice. Some bits of the old Gods couldn't be destroyed. Same with the generals. So they were sealed up in the earth and the generals were banished to the elemental plane. (note: This is where Ragnaros from Molten Core comes from! He's the Fire General!)
~ The titans Blessed 5 dragons (one of each color) each with a unique magic and charged them with keeping the peace on Azeroth. This is where the "Aspects" come from. Ysera (green - dreams), Alexstraza (red - life), Nozdormu (bronze - time), Malgyos (blue - magic), Neltharion (black - earth/matter).
~ They also created Earthen to reshape the world. After the Earthen were done they went to sleep underground. (These are precursors to dwarves! The places they slept? Uldur, Uldum, Uldaman and Ironforge!)
~ The titans then left to do other stuff. (There are a few Titan-like creatures still in Azeroth, though, like Maiden of Virtue, Ironaya and Myzrael - that's how we know they were sexy. XD)

2. Trolls
~ The first bunch of humanoids to walk on Azeroth were the Trolls. No one knows where they came from, but they are the oldest race on the planet (next to Murlocs, who don't count).
~ The old gods, it turns out, still had influence over the planet from their trapped locations, and they started a huge war using the Qiraj, a bunch of ugly insects.
~ The Trolls managed to force the Qiraj to the ends of Azeroth, sealing them in two places: Ahn'Qiraj, in Silithus, and Azjol-Nerub, in Northrend.
~ The Trolls had several internal wars, and spread out all over Azeroth. There were 4 major factions at this point: The Jungle, Forest, Zandalar and the "Lost" Tribe that went deep into the mainland.
~ The Lost Tribe ended up in the middle of the major landmass - called Azeroth at this point, where a fountain of pure energy (The Well of Eternity) was. It mutated them into what we know as Night Elves.

3. Sargeras and the Burning Legion
~ The titans charged one of their members with wiping out everything that was evil in the universe. His name was Sargeras.
~ He became upset because evil seemed to be everywhere.
~ He was tricked by some of the people he was trying to save into thinking that evil was SUPPOSED to be everywhere. Or he just got so pissed off at his impossible task, that he just gave up and started to think that Evil was the natural order of things. (When people complain about this piece of lore, it's because Blizzard changed it in TBC in order to make the Draenei)
~ He then decided that he was just going to corrupt everything with evil, and destroy all the good everywhere.
~ He made himself an army of demons (beings that are fully corrupted by dark magic) and called it the Burning Legion.

4. Nelfs and the Well of Eternity
~ The newly created Night elves (after fighting off the Trolls to protect the Well) worshipped the moon, believing she was the source of the power in the well. Others worshipped nature. They became Priests and Druids, respectively - this took some time to sort itself out, naturally. XD
~ The power of the Well fed them and extended their magic and knowledge. It may also have mutated quite a few of them into Moonkin/Dryads/Harpies, etc. (There are many myths about this that you run into, if you're very curious, check out WoWwiki's bestiary)
~ One of their queens (Azshara) realized that some of their people had strong gifts for Arcane magic. She called those Night elves "Highborne".
~ Azshara began to experiment with the powers of the well, and in doing so caught the attention of Sargeras - who began to whisper to her through a portal she had opened using the well's power.
~ Sargeras tricked Azshara into trying to summon him to Azeroth using the powers of the Well.

5. The Corruption of The Black Dragonflight
~ Basically after helping create the world with the Earthen, the various Dragons had gone to rest all over Azeroth. In the case of the Earth Dragon, Neltharion, he went deep underground.
~ While he was underground, the pieces Old Gods began talking to the great black dragon, convincing him slowly that he was the mightiest of all the dragons and he should take the powers of the other dragons for himself.
~ When Azshara began her spell, it roused his attention, because the very earth groaned with the horror if it - it shattered the single landmass of Azeroth into the word you see on your worldmap today!

6. Illidan The Betrayer
~ Illidan wasn't a Highborne, but wanted to train in Arcane magic anyways. This was probably to catch the attention of Tyrande (current leader of the Nelf priests), who was and is in love with his Brother, Malfurion (current leader of the nelf druids).
~ When Azshara began to summon Sargaras, Malfurion summoned forces to stop her.
~ When Illidan realized that Malfurion was going to destroy the Well (the source of all elf magic!!) he turned sides and told Azshara what was going to happen.
~ Malfurion was only just able to stop the ceremony in time, but much damage was done - demons were flooding Azeroth and the whole world was torn into large pieces - literally, the well exploded and created the Maelstrom (that huge whirlpool you can see on your world map).
~ Illidan managed to save some of the water from the Well, and attempted to make a new well in order to preserve magic on Azeroth.
~ His brother caught him and stuck him in a cave.
~ The Highborne who were caught by the blast of the Well were mutated into Naga. No one knows why they took that form, exactly, but there is some theory that when the Well exploded it allowed Neptulon, (the water general!) to escape his prison, and it was his magic that mutated the elves.

7. The Creation of the World Tree and Deathwing
~ When Neltharion came out of the earth, he convinced the other 4 "aspects" (leader dragons with magical powers) to give him all their power (into an item called the Demon soul) so he could seal the portal/slay the demon horde.
~ Naturally he tried to kill them all instead.
~ Now called Deathwing, Neltherion basically obliterated nearly all of the flights - they were barely able to scrap enough magic together to protect themselves and a scant few eggs.
~ Malfurion managed to steal the Demon soul with Ysera's help and eventually it was hidden in some undisclosed location - possibly the Emerald Dream (which is why it's now corrupted in the Wailing Caverns and the 4 green world dragons).
~ Deathwing trashed the planet in his rage, and Malygos, horrified that he had helped convince the other dragons into his brother's trap, went to Northrend in a sort of self-exile.
~ The other three dragon-aspects realized what Illidan had done, and headed to Hyjal.
~ The well that Illidan had created was corrupt - so in order to seal it, 3 of the dragons, Alexstraza (the red dragon of life), Nozdormu (the bronze dragon of time) and Ysera (the green dragon of dreams) planted and grew a magical tree over top of the corrupt well.
~ The three dragons blessed and charged the Night Elves to protect the tree from invasion and to destroy any demons they found, as well, they had to send druids to spend time with Ysera in the Emerald Dream. In return they would become immortal.
~ This tree was called Nordrassil, the World Tree. Teldrassil (the Nelf Starting area) is actually a SECOND world tree.

8. Draenei/Eredar/Orcs/Legion
~ As Sargeras found more things to corrupt he ran into a group of magic users who were very powerful. They were called the Eredar. Two thirds of them were hungry for power, and were corrupted.
~ The final third, led by Velan ran away from Sargeras, aided by the Naaru.
~ They traveled to many worlds but were always found.
~ Finally they landed on a world inhabited by peaceful shamanic tribes of a simple people called Orcs. They had found a new home, and called it Draenor, and themselves Draenei.
~ They were found here as well, by Archimonde.
~ Kil'jaeden (one of the Eredar leaders) tried to trick the leader of the orcs, Ner'zhul into tying his people to the Legion - promising him wealth and power. While Ner'zhul refused to submit, Kil'jaeden convinced his second in command, Gul'dan to drink Mannoroth's blood.
~ Gul'dan then used the blood to enslave the whole Orc race to the Legion.
~ The Orcs turned on the Draenei and waged a massive war with them.

9. High Elves and Humans
~ The Remaining Highborne, refusing to remain with their backwater cousins who had ruined their source of magic, traveled across the sea to make their own path.
~ So far away from the World Tree, they began to starve and die, their bodies becoming tiny and frail.
~ Their first king created the Sunwell, using a great magic to feed his people. This power saved them and they built a land around it to protect it (Quel'Thalas) - from the Forest Trolls (Zul'Aman).
~ Humans (who knows where they came from, but whatever) ran into the elves due to their lands being so close, and were shocked at the magic the elves had at their command.
~ The Elves thought the humans were amusing and began to teach them simple magic at a neutral ground called Dalaran.
~ Due to this magic use, demons were attracted to Azeroth, so the Elves and humans convened to create a guardian who would have an extended life and magical powers to destroy all demons that came into Azeroth.

10. Medivh
~ After a long line of guardians a simple human woman was made guardian, and in her task of destroying demons, she accidentally ran into a portal that led to Sargeras.
~ the will of Sargeras possessed her and convinced her that only her child would do for the next guardian.
~ She refused to give up her powers when her time came, and bestowed them on her son, Medivh - who was then possessed by the will of Sargeras.
~ Medivh grew up to be the most powerful wizard in all of Azeroth, led by Sargeras to open the portal to Outland, and thus start the war between the Legion and Azeroth anew!

11. (Warcraft 1) The First War
~ The Orcs came pouring through the portal en masse and tried to destroy everything in their path by cleverly building barracks and mining gold and building farms. Seriously.
~ The humans saw this clever strategy, and did the same thing. Sadly, they kinda sucked at it.
~ the Orcs torched Stormwind and Garona (a half-orc Rogue) killed King Llane (who you can kill in the Chess event in Kara!) who was the leader of the humans at the time.
~ The humans managed to trap and kill Medivh.

12. (Warcraft 2)The Second War
~ The Orcs, now led by Doomhammer, thought "hey, let's try the same thing, only make allies this time!"
~ Sadly, they were thwarted, due to the humans doing the same thing.
~ Gul'dan attempted to summon Sargeras to Azeroth, and Doomhammer turned on him (and killed him). This divided their forces and the Alliance kicked the snot out of the Horde.
~ Ner'zhul decided to take the orcs back to Draenor. So he gathered a bunch of artifacts to open the portal back up. One of these items was the Skull of Gul'dan (this is important later)
~ Ner'zhul opened the Dark Portal back up and he and the orcs all went through.
~ The humans decided that the Dark Portal being open again was bad, so they sent an army through to close it and kill the orcs. The army was led by Khadgar - that guy you see in the middle of Shat!
~ Ner'zhul tried opening a bunch of other portals on Draenor so the orcs could conquer other worlds. Unfortunately, the portals went ker-splodie instead.
~The human armies realized that this meant the entire planet would blow up, so they closed the Dark Portal from the other side so it wouldn't blow up Azeroth too.

13. The Corruption of Ner'Zhul
~ Ner'zhul and his followers ran through a random un-exploded portal into the Twisted Nether, and right into Kil'jaeden. Oops. ~ Draenor exploded (this is where Outland comes from; it's what's left of Draenor!)
~ Kil'jaeden tortured Ner'zhul and his followers for a very long time.
~ After a long period of time, Kil'jaeden drew Ner'zhul back out of the nether when he needed a commander for a new mission to destroy Azeroth - using a plague of undeath!
~ Kil'jaeden sealed his soul into a helm and a sword and encased them both in a throne of ice, which he then placed in the deepest part of Northrend.

14. (Warcraft 3) Fate of the Orcs
~ The humans took the rest of the orcs, cast spells on them to make them docile slaves and went about their business.
~ Thrall was taken as a young child and raised as a pet of a General (who taught him about being a leader of an army!). He eventually escaped due to his 'friendship' with a human girl, and realizing it wasn't nice what the humans had done to his people. (CoT: Escape from Durnholde)
~ Thrall starts setting his people free, becomes a Shammy - by training with the Frostwolf clan leader (Drek from AV), and joins forces with Grom Hellscream and Orgrim Doomhammer.
~ Doomhammer dies at Hammerfall, and Thrall gets his weapon, the Doomhammer, which he weilds to this day. In his honor, Thrall will name Orgrimmar after him.
~ Medivh (no longer possessed by Sargeras and randomly back from the dead) tells Thrall he needs to take his people and get out of the Eastern Kingdoms because a great evil is coming.
~ Thrall listens to him and takes what forces he can muster across the ocean.
~ Thrall meets up with a Troll tribe on an island near the Maelstrom, being overrun my murlocs. He convinces the Trolls to come with him to Kalimdor. They do so. (this is the Darkspear tribe - all Troll players in WoW belong to this tribe)

15. (Warcraft 3) Fate of the Humans
~ In the human side of things, a young prince named Arthas is told by Medivh that he also needs to run across the sea to Kalimdor. He disagrees (as did his father in an earlier scene!).
~ The undead plague begins to kill most of Lordaeron. Arthas goes mad with grief, trying to stymie the plague by even killing people ahead of time. He also kills a Necromancer (Kel'thuzad) who is leading some of the Undead. But it isn't enough.
~ Arthas opts to go to the source of the issue - Northrend.
~ While there he hears of a magical, powerful sword beyond all imagining - he figures that this sword may be the only way to save his people. (The sword is called Frostmourne)
~ Arthas takes up the sword, and is posessed by Ner'zhul, who had cleverly laid the sword out hoping to capture someone to become his new body.
~ Arthas goes back to Lordaeron and kills his father and overruns the whole land with the undead.
~ A human mage named Jaiyna Proudmoore was with Arthas as he began his decent into madness and upon hearing Medivh's warning, left for Kalimdor with a bunch of warriors, hoping to find a safe haven.

16. Orcs in Kalimdor
~ When Thrall lands on Kalimdor, he soon finds a group of people known as Tauren, who are struggling to survive in the Barrens due to Centaurs driving them out. He aids his new allies and they become good friends.
~ It turns out that The Legion knows where they are, and Mannoroth comes to collect what is his due. That is, he wants to take the orcs who were trapped on Azeroth back under his control.
~ The Warsong Clan (an orc clan led by Grom Hellscream) comes up against the Night Elves, who don't take too kindly to their trees being messed with, but both forces are blown away by the Legion coming and suddenly attacking. (the Warsong Clan does briefly make a pact with the Legion in order to overcome the Nelfs)

17. The Legion in Kalimdor
~ Tyrande, upon seeing what the demons are doing to her people, knows that Illidan might be the only one with enough magical power and knowledge to drive them back.
~ Illidan was eager to prove himself, and ran up against Arthas only to find they were evenly matched. Arthas tells Illidan about the Skull of Gul'dan and its immense power, knowing this will bring Illidan into the Legion's forces.
~ Illidan runs off to find the skull, eats it, and slaughters a demon army. He mutates into a demony thing, but still retains his personality.
~ When he returns, his brother freaks out and banishes him from Night Elf lands.

18. Arthas, the Sunwell, and Sylvanas
~ After Arthas killed his dad, he decided to bring Kel'thuzad back to life as a lich. To do that, he needed a sacred urn and some magic water.
~ The sacred urn was held by Uther Lightbringer, so Arthas killed him.
~ The magic water was the Sunwell of Quel'thalas.
~ Arthas and the undead marched through Quel'thalas, but an annoying high elf named Sylvanas kept trying to stop him. So he killed her and brought her back as an undead.
~ Then he corrupted the Sunwell and brough Kel'thuzad back to life.
~ Kel'thuzad went to Dalaran, got the Book of Medivh, and summoned Archimonde, Mannoroth, and most of the rest of the Burning Legion to Azeroth.
~ Archimonde destroyed Dalaran for sh*ts and giggles - what is left of it is in that big purple bubble.
~ Sylvanas repossesses her body, and takes part in the Legion. She eventually finds that Arthas' hold on her is weakening and plots to kill him (with the help of the Dreadlords). She fails.
~ Sylvanas takes some of Arthas' army with her, and they become the beginnings of the Forsaken.

19. Archimonde and the World Tree
~ Thrall and one of his Commanders, Grom Hellscream, run into Mannoroth.
~ Grom Kills Mannoroth and dies in the process, but in doing so he frees all orcs from the Blood Debt.
~ Jaina arrives in Kalimdor. Desperate for help, she turns to the Orcs and the Elves and helps drive back the Legion's forces.
~ They then realize that Archimonde is after the World Tree - they gather their forces, and try to hold him back but he is too powerful.
~ Archimonde grows about 1000ft tall and rips the tree partly out of the ground, while Malfurion summons a giant ball of wisps who basically make the tree grow into him, and eat him alive.
~ The tree is now ruined due to Archimonde's corruption and Night Elves become mortal.
~ Jaina and Thrall shake hands and call it a day.

20. Illidan, Kael'thas and Outland
~ Kael'thas, prince of the decimated High Elves, knows that it won't be long before the undead have completely destroyed his people, and now they are beginning to starve again (because the Sunwell has been destroyed - it turns out they were addicted to its magic).
~ Kael goes to his human allies, who basically treat him like garbage and put his failing army on the front lines to spare their own forces.
~ Kael is approached by Illidan and Lady Vashj who promise him a new hope - to go to Outland and take over there, since the Legion has lost so much it won't be able to control the place anymore.
~ Kael, Illidan and Vashj march to Outland to find salvation for their people.
~ Kil'jaeden is unwilling to give up on his world just yet, and kicks the crap out of Illidan, giving him a single chance to live. Go kick the crap out of Arthas.

21. Northrend
~ Arthas/Ner'zhul realize that their plans are about to foiled as the pesky Dreadlords are aiming to destory the Frozen Throne where Ner'zhul's spirit is.
~ Arthas rushes back to the Frozen Throne, knowing that the Dreadlords will head there to destroy Ner'zhul's weakened soul.
~ Arthas makes allies with the Nerubians along the way mostly by killing them and turning them into his servants, but whatever. It's friendship. XD They lead him through their old city where he finds and kills an Old God (or part of one).
~ Arthas is nearly there when Illidan shows up and he stomps the snot out of Illidan.
~ Arthas trots up to the Frozen Throne, puts on his shiny new Helmet and becomes the Lich King.

22. Alliance Resolutions Since the Last War (before WoW)
~ The king was kidnapped by the people who rebuilt Stormwind.
~ The humans who were far enough south to escape the full effects of the Plague are now recovering.
~ Dalaran is still in "protection" mode.
~ the Dwarves/gnomes have built a Tram from the Dwarf main city to the Human main city.
~ the Gnomes Blew up their home of Gnomeregan to stop a Trogg invasion. Oops.
~ The High Elves, for the most part have withdrawn from human lands.
~ the Night Elves have become a new group of allies, and attempted to grow a new World Tree.
~ Jaina has settled in Kalimdor, in Dustwallow.

23. Horde Resolutions since the last war (before WoW)
~ The remnants of the Old Horde escaped to Blackrock Mountain and the surrounding area under Warchief Rend Blackhand - the son of the guy who led the army in the first war.
~ The Orcs and Trolls have settled in Durotar.
~ the Trolls had an issue with a Dark Magic user, who forced them off their islands the Horde gave to them, so now they live with the Orcs.
~ The Taurens have gained control of their old lands, and have forced a Druidic alliance with the Night Elves through the Cenerion Circle.
~ The Undead who fled with Sylvannas have awoken to the life of the Forsaken - knowing who they were yet turned away for what they are. They joined the horde, though no one knows when or why that happened, exactly.

24. Dwarf History
~ Around the time the humans showed up, the Earthen began to awaken in their chambers deep underground. They had lost most of their original powers, but not their desire to craft things.
~ They called themselves Dwarves...or the humans did. No one knows for sure.
~ At some point in time, the Dwarves divided into three clans, that eventually went to war with each other.
~ The Dark Iron Clan leader, Thaurissan wanted to take control of the Clans, and in his digging in Blackrock Mountain, he dug so deep he came close to Ragnaros (the old general of the Old Gods) - who told him if he could be freed, he would send an army of fire to consume his enemies.
~ The resulting explosion destroyed everything near Searing Gorge and Burning Steppes.
~ The Wildhammer and Bronzebeard clans stood against the Dark Irons and managed to force them back into the mountain, where they wait to strike again, enthralled to Ragnaros.

25. Deathwing/Outland/Netherdrakes/Black Flight
~ After being chased relentlessly for his crimes for hundreds of years, when the Dark Portal opened up Deathwing took some of his flight and dozens of eggs and opted to hide in Outland/Draenor.
~ Gruul destroyed nearly all of the Black Dragonflight, but ignored the eggs.
~ These eggs became corrupted by the Free energy of the Nether, and that is where the Netherdrakes come from.
~ Deathwing's whereabouts is still unknown.
~ Without Deathwing's leadership, the Black Flight is being run by two of Deathwing's Children, Nefarion and Onyxia.
~ Nefarion is trying to create super-dragons by combining the bloodlines of various dragonflights.
~ Nefarion has also made a pact with Rend Blackhand, using his orcs to keep his secret plans of super-dragons safely guarded (BWL/BRS).
~ Onyxia is trying to take over Stormwind by subterfuge and disguising herself as a human - Lady Katrina Prestor.

26. Non-Horde Troll History
~ The Trolls that remained in the three groups - the Forest, the Jungle and the Zandalar (governing) Tribes were further seperated over time.
~ The Forest Trolls that ended up going into the Mountains became furry and became Ice Trolls.
~ The Jungle Trolls who were guarding the lands against the Qiraj when the world exploded (due to the Well of Eternity exploding) were trapped in a desert land, and became Sand Trolls.
~ Some of the Jungle Trolls (the Atal'ai) came in contact with a malevolent force which called itself Hakkar - it pretended to be the "Great Serpent" that all Trolls worshipped.
~ The Jungle Trolls began sacrificing each other to Hakkar.
~ The Zandalari Tribe didn't condone this behavior and banished the Atal'ai Trolls from Stranglethorn.
~ The Atal'ai made a new temple and began their rituals anew, convinced they would summon Hakkar into this world, and Ysera caught wind of it. She smashed the temple deep into the depths of the swamp, killing all the Trolls within, but she didn't count on some resourceful Trolls who were practicing nercomancy to save themselves by becoming the undead. (Sunken Temple)
~ Some of the survivors returned with renewed fervor to Stranglethorn and convinced the main tribes to start worshipping Hakkar.
~ Hakkar has been summoned and now resides in Zul'Gurub.

Changing times/Seasons

2008-04-08T13:43:00.000-05:00

I’ve noticed a certain lethargy when it comes to WoW lately. At first I thought it was just me, but then I started noticing that there are others who appear to exhibit the same attitude I have.

I read on WowInsider today about the pre-expansion blues, raid guilds stop raiding, teams fall apart, ppl leave on extended breaks etc – all because in a couple of months a new version of this game will be avail and all your purples will be toast.

Eh, so what.

Maybe it's just the new moon, but I’m not bored with the content. I’m bored with the people I know. Sorry you guys but it’s true – even married couples sometimes need a little space, ya know?

But more importantly, I’m not the same player I was 3 months ago. Six months ago I was a noob raider, then I got into a ton of raid ops and I think I got pretty good at it. I’m not great – or even better than most. But I think I’m a decent raider. Face facts folks, if you can show up on time, listen, follow basic instructions and treat your team mates with respect – you’ll make an okay raider.

Within 3 months of beginning I’d had my first guild meltdown, first raid meltdown and the first time I melted down on ANYONE. I went off - the one and only time I did so face to face with my fellow raiders. Since then I stepped back – dropped some aspects of Wow and picked up a few others. Right now I’m sorta learning healing as a tree (hey, I had a near complete offspec set) for an alt raid and I’ve left my huntard parked out on the isle.

But to tell you the truth – I like taking a break from WoW even more than I like playing anything right now. Maybe it’s just me after all. My fav thing to do in-game these days is the legacy raids – molten core in 2 hours rocks when you’re a 62 mage. But other than that it’s spring and I smell the rich loamy wet earth outside my window. The all-day rain soakers and the bright crisp sunshiny mornings have awakened this old bear from his winter’s slumber under the piles of Wowdom. No worries, though – soon I’ll be back to my old bearish self and we’ll go kick some butts. In the meantime I might work on leveling my profs and getting another alt to 70.

Kara wrap - finally!

2008-04-08T13:10:00.000-05:00

I’ve been promising this for months but every time I turn around I have yet another RL demand. So here – in it’s short and sweet format – is the breakdown on the rest of Kara.

Since it’s something of a moot point right now I’m not going into a great deal of detail – there are numerous sources on this and if you’re in the market for one – check WowWiki.

We need to wrap up 3 bosses, Nightbane, Netherspite and Prince.

Nightbane begins on a terrace near the side entrance to Kara. In fact, you need to clear some of the bosses (Opera I think) in order to gain access thru the side door. There’s some trash in here – follow my notes from Kara Part 5 for the clear to Curator for this. In a nutshell you have to fight a dead dragon. Yep, dead. As in skeletalbutstillabletoflyandbreathingfirewithteensylittlepalsthatwillkickyourbehindifyoucomeunprepared.

That’s Nightbane. You can only “summon” him if you’ve completed the quests for this – and it only takes one person to call the bugger out. The basic fight is a tank n spank with 2 unique characteristics. One is Charred Earth – a stationary flame ground aoe affect – don’t stand in it. Easily avoidable – however keep your raid casters/ranged DPS grouped or it may spawn all over – no idea if this is theory or fact – but it seems to work.

Also he flies at 75% 50% and 25% health – during this phase the group halts DPS and huddles – you get a shared AOE attack and some skeletons spawn – burn em QUICK – mark em if you need to but do it – NB only is in the air for 30 secs or so. The one other annoying thing NB does is fear. Ranged DPS and healers can EASILY Avoid this by standing at max range – but when coupled with the aoe ground affects it makes for a fluid fight – flask up – Salv everyone needing it and bring out your heaviest hitters.

Netherspite is a huge pain – at first. All you have to do is learn the Beams – there’s tons of great guides on this and you should read them for the fights cause there are multiple ways of doing this fight.

And finally is Prince. Which prior to 2.4 was easy – if you’re healers could last and if your DPS could dodge and IF your hunters had mana pots. Because Prince packs a wallop and he calls down staionary flaming elementals that do a massive aoe ground fire attack for about 3 mins. No you cant stand in it and he has a thing he likes to call Enfeeble that drops you to 1 hp for a set period of time – no if’s and’s or but’s – which coupled with AOEs sorta bites.

But in 2.3 you could stand in a certain spot and avoid the fire dmg – you had to know where to be.

In 2.4 ….. in the newest patch I think the fire actively looks for you. Blizz removed the safe spots and now whenever my ZA geared raid goes in there we wipe cause the fire dudes ALWAYS drop in a circle around Prince. I’m not saying they do it on purpose – but I think we’re pretty much done with prince. I cant see our wasting more time on him – it’s too random of a fight. But if you’re really interested in trying it out hit up WoWWiki for pointers.

The Name of the Toon

2008-03-20T13:18:00.000-05:00

Of all the things that gets me jazzed about World of Warcraft I think one of the most fun things to do is to create a new character. The feeling of making a new avatar, coloring the hair, choosing the facial features etc – all sorta make my bear heart warm n fuzzy inside. True, there aren’t many options so chances are you’ll end up looking like Butters standing next to Cartman sometimes, but the one defining convention of any RP game is the name you choose.

We’ve all seen and chuckled, or grimaced, at the names of characters running around capitol cities. I’ve seen some downright offensive names and have promptly reported such. I refer to those specifically racist or sexist in nature. I’m not a person who goes about telling people their business but I was taught to stand up against injustice and intolerance so when I see someone running around with a moniker that would make my old platoon sergeant wince, I am not shy about calling in the ban hammers from the GMs.

But that simply illustrates the less inventive or less creative side of the game. I’ve seen innocuous, forgettable names that spark no interest and often I wonder why didn’t they spend a few minutes racking their brains, or maybe hunting down some good references online before choosing Pallytankie as a name?

Before I launch into my ideas on where to get ideas, I’ve got to say that I’m more or less guilty of the offense of innocuousness in naming my toon. Agro isn’t very creative and while I do enjoy the name recognition, I wish I’d spent as much time as I had on my horde-side druid Ursal. But for all that Agro is a great name recognition tool – a lot of other people seem to think so too cause there’s at least one guy named Agro on most of the servers I checked on Armory.

Ursal is a common reference in the historical record. It refers back to many ancient civilizations’ deities – but I liked it because it seemed somewhat common in English – translating roughly into Bear from the Latin “Ursa.” English is based on Latin and we still use a great many Latin words in everyday language.

I often use dead languages to name my characters, or after the deities of dead civilizations – don’t use names from modern deities since you can get into trouble using some of them. I would imagine Native Americans won’t look too highly on anyone usurping the names of sacred lore or rituals for a game. You can argue all you want about freedom of speech et al ad nauseum, but it doesn’t change the fact that this is a game and if you do something intentionally to annoy someone then you’re really only detracting from your fun playing the game – Old Goblin saying, don’t borrow trouble, it’s always paid with compounded interest.

But you can find numerous references on ancient languages or peoples whose everyday common words can fit the bill of needs. The Aether Rays in Blade’s Edge mountains are named for Aether, ether, æther – Greek, roughly meaning or referring to a fifth element in alchemy, that which we now call “space” or “heaven,” once thought to be the medium through which light moved rather than simply a vacuum.

There are common references in the game to such things. All are taken from ancient history or languages or even proper names for long-dead people. Uther the Lightbringer … sorta sounds a bit like the Arthurian legend doesn’t it? Possibly loosely coupled with Judeo-Christian roots as well but you get the idea. Writers often borrow from such sources for inspiration.

When making a new character I often try to imagine a bit of a back story – it’s the RP in me I think that does this. I don’t normally RP when playing the game, but I do often think of this while I’m playing. What would Agro the Bear do when confronted by superior odds defending the body of a wounded comrade, while engaged in exploring the halls of an ancient castle tower, rife with deadly enemies? Why, attack of course! As if Agro had ever run from a fight … pfft.

What would Paladin Defender Thorney, so named because his bleary-eyed father ran smack into a thorn bush when rushing to summon the mid-wife for Thorn’s birth, do upon being confronted by 3 of the evil Horde, after flagging himself blessing a fellow of the Alliance? Stun, Bless, Judge, Consecrate and swing, until they or he dropped. It’s not so hard to do really, the imagination part I mean. (3:1 odds against the horde can be a bit of a pain). Imagination is what you want it to be.

So the next time you roll, take a minute to think of what you’d like people to see. I’ve seen some rather silly ones that really don’t make sense to me, a night elf who RPs as a paladin, uhm… might wanna stick to stuff you can actually do there bud… sorta helps to stay within the confines of the game. But hey – if you wanna go nuts and use the crayons totally outside the lines that’s the great thing about WoW, I don’t have to listen to ya.

If you’re looking for some good reference material then you could start by looking for lists of words in foreign or dead languages. Greek and Latin are great for starters, though you may not wish to stop there. I also read though old histories sometimes – you can find short, down and dirty descriptions on Wikipedia, not the most accurate of encyclopedia reference tools but it doesn’t matter too much when you’re not writing a thesis.

Biblical references work too – though I generally stick to historical names. I used Biblical names for my hunter’s pets. Ancient Egyptian, Eastern or European cultures all have proper nouns or names you can use, the limit is your gut instinct and the amount of effort you wanna put into it.

Legacy Raids and why we do them

2008-03-20T11:52:00.000-05:00

Legacy Raid refers to the old level 60, 40-man raids that were the rage before Burning Crusade hit the shelves. Things like Molten Core, Blackwing Lair, Onyxia, AQ20/40 and Naxx. You may or may not be surprised to learn that those raids are still quite challenging, even if you bring in your level 70 buddies.

The reason is that raiding at any level requires coordination, leadership, listening and no small amount of individual player knowledge regarding their class and abilities and how to use them in conjunction with others.

Let’s take Molten Core for example. It’s a relatively easy raid, can be run comfortably in a couple of hours now- pre-BC raid guilds were doing this in 5-8 hours after weeks of working at it. But I’ve seen uncoordinated groups of level 70s wipe REPEATEDLY on these due to inattention and lack of skill.

I never raided pre-BC. I was on the game for about a year before the expansion hit but I was in a guild that wasn’t into raiding and consequently, I didn’t’. But when Kara came out and I capped my second toon, I felt the need to find something new. So while stealthing the LFG channel one Sat night I ran across a group of pre-BCers who were going to run Molten Core. I grabbed my 70 and headed for Searing Gorge. The rest is history. It was so much fun I specifically leveled a paladin to 55 so I could join that raid and get my Tier 1 set, aka my Bananadin set.

But why do it? I mean Tier 1 gear may be nice for a 55 but for a 70? Why bother? Well, I guess it goes back to a combination of things. Nostalgia is def part of it, RP, and training new raiders is always a good thing – remember there are lots of folks out there who don’t know how to. Also, you find good people from small guilds who want to learn and can be an asset to the ‘real raids’ later on. So it’s sort of a recruitment tool as well.

But I just figured something else out too. Some of the best content written for this game has roots deep within those legacy raids. Ultra-long quest chains that can only be accomplished through the nitpicky world of repeat raids in places like BWL or AQ40. Boring? Perhaps to some, but the essence of getting the full value of the money you spent on this game is getting into the details of what came before Karazhan and ZA – it not only helps you flesh out the lore, it gives you some unique content that most people don’t get to do, and frankly, most will never see.

These quest chains can take months to complete but the end result is fun – world events involving massive raids – up to 100 players defending a village from invasion, while downing a massive dragon and fighting alongside legendary NPCs. Don’t think that happens? We did that last weekend on Feathermoon.

I main tanked a giant shark - 100ft long in the waters off Azshara. I got to take on a wicked Satyr in Duskwood of all places. And if you think it was easy, well, to a degree it was, but if anyone died the Twilight Corrupter gained LEVELS, not hp or powers but LEVELS. I’ve read that bad attempts resulted in a level 90 bad guy – yeah – 90.

There are others too – rewards for these can be Legendary items – you know, the Orange ones. Who cares if it’s for a level 60 player – it still looks cool as hell and will turn heads no matter where you go. Even the top raid guilds won’t have many people who have those items.

So now you have bragging rights. And if you find a group running those instances you can usually bring your level 60. Getting epics for a level 60 is pretty cool. Sure the outlands gear is better suited to leveling – in most cases, but don’t sell the tier items short. If you can ever get into Naxx before they pull it the tier 3 items can be used all the way to Kara, yeah they’re that good.

So next time you’re wandering around Feathermoon on a Saturday night, right about 6:30 or so, pop into the LFG channel and see if we’re hiring for the night. Anyone can come - based on the raid we’re doing. MC is 55+, BWL and AQ tends to 60+. If there is an attunement requirement we often run that for folks that need it before the raid starts.

Look for Agro, Firac, Teur, Chirax or Thorney. I won’t give out the raid leader’s name ‘cause he’s a high-end raider who spends a lot of time in Hyjal and BT – I’m sure he’d appreciate the enthusiasm but would rather I or one of my counterparts dealt with the details.

Welcome Back

2008-03-20T10:49:00.001-05:00

The last few weeks have been crappy in terms of demands on my time. I've been able to get on WoW a few times but so much has happened that I'm barely on - just keeping up my commitments.

Which brings me to a retroactive announcement. I pulled out of my Friday Kara group. There was a whole lotta drama behind that one but for the most part it's history. A quick recap should suffice. I was on the verge of pulling out, sorta hemming and hawing over it when I got into the last run I did with them 3 weeks ago.

During the run our main tank was continuing her BS attitude, publicly calling out mistakes, deriding people and generally being rude as hell. Some of the other raid members were as annoyed with her as I was and a few started answering back. Things quickly spiraled out of control. I'd had a long day, hadn't really wanted to spend the night in a raid that wasn't fun and was tired - yes you can guess where this is going.

This old bear Laid Down the Paw. That's right. Papa Bear got up on his hind legs and knocked the entire raid on its ass, threatened to call the raid right then and there if that nonsense continued and further called out ACTIONS (not people but those doing the actions knew what I meant) that were reprehensible (ya I used that word too - seriously, don't piss off a pissy old bear).

I ended by saying that this was nonsense and that they could find themselves a new OT beacuse I didn't feel like wasting a Friday night I could be spending with my son.

Things sorta got quiet after that. A few of the people privately messaged me with /cheer and a few others I haven't spoken to since. But that was the catalyst for me. I contacted the rest of the officers the following Monday and told them I was done. I didn't have time for juevenile antics and I needed more time to myself anyway. Since then the raid has died. They tried to pug a few people in - 7 last I heard - but their issues with the MT caused that to end in a mess.

I'm happily raiding with my hunter's group - we're moving into ZA tonight for a more serious run than we've done previously. They really want me for Sat nights but I can't commit more than every other week. I've taken to spending every other weekend with my little one exclusively now so that sorta hurts them, but I was always upfront that Sat nights were too difficult for me to do much more than AH or farm mats.

Oh, I manage to get into a legacy raid as a pug - we run them every weekend, but more often than not I end up putting someone on follow for part of the run since my little one will wake up and needs his papa for a bit. Gruuls and Mags would be really nice- but I just can't give up daddy time.

Which brings me to another reason I've been absent - daddy time plus family time. We lost a grandpa recently - sadly we'd seen it coming for a while (inoperable cancer) but still, one needs to take time to care for the things and people that need caring for so WoW definitely took a back seat.

And one other fun thing - I hate my job. Okay, I know I'm in the club now, it's called Everybody and we all meet at the bar on Tuesdays, but I really hate my job mostly because of my inept boss. So I've been spending more time looking for a replacement (job not boss.. well.. boss too I suppose).

But I've set goals and am working on them so I feel that with not raiding as a bear, and with getting my family stuff taken care of I'm ready to get back into playing a bit more.

See you out there! Look for my Paladin Thorney - lvl 62 on Feathermoon!

Pally tanking is serious bidness and man is it fun!

2008-03-04T11:16:00.002-06:00

Well howdy all, Life's been a bit nutso lately so I've taken a short break from posting on a regular basis. It's the standard fare, work, family etc. But I owe you all a continuation on Karazhan and I haven't forgotten, I just haven't had time to write it lately. In fact, things have gotten so tight on time lately that I've given up my Friday night raid in order to spend more time in the real world. So it shouldn't be much longer before I get the next few bosses up here. One other thing that may interest you is that I've started my journey to Zul'Aman on my hunter, and have even gotten a few invites as a bear. So dear readers, look forward to a run down of those bosses in the weeks to come!

hard to post now

2008-02-28T17:45:00.001-06:00

Work and life caught up with me about 10 days ago - I'll get back to updating when I figure out what that big yellow thing in the sky is doing there and why I only see it for a few minutes in the morning.

Type rest of the post here

Kara - Chess Event

2008-02-12T14:43:00.000-06:00

Last time I blogged a bit about Kara bosses I touched on the Chess Event and I mentioned I’d cover the that and perhaps Prince Malchezzar. Well here ya go.

Chess is easy peasy. After you leave the Shade’s room you go down the ramp then up to the left. Your locks need to pop Detect Invis on everyone (locks, get in the habit of doing so without being asked – you’ll find it’s a huge time saver) and your tank will mark up the first of two, 4-mob pulls. These are ghosts, without DI you’ll risk losing LOS on them in the middle of combat unless they are hitting you.

Clear these mobs, then the ones that follow them – pick up the books lying around and move on up the next ramp at the far end of the room. More ghosts here, and once cleared you’re gonna see a new mob – they look like the dudes up in Netherstorm and they are linked to Netherspite, who is actually very close to you now.

These guys can be taken one at a time – there aren’t too many here and they have an agil debuff, but they go down easy enough.

Moving through this room and down the right side ramp (up the left side one leads to Nether) and you’ll have one final room to clear before heading down into a room with a repair guy. You need friendly rep with the Violet Eye to use him, and he also sells reagents – so get em while you can!

After topping off you go through the double doors and down a small ramp into the Gamesman’s Hall – where you see a large chess board and two sets of chess pieces – horde and alliance.

Your side is whatever faction you are aligned with – makes sense eh? Since I’m an alliance player I head to the right side and pick a piece to stand behind. You get the option here of Elemental (rook), Horse (knight) Healer (bishop), Mage (queen), King Lane (King) or one of the pawns. The pieces move as one would expect with some slight cheating as compared to real chess. Once someone talks to the King all players can then talk to their piece and you ‘enter’ them as a player. This means you are now controlling a chess piece on the board and you have a ‘pet bar’ your action bar icons should now reflect a few new choices (check the lower left side of the screen where your attack button and your hot bar items 1-4 are located).

Knights can move I think 3 spaces, everything else is limited to 1 at a time. You’ll want someone to move the pawn in front of the king so he can get out on the board – everyone else should be able to make their own way.The way to win is to kill the king on the opposing team, some folks try to take down the casters or healers first – I’ve done both and have never lost at chess. Seriously, if you lose at chess then you need to rework your strategy because it’s simply the easiest epics you’ll ever get.

Once you win DO NOT, under any circumstances, talk to anyone in the room – not Medivh or the chess pieces. If you do you’ll place a silence debuff on the raid that lasts a very long time. You can let your raid leader or loot master open the chest at the end of the hall, let them dish the goods then everyone takes a turn opening it for their badges – Free Lootz.

Once done gather on the center of the chess board. I’ll take you up to Prince then we’ll halt for the day – but in reality – you’d want to drive on to Prince and clear that fight, if you can.

At the far end of the hall is a double stair similar to the one you entered through, there are a total of 5 mobs in there, have your MT pull the single pat back to the board – you all DPS him down – MT and OT get the next two, same drill, then you all move on up and into the room they were in to pull the last two from what should be the right side, as you entered the room.

Once cleared there’s a spiral stairs leading up – your choice here – the raid goes all the way up, hugging the inside of the stairs to avoid the hidden mob that’s near the door on one of the landings OR

To be completely safe you can have your tank run up the stairs a bit and get that mob and bring him all the way down into the main room so you can work with some space.

If you elected to pull the odd add, you can stand at the top of the stairs and let your tank take the guy at the very top while you do stand-off attacks, or you can have the tank take him in the top central room and the raid can bum-rush him. Your call, if you didn’t kill the extra add then you have to bring the entire raid into the top room or you’ll pull the loner from below.

Once they are down/bypassed go out the next hall and stop by the door. Your opponent is now Prince Malchezzar – and he’s tied with Nightbane as the hardest boss in Kara.

Cogitations on Cat Gear/Stats for Kara

2008-02-12T12:34:00.001-06:00

One of the readers of this blog posited a question for me regarding my interpretation of the table I posted on Karazhan minimum requirements. He asked why I didn’t post a set of stats for feral kitty and since I’ve seen this question a few times I thought I’d write up a formal post in lieu of replying directly in the comments.

There are a number of good items you can get for feral cats and I think when I see this question posed, most people tend to answer it in terms of what gear to get, not what stats you should have. To that end I’ll post a couple of links I ran across from the forums, but later on I’m going to digress deeply into my thoughts on cat gear.

Here are a couple of links I’ve found that can perhaps help out Link 1 & Link 2 .

I’ve read 2.2k AP with 30% Crit is a good target starting place for cats. The basic gear choices for kitty are (one bear’s opinion here) – epic crafted chest from LW, hourglass trinket from BM, Abacus trinket from Arc, The clefthoof hide leggings, the elekk leggings or the x-52 pilot leggings from a quest in Netherstorm, the staff from Bot regular OR the Staff of Beasts from Nagrand, which is easier to get. Some folks like the hammer from PVP better than the staff Illhoof drops – but I hate PVP. I only did it to get my bear shoulders. The rogue gloves from Shattered Halls, Helm of the Claw was my DPS hat for a while (with the +12 agil meta), any decent DPS leather bracers – any of the nice DPS capes – there are several in the dungeon sets. I think I had cloak of the inciter but that wasn’t highly recommended for cats.

Mmm, If you don’t want to waste a lot of time getting gear – get the assassination set – rogue dungeon set 3a. That’s not a bad set to start with you could prob get one in a week or two. Other people will wax philosophically on the virtues of various gearing choices as a start, but I was always more focused on the tanking aspects. I gambled on picking up kitty gear as I went along, and I did.

My Digression
The KZ table I published was based on one I found on TenTonHammer, I freely admit I absconded with their table and I even noted why, because I was annoyed that I couldn’t deep link you directly to it, which in my opinion made their version all but useless – since it was hard to tell people how to find it, Go to this site, search for these words, click the third link, sacrifice a small mammal at the dark of the moon … BAH!

In all fairness I’ve even updated their chart, added color to make it easier to read and a few tweaks of my own and have since altered it based on suggestions from readers, friends and knowledgeable guild mates.

The KZ minimums table is lacking in two notable areas, Survival Hunters and Feral Kitties. I think there’s a reason for the lack of each. I know the survival hunter is a neat spec, you get exposed weakness which is a really nice boss debuff, and you get a solid trap option for CC, but in my experience, the overall consistent DPS output for BM hunters is more desirable than better traps. I know very little of MM, other than it is still a viable spec for KZ.

For feral cats, most of the time I’m in Kara, even when in cat form, I tend to stay in my tanking gear. The reason for this is that I can easily pick up a mob if the tank gets in trouble or if someone decides to pew pew the wrong target by accident. This sort of thing happens a lot to new groups – hell it happens a lot to me and both the KZ groups I run with are experienced raids.

I think the reason it's not on this chart is that you're not going to get into Kara as a kitty - you're going to go as a bear, who happens to have a cat set. A limited point of view to be sure, but perhaps the original was written by someone who wasn't into cats. However, we can correct this through a few modifications to our chart. (ohhhh, my first use of the Royal 'We')

A feral’s strength is “versatility” – it's hard to replace a rogue or lock that knows the job and does it well, but you are perhaps the most versatile class in the game. So yes, I think it's a vaild point to raise and I should make some changes.

But let’s get back to the issue of stats – as I‘ve said, I’ve read 2.2k AP with 30% Crit is the target to start. I don’t know about health pools but I’m guessing if you get the other two, the health pool your left with will be on the order of a geared pre-kara rogue. If anyone has solid info lemme know and I'll tweak it.

From what I’ve seen you’re looking to make your cat set similar to a rogues set – which only makes sense now doesn’t it? I mean, you’re a melee DPSer wearing leather … so sure, rogue sets are among your friends.

Mine wasn’t even close to that when I started, but my tank set was the best a raider could start with – and I had all the right gems and enchants. Both sets improved drastically since I was picking up both cat and bear gear as I went through the first month. I had to wait (and you may have to as well) on some of the kitty gear because our rogue got dibs on DPS leathers. Perhaps this explains the shortcomings on the chart - I was able to run kara in bear gear - almost all the time, perhaps the authors did as well, but that's still no excuse for not doing better.

We’ve all seen a lot of people with narrow minds in this game. So it will be no surprise if someone comes along and trashes my opinion, but I’d like to point out that this is simply that – my opinion. And in “My Opinion” there is no “set in stone” answer to the choice of gear/stats, only a set of guidelines and some general knowledge you can use to improve yourself.

Raiding is more about knowing your class and spec well than it is about what your gear will allow you to do. Any good raider will tell you that good raiders can make up for shortcomings in gear through skill and spec choices – at least until the gear they need drops.

I hope that helps.

Weekend Raider – Kara, the Shade

2008-02-11T17:05:00.000-06:00

Well, it turns out I ended up doing a Kara raid this weekend on my bear, though not with my regular group since I was busy with my son during our regular raid. I managed to pick up a couple of items – new cat shoes, belt from badges etc, which was nice because it means no more green items. (yes you can raid KZ with one or two green items depending on what they are – bears get Manimal’s Belt as a quest reward that should last them until they get enough badges of justice to replace it or run heroic Ramparts for the belt off the last guy.)

But, the real winner this weekend was my hunter. We hit Kara last night and I was practically falling asleep. My little boy spent the weekend running around my house getting into absolutely everything so I was somewhat drained by the time I got back from dropping him off at his mom’s.

But I pressed on, by this time our fights are easy because our gear lets us plow through boss after boss. We soon found ourselves outside Netherspite’s hall. Nether is the only boss in the place that hadn’t fallen to us yet. It took several tries to get everyone in their groove, but we managed to get him down after several attempts. And low and behold what should drop but hunter pants – literally 2/3 of the bosses dropped something I could use or needed, including my T4 helm. That’s going to really make a huge difference when it comes to next week’s run. Now I need to spend some time making money so I can afford to gem those out nicely. If only work would cooperate.

Last time we talked I owed you a run down on the Shade of Aran. You can find a good explanation of the fight over at Wowwiki, which should give you the basics of Shade. I’ve mentioned this in the past but it’s worth repeating. Your Raid leader or assist needs Deadly Boss Mods and/or Bigwigs. Shade has a few different phases and both of those mods can help.

The other noteworthy item to know about the Shade is he likes taking down your weakest player – so your healers need to try to keep everyone topped off. Since it’s not an aggro fight it’s a sort of loosely controlled chaos the MT/OT are mostly DPS/Stunning through the fight. As mentioned, there are a number of phases Shade likes to pull, he alternates fire and frost bolts – which you need to constantly interrupt, as well as arcane missiles (which you don’t interrupt) and an arcance explosion which will one-shot you if you’re within it’s detonation radius. There’s a blizzard affect that roams the room, some elementals that come out at one point and the most significant of all – Flame Wreath. FW is a big pain because due to a number of factors, your graphics card, latency etc – you may not even see it. But if anyone in the raid moves, even so much as turns in place (even if you don’t think it’s affecting you) the entire raid will wipe. When it hits you’re stuck in place. You can auto attack, i.e. shoot, wands, bows, guns, melle can auto attack, casters auto cast, but you cannot change your position in any way or the raid will literally get burned. Melee – if you’re out on the edges, then you need to hold in position until it passes.

Other than that the only thing to clearly watch for is that his mana pool stays above his HP – if it goes under his HP at about 10% or so he’ll polymorph the raid (even those immune to it) and when you come out he’ll blast you. The only way to survive is to have everyone topped off and to use healthstones, pots, bandages etc. as soon as you come out of sheep form.

My last word on Shade is that it’s not that hard of a fight, but it is yet another gear check – your DPS really needs to shine here and your raid leader needs complete command and control throughout the fight. It’s not uncommon for well geared raids to wipe a few times on him, it’s definitely one of those encounters that you need to practice a few times before mastering it.

Next time: we’ll move on to the easiest fight of all – Chess and perhaps discuss the Prince event and the last bosses, Terestrian, Nether and the skeletal dragon, Nightbane.

Sic transit gloria mundi

2008-02-07T15:50:00.000-06:00

It is a Latin phrase that means "Thus passes the glory of the world". It has been interpreted as "Fame is fleeting." One of the more famous versions exists at the end of the film "Patton" and was attributed to the famous WWII general.

"For over a thousand years Roman conquerors returning from the wars enjoyed the honor of triumph, a tumultuous parade. In the procession came trumpeteers, musicians and strange animals from conquered territories, together with carts laden with treasure and captured armaments. The conquerors rode in a triumphal chariot, the dazed prisoners walking in chains before him. Sometimes his children robed in white stood with him in the chariot or rode the trace horses. A slave stood behind the conqueror holding a golden crown and whispering in his ear a warning: that all glory is fleeting."- Gen. George C. Patton

Teacher says she’s just tired of tryin….

2008-02-07T11:08:00.001-06:00

That’s one of my favorite Ralph Wiggum quotes. For today, rather than go into a boring diatribe on the Shade of Aran, I’d like to talk about my experiences with casual players and how I think they could fit in a raid structure.

Let’s start with my RP guild. I call it that for lack of a better term but they really aren’t into role playing, they are simply casual players who log in when they have time to kill – like every night. Most of the guild have 70 mains and at least one 70 alt – several of them are working toward their third and fourth 70. There are a variety of players among them, teenagers, college students, mothers, fathers from all walks of life, cops, professionals, students, retirees etc.

It’s an interesting mix and a fun one, but after a while I got bored with just leveling my alts. So I started raiding a bit, found I liked it, then found it was very time consuming and very expensive. So I got an idea, casual raiding? I've heard it can work if you're not into progression, if you like gear and seeing new sights but aren't worried about full clears. So I gave it some cogitation.

But taking the casual player and getting them to understand the needs of a raid isn’t so easy. I have a warrior friend who thought playing his warrior was the coolest thing – though he always said he found it really hard to level up.

I was amazed. I have a 51 fury warrior and I buzz through mobs my own level constantly. About the only breaks I ever take are to wrap a band-aid around my owies and drive on. Then I looked over his spec. UGH. He had points in all three talent trees, and nothing heavily invested in any of them. So I pulled a good DPS spec off the web and sent it to him, along with a list of gearing options for DPS warriors. A week later I checked him again and found he was protection – with all the wrong talents chosen. I mean, if a guy could pick every talent incorrectly – he did it. Instinctively I think. He said he wanted to try tanking and had read up on uncritability, but he was still getting mauled in 5-mans – non heroics. Gosh, I wonder why.

HE’s playing a mage now and says it’s so much easier to level, but he can’t do 5-mans, because he runs out of mana in the boss fights ….

I asked what his mp5 was, (mana regen per 5 secs) he hadn’t heard of it. I asked what his bonus spell dmg was at lvl 70 – it was 289, ‘why, isn’t that good?’

/sigh

Now to be fair, he’s tried. But he just doesn’t “get it.” He’s read some things, he’s tried gearing a little, but he has some blues and some just silly choices for gear, stats and spec and he can’t figure out why he’s not doing better. I’ve done what I can to help him, but I’m done trying

But I’ve gone from the idea of casual players in raid settings to harping on one gearing and talent choice. There are many like this guy, they aren’t theorycrafters and don’t get the game – but it’s really not that hard and you don’t have to get into the details of theorycrafting in order to start something like kara. You just need someone who knows raids, and the bosses to be the leader, someone who can help out to be the assist and someone who can follow the basics of loot rules to parcel out the good stuff. The leader simply needs to be someone who understands what each class does, and how to use the talents available.

I used to think leading a raid would be hard. And admittedly it can be difficult, but it doesn’t HAVE to be. It’s like so many other choices in life, it is what you make of it. Be a hard case and you’ll have to deal with resentment issues, be too lax and you’ll have a rowdy unruly bunch who wipe a bit more. Be of even keel and keep your mind in the middle and you might just get by.

I think if my self imposed breaks extend for any real length of time I’ll look forward to pulling together my own KZ raid, just to see if I can get a group of casual players to work out or not. I’ve tried this with the legacy raids, it’s not the same. There’s no incentive for them, no real reward. Maybe KZ is the place to test this out. I’ll let you know.

Burned out by the real world

2008-02-07T10:29:00.000-06:00

Man, have I been lazy this week. I’ve been busy with the real world so I haven’t been giving this as much attention lately. I owe you a run down of the bosses following Curator but to tell you the truth, I’m a little burned out this week. :-)

My son and I started early childhood development classes on Wednesday of last week (organized playtime with other dad’s and their kids) and I’m also shifting my weekends around so I’m able to spend more time with him than with WoW and my raid buddies.

Given how irritating and chatty our Friday night raid has gotten lately I’m not all that sorry to be taking a break. If they find themselves in dire need of a Dire Bear I can join them next week, but we’ve had an abundance of people willing to come so I think they’ll be fine.

I talked it over with my raid leader last week and mentioned that as my son grows up I’ll be shifting my schedule to meet his needs. And let’s be honest – a boy needs his dad more than this dad needs World of Warcraft.

But make no mistake, this is a break, a well deserved one I think for all the nonsense I’ve managed with this group over the course of the last two months. I also intend to resume my work here – even if no one reads it I can’t leave a project unfinished.

Weekend Recap

2008-02-04T10:34:00.000-06:00

I got a bit lazy this weekend. I don’t know if it was lack of sleep (dang neighbors) or the sloth of a Sunday induced football game but I didn’t get a lot done. I hardly bothered watching the ‘big game’ either. Maybe it’s the weather that causes this apathy.

I did manage to get my Tier 4 gear for my bear on Friday, but the run was tough. I hate chatty vent servers – it’s annoying. Of course we have a lot of chatty people and after 4 hours it’s beyond annoying. I usually turn the volume down completely.

But we did manage to clear KZ in 4 hours – so that’s something.

I got an in-game note from my hunter’s raid that Sunday’s KZ run was being moved to today, apparently the raid leader is a Pats fan. I thought it was a lame excuse for moving a raid, but eh – I liked the break.

So this weekend, instead of running up to 58 on my pally, which I should have done, I instead got on my lock. He was 51 on Sat and is sitting nicely at 54 this morning. Three toons headed to the outlands at the same time? Huh, I guess I could do it easily enough.

I really need to work on better gear though. My paladin in particular needs better armor and spell dmg. I had forgotten how much fun a lock can be … DoTs ftw. I was busting down tons of mobs a lot higher than I was too. The fights tend to be a bit mana intensive, but for all that it’s not so hard. Life tap works well when you have a tank, but my healer buddy kept trying to heal me, even after I announced I was life tapping /sigh.

As for the rest, I spent a lot of time going through mailboxes and bags, putting stuff up for AH and trying to clear some space. After a couple of months my bags get so disorganized and I have to spend a day cleaning house. I still have a ton of items to DE and sell. Need to get back to work on that.

I’ll put the next Kara boss up soon, but it may not be today. I wrote everything up but I need to spend some tweak time on it yet.

Kara Part 5

2008-02-01T11:30:00.000-06:00

The Curator
When we last parted ways I left you working your way toward the first boss that drops a Tier 4 token, the Curator. Every Kara raider will let you know that the big machine is a gear check, meaning that if your group can bring him down, you stand a reasonable chance at downing the rest of the bosses in Karazhan. The exceptions are Prince Malchezzar and Nightbane. The rest should be doable.

Should be doable … well, you will most likely wipe a few times while you figure out the fights but lets see if I can help when we get that far.

For now what you need to do is what I mentioned last time, either clear the mobs on the far side of the Opera Hall or run back out the front door and cross the river to the side entrance.

Going to the side entrance presents you with an additional opportunity, since Nightbane is summoned on the master’s terrace and if you go in the side door you’re about 50 yds from the place. But it also presents a small challenge. There are ghost mobs sitting on the other side of the door. They aren’t too close, but if you run in and move to either side of the door you can pull one or both. Since your raid is likely setting up at this time it’s usually a wipe – at minimum it’s a few deaths. So the trick here is to open the inner door and run straight ahead to the far wall – all raiders stack on top of each other. You shouldn’t pull anything that way. Alternatively you can assemble between the entrance and the door before opening it.

Once you get set up – crack the door if you chose that option and run to the left, tanks out in front. Take out the ghost mob (only one) and make sure your mage decurses the affected party members. This first mob is purple. Later ones are green. The green ones cannot be taunted so keep that in mind when pulling.

Now you begin a long climb up to the back entrance to the Menagerie. There’s a bunch of ghosts along the way and when you reach the top there’s 2 arcane protectors inside the first room. They should be taken at the same time – MT/OT with attention paid to the debuff one of them tosses out. It affects one party member and while it’s active – that person discharges an arcane blast for 1-2k every couple of seconds – so make the person who has it run away from the raid.

After these are down move up the stairs into the small ante-chamber and gather. Through the only other door is the Menagerie and Curator, and about 7 groups of mobs. These smaller groups have to be taken out first – MT pulls one into the antechamber while curator is on the far side of his patrol. The raid focuses on the giant arcane anomaly first. It will look as if you’re doing no dmg to him but he has a mana shield and your shots deplete his mana – once it’s gone he goes down like a .,. well you get the idea.

Drop his mana worm palls, rinse and repeat for the other mobs. Pull them all into the antechamber. I know raids that do the last 1-2 in Curator’s room but that is a huge risk for a new raid as Curator has a massive aggro range. Use your hunters and mages to pull the mobs, MD, blink etc.

The boss fight can be done two ways. Both ways require the raid to assemble in the boss’ room on the far right wall, line abreast and don’t get off the wall while he’s nearby. Once he moves away you can set up.

The tank will take the boss (boss’ back to raid) at the third diamond shaped pattern on the carpet. In the first method all raiders will spread out in a U shape, with the base of the U on the wall right of the door you came through. Ranged DPS can deal with his add (astral flares) and have to get them down fast. In the second method your melee can help the ranged by following them around.

The first method is less damage intensive as the flares can cast chain lightning for arcane dmg. But if your healers are good you can do it the other way. See the strategy notes on fighting Curator. If your gear is good and your team is well prepped, he can go down in about 4-5 mins.

Outlands Bound … this time on a paladin

2008-02-01T11:07:00.000-06:00

Last night I was helping one of my guild leaders level his paladin. He had a series of quests in Maraudon and was having trouble finding a team. Sheesh I wonder why – it’s only a freakin nightmare of an instance. I have only done parts of Mara a few times in the past, I’d forgotten how screwy that place is. An entire clear would take a level appropriate team a long time.

So, Chirax and I hit Mara for some ‘fun.’ I guess it wasn’t all that long – maybe 90 mins or so, but even on my 70 hunter it was a pain. Those stupid knockdown effects from the Thrashers got on my nerves.

While underground one of our feral buddies got on and said he was bored and could he please run us through something.

Never one to turn down such an offer Chirax and I both said we’d be happy with a BRD run.

So I jumped on my tankadin, dumped my bags and headed for Burning Steppes. PL runs are fun once in a while, so long as you don’t beg for them or get constantly asked to run someone. An open invitation is too good to pass up. The funny thing is, I never really enjoyed playing a paladin. I was a horrible healer and I could not figure out the ret combos. Everything seemed to take forever when comparing it to my mage or druid. So I had left this toon parked for a long time. But not so long ago I started taking an interest in him again and recently spent some time leveling him up a bit more.

In this case I was sitting at 55 on my pally and I’ve been trying to hurry up to 58 so I can use him as a teammate with Cam – my shadow priest friend from TSS. That mana regen is awesome for tankadins. I really should have thought ahead when I chose my mage instead of my pally.

The end result of our little excursion was a full level and a half of xp – I’m sitting nicely on the positive side of 57 and have the first set of quests done for BRD. I need to hit Burning Steppes quick to start my Ony attunement chain, but I’m not too worried and besides, I love killing dragons. Our main tank from Kara even showed up on her mage for a bit, though she DC’d after the bar and never came back. Sad, she missed a ton of good cloth gear.

I totally hosed up a quest for the shadow key, I forgot you have to talk to the dead guy twice. Oh well, I can always do it the hard way. The good news is I’m attuned for MC this weekend. Can you say epic pally gear?

The only downside from last night was that I ran out of rested XP. Since my mage has only been parked for a week he hasn’t save up enough of his own yet, so I’m left with a choice.

Chirax and Mageblast (MT’s mage) are both at 47-49. Mageblast has 251 spell damage, un-freakin-real. She farmed up two epic rings in Winterspring on her own and you can’t believe the DPS that girl puts out. But since they are sitting under 50 I suppose I could grab my own shadow priest and bust him up from 44 to meet them. That would give Chirax a nice mana pool to tank with while us clothies pound the mobs. Alternatively I could pull out my warlock. I love playing him in groups but I pull so dang much aggro I was getting frustrated playing him.

Decisions, decisions.

Wouldn’t that be a trip, three characters sitting in Honor Hold awaiting my free time? I’d be beside myself. I think I’d have to give up sleeping for a while.

Tonight is Kara, so no PLing for me. Our tank is coming back (if she doesn’t DC) and we’ll get yet another chance to see the same T4 tokens drop. Maybe my boots will drop tonight.

KZ Minimums (by talent tree)

2008-01-31T15:11:00.001-06:00

I had a difficult time getting this information when I first I went looking for it. What I needed was a general set of guidelines as to what constituted "entry level" requirements for the end-game level 70 raids. Well, I still haven't found one for the 25-mans but I mentioned previously that TTH had a nice little table for Karazhan.

The only problem is I can't link you directly to it. Also, I didn't think it was as accurate as it could have been so I've updated it. I also added a line for survival spec'd hunters since there wasn't one in the original, however I don't know the spec that well so anyone who does please feel free to comment and I'll change it.

Kara Part 4

2008-01-31T13:37:00.000-06:00

When last we left our series on the opening moves of Karazhan we had cleared the Maiden and the trash along the way to the Opera Event. Now that my posts aren’t taking the entire freaking page (unless you clicky the little Read More button) I think we can pick up where we left off and describe one of the more interesting fights in this instance.

As we parted ways the other day I left you standing on the ramp leading up from the orchestra pit aka Opera pit, below the stage. You may not have realized that was where you were, because there isn’t an orchestra there, but that’s where you were moving through.

Once on the ramp you’ll want your ranged casters and healers standing about a third of the way up on the stairs, and your melee closer to the top. The tanks can move out into the open area head. This is the backstage part of the Opera Hall and there’s a few mobs to clear. The first is a 2-pull pat(rol) that can be easily face pulled (letting them get close enough to you that you aggro simply by letting them see you). Many groups will inadvertently face pull these and if not done properly, you can pull one of the stationary mobs nearby as well. These guys hit hard and have debuffs that will mess you up. So please, let your tanks be the only ones out in the open and the rest of you stay on the ramp.

Each tank takes a target and once engaged the raid should focus fire on the kill order. At some point each of the bad guys will pop a column of white light, it’s very important to move the mobs out of the light or Very Bad Things result. So for you folks in the ranged department, be aware that the tanks will be deliberately moving the mobs around a few feet when the light shows up, and you’ll need to adjust accordingly.

The mobs in this area aren’t too hard to defeat. Once you clear your way to the immediate backstage area you’ll see an NPC named Barnes, the Stage Manager ahead. Don’t go to him yet. There’s a wooden stairs off to your left, send a tank up and pull the mobs back down (sometimes they like to pat back down and can nail your raid while your prepping for the boss fight. There’s a couple on either side at the top of the stairs. NOTE: it’s not a necessity, just a safety precaution.

Once cleared take a short break to call for full raid buffs. Include food buffs, lock cookies but you shouldn’t need flasks for this next part.

The Opera Event is a unique fight in which one of three “plays” is selected for you randomly. Your choices are Hood, Oz and Romulo & Julianne. Each is handled very differently. A lot of raids will send in one person stripped of gear who will begin the event by speaking to Barnes and then run through the side door out onto the stage in front of the curtain. The rest of the raid waits, either in the pit below or simply in the room you cleared before you got to Barnes.

I’ve been in several raids that just position themselves out on the stage and take whatever comes without doing this. New raids should use the first method as it increases your opportunity to explain what will happen next and minimizes confusion and deaths.

Hood is basically Little Red Riding Hood and the boss is the Big Bad Wolf, linked above. He turns a random raid member into Little Read Riding Hood and chases her around the room til he kills her. He also has a fear and stun capability and cannot be aggro’d off Red during this phase, but DPS and tanks can and NEED to keep building threat on him or when Red goes down or fades he’ll turn on whoever is highest on the threat table. It’s best to tank him left rear stage away from the raid when possible. The Red Riding Hood debuff turns you into a little girl with zero armor. To stay alive you need to run the perimeter of the stage in a SQUARE, not an oval or a circle. BBW chases a spot just in front of the runner and if you don’t run in straight lines he can catch you.

Oz is the Wizard of Oz – there’s Dorethy, Tito, Roar, Tinhead and Strawman – see the wowwiki notes on strategy – easy fight – bring a lock and a mage for it. Kill order Dorethy, Tito, Roar/Strawman, Tinhead. Keep the straw guy feared and fire DoT’d and he’ll go down fast.

R&J – strangely enough I rarely see this fight. I know Blizz has said the events are random, but I don’t think I believe that. I think they are more likely to happen on certain days of the week, but then that’s just my subjective opinion. The unique thing on R&J is that you kill one, then the other then you fight both and they have to die within 10 secs of each other or they rez again. She’s a caster and he’s a DPS warrior. Good Luck!

Once you clear whatever Opera Event you get you now have an interesting option. You can either head through the door leading to the area ahead, which is the noble’s balcony. In there you can clear the mobs for some phat gold. I’ve been told each raider can get as much as 20g in there. You have to clear the area all the way up to the door that leads to the back of Kara, out on the Master’s Terrace.

If you don’t feel like risking it you can head back down and out the front door go to your left diagonally, crossing the foundation of the ruined house, across the river, up the bank and to the stairs leading up to the side entrance. It’s a long climb and you end up on a narrow bridge in front of the side door. I think you have to clear Opera to use it but I’m not sure. Here endeth Kara Part 4. Your next fight is another gear check and your first chance at a Tier 4 token.

Woot! Figured it out!

2008-01-31T10:33:00.001-06:00

Many furry thanks to the Big Bear Butted one John P. for the tip on making my blog more readable. I've debated going back and changing older posts so everythign lines up nice and neat, call it the OCD part of me. But I've decided to let the previous ones stand since the comments would be lost. However going forward I'll be using a new method that links to the main pages of each post and should make this mess a little easier to read.

Kara - part 3

2008-01-31T10:11:00.000-06:00

The Maiden of Virtue

Okay, you’ve handed Attumen his head, crashed the party in the banquet hall and silenced about half the people doing the Hokey Pokey in the dance hall (no lie, they really do the HP).

You’re back on the stairs and ready to drive on. Depending on whether or not you pulled the AOE non-elite pack on the right side of the top of the stairs, you need to clear it – so if you didn’t yet do so now – same drill as last time. Pull to stairs, AOE em down, focus heal the cloth cannons. One of your tanks will hug the right wall heading down to the far right corner of the dance hall to whack the mob standing there. Once engaged the raid should follow. There’s another non-elite AOE pack in the center-right of the dance hall – they die too. Watch for the elite mobs sitting along the walls – sometimes they come along with the larger pulls – just mark them for death first and hold the mob.

Clear the singles on either side of the door on the opposite side of the room, watch for any patrols that might pop through and send in your stealth to verify the area is clear.

Head into the next area – its an open space with many of the same mobs as the dance hall – AOE packs, both elite and non-elite. As well as single elite mobs. Use basic tanking procedures here – Line of Sight on the bigger mobs as they are needed. Leave the elite AOE pack over there alone – you can move without aggroing them, but take down all pats and the big non-elite pack in the middle of the room – tank hint: tank runs up to them and kites them away from the elite pack, then back to the raid while hugging the wall farthest from the elites and lets them stack on him, use a corner to hide in so they bunch up before DPS sets in.

Ahead on the far side of the room is another doorway with pillars, on the right wall is a single small doorway – head for the small one. Stealthies can peek to see where the pats are in there, if clear the raid can go in.

The raid moves in and to the left – there’s a long narrow hallway here and the raid should stack in there for the next pulls. There’s a few guards close by in the main hall, and some wandering hookers patrolling the halls. The respawn time is 1 hour in the hall – do not go into the side rooms. Those spawn on a 20 min timer. We’ll come back to that in a moment. Clear the halls 1 set of mobs at a time. There’s a 5 pull off to the right – leave them until both the pat and left side guards are down – but if the pat is a ways off you can pull the guards on the left, just do so that they run along the left wall.

On the pat – our raid calls it the whore (whoor) pack, I forget if there's one or two - think it's only one set. It’s a demon and an undead. Banish the demon if you can, or shackle the undead. Take only one at a time. One of them will try to charm the melee, the other will use a banshee howl – burn em down.

Note: everything here until you get the 5-pull gets pulled into the hall and burned there. The guards summon dogs so melee, watch your casters. Now, the 5-pull. You need MT and OT for this, shackle banish, etc. Clear those and there’s 2 guards at the end of the hall – shackle or OT one and burn them down.

Stop

Do Not Pass Go, Do Not Collect $200.

Ahead of you is the Maiden of Virtue, your next boss encounter. I asked you not to go into the side rooms, which probably sounds reasonable unless you need to for one of the quests for Kara. Well, it’s still reasonable even if you need to ‘cause you can simply wait 5 hours for the packs to despawn once the boss is dead. That's right Snoopy, once a boss dies, all mobs associated with that boss despawn in 5 hours - since the raid resets only once a week - you can come back another day and freely wander the areas you've cleared. How? Form a group with another player and convert it to a raid, then walk in – by this time the dance hall and stables and the whoor’s quarters are all empty IF you killed the bosses.) Besides – no need to make the raid wait for you. There’s killin ta be dun.

Maiden isn’t hard, but she sure seems so at first. The link to Wowwiki describes the fight and the abilities she has. But the most important thing to know is that positioning is key. One SUPER important thing to know is her aggro radius is quite large. So hug that outside wall!

So here’s how it all goes. She’s in a circular room (she’s a mini-Titan btw) and there’s pillars surrounding her – she’s in the center on a slightly raised platform. Your raid leader will mark out or walk you to your spot. You’ll be hugging the outside wall AT ALL TIMES – hunters put your pets on passive and MAKE SURE THEY STAY WITH YOU. I’ve seen pets pull Maiden = insta wipe.

The raid leader will generally split the raid up so the healers are evenly spaced with DPS. Melee and tanks will stay put at the entrance and well outside aggro range.

Maiden does a few unique abilities, holy fire, repentance (stuns the raid for 12 secs – dmg breaks this). The key element here is to get your melee into a max-range triangle or square around her as soon as the tank picks her up – no OT needed here – go full out DPS.

As soon as the fight starts you can do one of two things, everyone can stand in the center of the space between the pillars AND on the edge of the dias (raised part), or can stand in front of the pillar they are on. However you all need to pick the same stance or she’ll holy chain fire you down because you'll be too close together to avoid it. She drops holy ground (holy dmg in the 300s every 3 secs – its not too bad) and she Holy Fires random people – that has a DoT that needs to be dispelled – make sure your clothies are removing it quickly. Keep melee alive and kicking and the rest of the fight is gravy.

Just make sure when you go back to the hallway you hug the side away from the whoor’s rooms. Make your way back out into the larger open room and to the door (now on your right) with the pillars, don’t get too close now – there’s baddies there.

There’re two skeletal guards here, both the MT and OT need to take on the same target – CC the other. ALL DPS holds for a moment because the guard will Ice Tomb the person highest on the threat table (Get OMEN, Seriously) and will go for the second person on the threat table. Now that had better damn well be a tank or your health monkey is gonna be eating floor. Once the Ice Tomb hits and your tank is safely encased – DPS opens the floodgates and down he goes.

Same deal for the CC’d mob and the next 3 guys – including the one pat – wait for him and burn him the same, then there’s 2 up ahead – you can skip if you want, but we always burn em to be safe. Now you’ll see that you’re in the theater area (stage not screen). Go up to your right – hug the wall and head backstage and down into the pit, across and then up the ramp – stop before you get to the top. I’ll leave it here cause the next part leads into opera – however you wouldn’t stop a raid here normally. But this is getting long.

Still figuring out blogs

2008-01-30T15:30:00.000-06:00

I have to apologize for the length of my posts. I'm not smart enough yet to figure out how to do what BBB and the other bloggers do regarding linking these to pages all on their own. I'll keep at it and when I do manage to wrap my paws around the method I'll go back and clean everything up nice n neat.

Thoughts and musings on Kara – part 2

2008-01-30T13:46:00.001-06:00

Moroes the Steward

Moroes is a pain for beginning raiders because the fight is a real test of your ability to manage multiple targets under a tight deadline. Once you get the knack of it though, he’s not so tough. As a bit of lore, he was the personal servant to Medivh while the master mage ran the tower. Medivh was the son of one of the guardians who fought Saragas in ancient times and was born possessed by the villain – long story. Toward the later stages of his life Medivh cum Saragas killed off Moroes and the castle cook, named … Cook. They are buried outside near where you rez. NOTE: you have to kill Moroes or you cannot proceed to the Opera Event – he’s a required boss. Attumen isn’t, nor is the next boss the Maiden of Virtue.

First of all your raid should gather on the stairs near the door leading out of Kara. We usually group near the base of the second flight of stairs. Up ahead of you – which you can’t see – is a large dance hall with a mess of non-elite AOE packs and a few single elites as well as some smaller elite AOE packs. Off to the left is the banquet hall, to the right is a door leading to the prostitute’s quarters.

Get a rogue or cat to stealth up and start marking targets. The single elites will be patrolling around – mark them up first. Toss a mark on each of the nearest AOE packs as well – one mark for each pack.

Once everything is marked – specifically watch those patrolling elites, you can pull one of the nearest AOE non-elite packs to you. Pull them down the stairs and let your casters go to town. Focus heals on the cloth cannons so you don’t lose too many – we usually end up with at least one dead.

Now that you’ve cleared the annoying non-elites, start pulling the single pats as they come by – take your time – the respawn on this area is a lot longer than on the stable trash. Kill each, pull the next, rinse and repeat. Now you should have a clear field within about 30 yds of the top of the stairs. It’s not necessary to clear the room – just anything that might wander into your raid or that is near enough to aggro on them.

You have the option here of doing the next pulls 2 ways. What needs to happen is this. There’s a banquet hall off to the left of the top of the stairs and in it are several tables, each with a non-elite AOE pack. There’s also some wandering single mob, elite Stewards (waiters). Your choice is to have the raid remain on the stairs and have your tank pull them to you OR have the raid hug the left wall, bunch up in the corner at the immediate top left of the stairs and have your tank pull the mobs there.

I’ve done both and each has its plusses. I like the stairs best ‘cause it lets me see more, but you also get a scatter effect as well. At any rate – the mobs at the table and the patrolling elites all need to be cleared (one group at a time!) Once you clear the near portion of the banquet hall you can move the raid inside -- MAKE DAMN SURE NO ONE PULLS THE AOE ELITE PACK standing nearby in the dance hall. It’s all too easy to do and can cause a wipe.

As you enter the banquet area, there’s two elite mobs standing on the right wall – their counterparts are on the far left wall – leave them alone for now. Also – there’s a raised stage at the back wall (the boss is there with his buddies) and there’s a table on either side of the raised area – more non-elite AOE packs. And finally there’s a couple more elite single mobs patrolling the area between the long table and the two smaller ones. There is also something called a Brittle Bones debuff the patrolling mobs give out when attacked – make sure if your tank has it that he isn’t the one pulling the next mob – let the OT handle.

To clear the room you want to mark up the patrolling elites and the non-elite AOE packs at the small tables. Pull each individually and burn em down. Next pick on one set of the paired up elite mobs standing on the wall on either side of the room. Each tank takes 1 each – focus fire on one til it’s down then shit to the OT’s target. Healers watch VERY CLOSELY to the drunken debuff the tanks can get – it’ll screw them up bad if you don’t dispel it fast. I’ve seen a lot of raids wipe on these.

Now we come to the boss fight.

Moroes is a rogue – not that he isn’t likable but he has Vanish, Gouge, Blind and Garrote capabilities and wields two daggers. His friends are worse.

From Wowwiki: The Moroes encounter tests your raid's ability to control several targets while also maintaining high DPS. Success requires a solid control strategy for his four dinner guests. If allowed to go free, they will quickly put an end to the squishies. Control must be established immediately on the pull and maintained throughout the fight.

Once control is established, the encounter becomes a race between the raid's damage output and the building damage caused by Garrote. Each time a Garrote is applied, the strain on the healers increases. Moroes must die before the healing needed becomes too much to handle. (interpretation – healers need big mana pools)

In fact – so this doesn’t get too long just go read the strategy page at WoWwiki that I linked at the top. About the only thing I’ve done on this fight that is different is changing up tank roles. New raids will want to have both tanks on the boss at all times – since either can be stunned or blinded and will lose aggro for a second or two – dispel the affects when you can and it should go smooth. We usually have the MT pull the boss and both MT and OT gank him while keeping him on the right wall of the room. You’ll want one of your melee nearby because both tanks can be stunned/blinded – doesn’t happen a lot but it does happen. Keep a melee near so Moroes doesn’t go for a healer.

The casters need to go down fast – esp the Spriest if she’s there – her mana burn can wipe your raid. A good rule here is to shackle/trap/sheep all but one of the adds, leave a priority cloth target out and have your melee and ranged DPS burn the add down. Recast your shackles and other CC every 10 secs (or chain trap/kite) or so to keep them locked up. Then take the next that doesn’t need a tank. Keep anything CC’d that might require a tank to kill. You should be able to burn 2 mobs, leave the others CC’d and turn ALL DPS on Moroes, healers are gonna get a work out if you dilly dally around due to the garrote ability – they basically have to heal through it. Shammy healers can mitigate this threat nicely with chain heal, but any good healer can make it happen. Pallys can BoP someone out of it – Divine Shield themselves if needed.

Once the boss is down get the raid out of the room and back on the stairs ASAP (without pulling the dance hall mobs) and let the tanks break CC and kite the adds to the door – no need to kill them, they will reset if pulled to the door. Once they do go get your loot. And get your fannies back on the stairs outside.

The alternate way I’ve done this fight was to have a single tank on Moroes and let the other tank the un-CC’d adds one at a time. This is an okay way of doing it – the non-boss tank needs a few shots on the boss to register on the threat meter – but it’s more risky if your tanks are less than ideally geared. I do like the method though because you can use a tank to bash the cloth around and that helps protect the raid. Just remember – the longer the boss is up, the more dmg your healers have to deal with due to Garrote.

Thoughts and musings on Kara – part 1b

2008-01-30T13:29:00.001-06:00

Ok – as important as some of that long-assed post on starting out is, lets move to the first real boss in KZ. Attumen the Huntsman. I’m skipping the animal bosses but you don’t have to. The only reason I skip these is that I’ve never done them. The raids I’ve joined skip these and I’ve been told the animal bosses give little in the way of rep or rewards. However I do know they are meant as a gearing, coordination tool for beginner raiders.

As you get in and gather in the courtyard, get your buffs up – mage table up. lock cookies have been handed out, stam food, raid buffs stack and your MT and OT get into position while the raid leader starts marking targets and announces the kill orders and CC icons. The horses aren’t that hard, but you should focus fire on them (all DPS on targets in a pre-determined kill order) until they are down. Let your priest shackle one as CC to help with that. You can also have your hunter toss out a trap to hold one for a few secs. If anything breaks off CC it again or one of the tanks will need to pick it up. Horses will often charge the ranged casters/DPS so it’s important that two things happen on the first few horse pulls.

First is your tanks need to bring the pulls into the main room, away from the hall (cause there’s a pat that comes by). The other thing is that you can mitigate the charges by grouping closer together – don’t let your hunter stand off by the door and lob shots in – or he’ll pull the horse across the room, wasting valuable tank rage and threat.

The trash leading up to the boss will respawn faster than most of the trash in KZ, you have a very short amount of time, I think 20 mins. So no afk breaks until after the first boss.

Yeah, 20 mins sounds like a long time but it isn’t. I’ve seen new raids miss this and have to go back and re-clear EVERYTHING – if you start the boss fight without doing so, anything alive in the hall will come up behind you and give you a big ole sloppy kiss. Once you start the boss fight the trash will not spawn while you’re engaged. Wipe and it’s a different story.

When you get the pull order down (basically take groups one at a time and use your CC when you can, try not to pull pats with other groups and when you get to the bigger room, pull the nearside first (right side)). Then pull the two left side mobs, then the 5-pull mob standing just outside Midnight’s stall. Once you clear this trash you see Midnight standing in the stable. She’s yellow until attacked.

As the first and easiest boss in Karazhan, Attumen is considered a gear check for those who wish to move further in. He’s optional; it is not necessary to kill him in order to progress to the later bosses.

As a bear OT my job is to tank Midnight. (I know Paly tanks that can tank both simultaneously as well, you just need to make sure the raid watches threat) You really want a warrior to tank Attumen if you can – simply for the disarm ability. At 95% dmg on the horse,. Attumen comes out to kick your raid’s butt for messing with his pony. Your MT picks him up, a hunter can toss a misdirect up on the MT as well. This is Phase 2. When the horse OR Att get to 25% health Att jumps up on his horse and Phase 3 starts. All DPS needs to stop here and the MT takes over both targets – which are now just the one.

Let your tank get Attumen’s attention and to also turn him so his back is to the raid. Now we hit a KEY POINT. The entire raid has to scooch up and sit at minimum range on the horse’s rear end. Why? Because Attumen gets the Beserker Charge ability in Phase 3 and if you have people spread out he’ll leave the tank and charge across the room. Keeping your raid bunched tight on his horse’s rear mitigates his charge, and won’t leave the tank to twiddle his thumbs.

Attumen actually goes down pretty easily and drops a few nice items. Once Attumen is down, clear the mobs near Koren the Blacksmith. He is required for quests, and your raiders who have at least Honored reputation with the Violet Eye can use him to repair and purchase Blacksmithing recipes. You don’t need to fully clear the trash at the end of the room Koren is in – just don’t let anyone wander over there.

Grtz! You’ve downed your first KZ boss and the trash around him. Now quit lollygaggin and git yer butts back into the entry hall and UP ON THOSE STAIRS!

Thoughts and musings on Kara – part 1a

2008-01-30T12:59:00.000-06:00

I posted the other day that if anyone wanted to hear my thoughts on instances or bosses from a bear’s point of view (or a hunter’s) that I’d happily share them. Well readers, Mosshoof graciously accepted my poor offer and asked if I would do so since his raid is just getting underway in Kara. Feel free to correct me or add to the general discussion at will.

Now, not that Moss or his raid need this, but by way of introduction to raiding in general I’ll begin with a short intro to raids, pugs, specs, gear and then move later into the first couple of bosses in KZ.

First of all I’d like to touch on Pick up Groups aka pugs. When I hit 70 on my hunter and spent some time getting attuned to KZ I thought I was the cat's ass. “Oh yeah,” I thought. “All I have to do now is find a team.”

Not so, super trooper. There were a lot of aspects [pun intended] I hadn’t considered and the most important ones were ability and gear. KZ is not hard … IF you know what you’re doing and IF you have the goods to wear.

For any class there’s a threshold you need to reach to really be considered a beginner in KZ. You can find this in a nifty format over at TenTonHammer – Karazhan Minimum Requirements. I don't agree with everything on that list, but it's a nice general guide.

You can use this in conjunction with www.wow-loot.com to gear up your character. There are also lots of gear/gem/enchant guides for particular classes as well. In researching my bear gear I found several pre-raid gear guides. Not all were helpful but it put me on the right track.

As a hunter I chose BeastMastery, which wasn’t a great spec until 2.3 hit – you see a lot more BM hunters now. I picked up the Beastlord armor set (dungeon set 3a). and worked on getting rid of my greens. (with some exceptions greens really shouldn’t be worn in KZ – work on getting a good blue item or matching set for every item you own)

As a bear I loved being on the front lines taking a beating or sneaking up blasting mobs with my pounce ability. So that lead me to the Heavy Clefthoof crafted set and a mess of little items that boosted my stamina and threat generation.

Since I was slotted as the Off Tank - OT - I also made sure I had at least a decent set of cat gear, since not every pull was going to require me to tank.

Communications
Some other things to consider as a new raider: get Ventrilo or Teamspeak – both are vast improvements over the in-game version of voice chat. You’ll also find most raids will require Vent or TS. However, due to your hardware or cost, you may not have the option. If you don’t then very tight control of voice chat is required. If using in-game, I’d mute the non-key slots (not the tank or MH) until you get into a groove.

The ability to listen in is more important that getting a mic, but if you’re playing an integral part talking is essential. As a beginning hunter I just listened at first, but I got a mic soon after and it’s only helped my performance.

Lastly, make sure you have a viable raid spec. There lots of specs to chose from, but ask around among your friends, check out a few web sites and search the forums a bit. You should find enough to point you in the right direction. If you get it wrong, don’t be afraid to listen to someone’s comments on it.

When I first started raiding on my hunter I wasn't the cat's ass, I was a complete dumbass – thing is, I didn’t know how much I didn’t know (if you follow my meaning). I actually thought I was well situated and geared. My raid leader approached me quietly and said, “Hey, not to tell you what to do, but have you considered changing your spec?” It was a really nice way for him to let me know that I could be doing better on the DPS charts and he even shared a couple of examples.

My advice to you is, “Don’t scorn advice,” even if it’s sometimes put to you poorly.

So, why the big lead in? Why all the stuff about what to start as, gear, spec, et. al. ad nauseum?

Because the very first thing I’m gonna do when you list yourself in LFG for Kara (or PST me) is to use Armory to see if you know what you're doing. I'll be checking what you are wearing and what your stats are and I may ask questions. I’m not sure if all raids do this but in my experience if they don’t know you they probably will look you up.

I’ve also learned that when listing myself in LFG (even for 5-mans) to use the comment bar – that saves time and gets you noticed faster. Example: Feral tank, half Kara gear, 16k HP, 24k AC, 35% dodge unbuffed. These are your bona fides - your proof that you have been to see the elephant and returned to tell the tale.

Add-ons
If you don’t run with add-ons, you should probably get at least a couple. As a raid assist I run BigWigs and Deadly Boss in case my raid leader DC’s in a fight. Both can be found over at Curse These have built in timers for boss fights and give a shout out to the raid as to what’s coming next. You might want to simply download WowAce2 and use that to auto update all your addons.

Omen is a great one for anyone really. It’s a threat meter and it pops a small window on your screen that shows who has threat and at what rate they gain or lose it on a given target. That’s practically a must when raiding. It lets your raid know when they need to bump up or back off aggro.

Class play
You ought to know your class well. As a BM hunter this meant learning which pet to tame, chain trapping as a means of CC (admittedly a weaker one), shot rotations and mana conservation for long fights. As a bear it meant learning how to generate the most threat I could so my raid wasn’t pulling aggro on me, and my targets weren’t skipping off to grind our healers into tiny bear snacks.

Finally
One last word for you. If you are going to use this guide and look for a PuG spot, make sure you approach prospective raids with your hat in hand. Even well geared and experienced raiders will often PuG a group for various reasons, but the best ones realize they aren’t in charge. Well, you aren’t either. Don’t be telling the raid leader how to do certain pulls and under NO circumstances tell them Agro told you it was okay – cause it AIN’T! Raid leaders have a lot going on – don’t add to their stress or you will likely get /kicked. At the very least you won’t get invited back.

Good rules to follow:
Shut yer pie hole – No one needs to hear you joking, if you PuG you don’t know these people, so just watch and learn and do your job. Even if you aren't, inane chatter is annoying.
Don’t be a loot hog – if the raid says it’s open rolls – then take your shot if you NEED something, but don’t roll on something that will benefit you 1% when it would benefit someone else 30%. Learn to share.
No Whining – as BBB himself put it, there's no crying in Kara. You don't like it? Don't run with them again. (the corollary to this is that a good raid won't abuse you either - watch your ass, do your job, alter your play to suit the raid's needs and you should be fine.)
Come prepared – bring mana/health pots/ flasks/food/pet food/ bandages/bullets etc don’t beg for stuff. And be prepared to shell out gold for repairs too.

A raid is a team - be a team player, put the TEAM before yourself - especially if it's YOUR team.

Just when I thought I was out... they pull me back in!

2008-01-29T10:24:00.000-06:00

Get this friends n readers. Our main tank is apparently coming back.

When our guild leader told me this last night I was floored … stunned … flabbergasted.

But yea, apparently she heard through the grapevine that we booted the raid leader who caused the drama and that since we’ve been doing really well. I haven’t talked with her yet so I guess I am only going on third party scuttlebutt here, but … interesting at any rate.

I think that while last night’s performance showed the entire raid that even a good tank can be replaced and we won’t suffer horribly, I won’t be sad to see her return. It means our progression can return to normal and with the tank who’s been subbing in I think we might be able to pull off a second Kara team sooner than we’d anticipated. So instead of looking down the road at Gruul’s in a month or two, we might be looking at it a bit sooner – if we can coordinate things appropriately.

But I have to say, I still have that little thought in the back of my mind and at the moment – it’s growing, not fading. She went to a guild I recommended her to, I gave her my endorsement and then she apparently traded accounts with a friend. Very quietly I had a chat with the guild leader over there. He had put her in charge of one of their Kara runs and when the “switch” happened I talked it over with him to let him know the person I recommended wasn’t the person he got. Now she’s coming back and ditching them?

I have mixed feelings on this. I’m concerned our drama factor will increase, I’m thrilled she’s coming back, I’m wondering what she’ll tell her other raid. Will my guild leader buddy hold this against me? Ugh, so many questions.

In a number of ways it might be best if she stuck it out there. I think she’d be happier. We closed the books on drama finally and the prospect of it returning doesn't excite me. Yes, I’m very happy we have our tank back, but after last night we know we can live without her too.

No offense to her, I really do like her and any good tank is worth their weight in gold, but I have to ask myself, is there a potential for the emo to return?

Time will tell. But the upside is - I get my friend back - so I guess I win one way in the end.

Veni, vidi, vici

2008-01-29T10:03:00.000-06:00

(a famous Latin sentence spoken by Julius Caesar in 47 BC)

The quote is an old favorite and is well suited as a description for the events of last night’s Kara Clean Up Run. We rocked! I main tanked all the hard stuff, Prince, Nether, Night etc. It was my first time and I didn't let anyone down! I'm psyched.

I even ended up pulling in some decent cat gear for a change. About all I need now are my boots and my T4 hat and I can easily pug Gruuls or Mags. Honestly, I had my doubts about last night. I even voiced them in officer chat early just to let people know I didn’t want to put the raid at risk.

But my worries were groundless. As main tank I felt I gave an excellent performance. Not flawless, but still exceptional for one who’s never been MT on a raid. And yea, I’m done tooting my own horn now. I have some things to work on as well. One of the issues I have is getting the pulls confused between my raids. My hunter’s raid leader does things a bit differently and I’ve run more with them, so every once in a while I’ll do something other than what my group expects - last night I caused a wipe doing so – ouch. (Sorry all).

But learning is learning and the wipe was on trash, not a boss. So thanks for putting up with my learning curve guys n gals.

[Edit: Actually I was reminded that I caused 2 wipes and one was on Nightbane. I ended up moving and calling the raid to me during the rain of bones (something my hunter's raid does to mitigate damage to the clothies) it was messy and I apologized, but we picked it up next run through]

I know a lot of people who keep blogs tend to describe certain fights or different tactics. I tend not to do this simply because I’m not anything special in this game. My perspective is that if I can’t add to the common knowledge, why write about it?

So many of you have done Kara and are far beyond it now that my blogging about my tactics doesn’t seem particularly helpful (since there is a lot of material about the experiences from more seasoned players than myself). However, should anyone wish it, I have in my head the basic outline of a series of blogs on how to take on certain instances or bosses – from the perspective of both a tank, and ranged DPS hunter.

Respond in the comments section if there’s anyone who’d find value in this – otherwise I’ll keep my thoughts to myself.

Clearing up the last of the mess.

2008-01-28T13:58:00.000-06:00

In reading over my last week’s posts I realized I’d undergone a slight be definitive shift in terms of where my head was in this guild drama. I’d gone from standing outside it to taking an active role in resolving it.

While I made some statements here that may seem incongruous, I think they reflect a more subtle change of heart.

When I wrote that the raid leader was ruining my fun, I was angry and disappointed that I’d let someone else mess with my game time. When I heard about the troubles he was causing other people I realized he was ruining it for others as well. What really made me angry I think was that he was doing so deliberately – in an effort to bolster his own self esteem – “I’m leet – yur not.”

Sorta like the, “If I hate so and so then you should too.. my way is the only way or I’ll go and pout.” Which is sorta what he did. He took his ball and went home, so to speak.

I actually did have a chance to talk to him the other day. We were all on vent chatting about this and some other non-related stuff when he logged on. He got into the whole thing almost right away and began spouting his nonsense again. Well she shouldn’t have lied (attempt to justify) wasn’t really a girl and I know it (attempt to collude and justify). That bad thing that happened to her didn’t happen, etc

This went on for a bit and I could feel myself getting more upset. I was about to log when one of the others on vent said, “Agro said she was a girl, said he spoke to her and that she was on vent with him frequently.” (mostly true, a few times, nothing I'd call frequent)

I confirmed that the person I’d spoken to was a girl. I followed it up truth being a relative thing, that you can’t know one way or the other if a given bad thing happened or not and that it would have been better for everyone had the mean things simply not been said. He tried to shift his agrument back to the points about belief, and I countered with - "well, what good came of your 'disbelief? She's gone, we're now 4 weeks behind on progression and you aren't with us - so how did your comments to her "Help" us?' I added that truth didn't matter, since there's no way someone would know unless you knew them IRL - so what did it matter?

I think he had to admit that not only was I right, I could tell he had trouble swallowing that bit of crow, but that many of the people listening to us probably agreed with me – even if you didn’t believe her you didn’t have to make her so mad that she quit, or kick her out for doing what you yourself did. I also tried to reason with him in such a way that I didn't look like I was publicly berating him - just showing him I could disagree calmly and rationally, using logic skills. Eh, I'm not that smart, but I can act like the Old Bear of the Woods on occaion - I hope I did the right thing here.

Good lessons here for all.

Outlands again!

2008-01-28T11:12:00.001-06:00

Woot, I got my 3rd toon to the outlands this weekend. Osrik the Level 58.6 frost mage (yea I respec'd) made his triumphant arrival at Honor Hold on Friday evening.

And in doing so he ran completely out of rested XP ... so sad. But fear not! Thorney the pally tank has taken up the mantle of duty and is currently busting a hump in Un'Goro so he can be the leveler on days when Os runs dry on rested. I think we did this backwards. I should have grabbed my pally first since my leveling buddy is a shadow priest. that mana regen woulda been sweet!. She's got her 51 warrior going with me now and I'm sorta half-assed thinking I'll switch from pally to lock, just because of the mana issues. But I think we can catch them up and then we'll see what we can see.

Laying down the paw

2008-01-28T10:59:00.000-06:00

Ok friends n neighbors – long post ahead.

This old bear still has some bite left and this weekend my raid discovered the hard way that I’d had enough nonsense. I logged in on Friday for our KZ run and ran into the guild leader who asked if I knew any of the backstory to our losing our main tank.

For a quick update I’ll add in something I hadn’t yet shared. Our main tank had been through hell AND high water and came out the other side as one would expect. So great was the drama that on Thursday night she apparently decided she’d had enough and traded her account with a friend and returned to her old PvP server. Don't know if we'll ever see her again.

Now I wasn’t the first bear on the mountain, but I’m not stupid either. This whole thing smells like old trout and I have some thoughts on how a bear can deal, but we’ll go into that later.

My immediate concern on Friday was to force the issue of resolution. I had a quick chat with the guild leader and very simply said, “This isn’t fun. Either we lose the emo or I’m going to ask that you find someone to replace me immediately.”

The GL agreed and we got our group together quickly, minus the raid leader who was one of the prime sources for the drama. The regulars got into private vent after I and the GL chatted. We explained that our main tank was gone, described without detail some of the reasons for her decision and left it at that. We got a newer tank to pug with us, someone a few of us knew as being reliable but without the best gear. I OT’d most of the raid and while we went slower than normal, we one-shotted up to curator. We plan to head back tonight and clean the rest up, Prince, Nightbane and the rest. I will likely be main tanking tonight – my first go at it – wish me luck.

When I spoke to the guild leader about our raid leader’s actions that fostered this nonsense, I simply said, I don’t know him, I don’t have any bad feelings about him, he seems to be a nice enough guy, but I don’t really care. His actions to date have left us in a shambles while he’s off in SSC/TK and that isn’t fair to this group. Further, there’s no fun left – so let’s change it or break up the group.

Results
The raid leader isn’t coming back, and we’ve told everyone that we aren’t interested in hearing about the newest movie or newest love, even while we’re clearing trash. We aren’t putting up with BS any more and that’s pretty much that. Friday went slow, but vent was clear, people were focused and everyone said things went so much nicer than before.

Now for a bear’s thoughts. Our MT supposedly left our server and went back to her old one, giving her T4 tank to someone she knew. Apparently she’d only been here because of her now ex-bf. I can see some of that, but I know she was well liked and I have a hard time imagining someone giving up a character as well geared as she has become. But as I told the rest of the people who asked me, I am not smart enough to know when someone is lying to me. So I presume everyone is telling the truth. What gain could she have in leaving the entire server this way? And to do so because of ONE PERSON? What possible motive could drive a person to make up such outlandish stories? No, I don’t believe that and I took her at her word.

And another thing, there's never a good reason to be rude or deliberately mean to someone. Even if you think they are lying to you, just don't play with them anymore. But to make a federal case out of such things is really childish, and you run the risk that IF a person is telling the truth that you really hurt someone's feelings. Our tank told us what was going on, sometimes a little TMI, but to challenge her statements would have been akin to telling a woman she didn't get molested. In other words, it cannot be said. For those of you out in the world who don't know this, there ARE some things that can't be taken back. There are some things once done that can't be un-done. So even if you think you're being had, walking away is always a safer option than starting a pissing match. At least you look more mature.

But yes, for those of you wondering, there is a little tiny corner of my mind that wonders if I am self-delusional about her statements and whether or not I should care. Right now I don’t care and am not going to think on it - time will usually tell in things like this.

I do know one thing though, I’ll miss playing with her.

Soo close now

2008-01-25T15:38:00.000-06:00

Os is finally within striking distance today. He’s a hair shy of 57 and has the whole of Silithius and Winterspring open to him. Fire spec rocks in snowbound regions – I totally love it.

The emo over at my bear’s guild is threatening to blow the roof off. I think we may be in for a house cleaning (or wrecking) tonight. I’m due to hit the server for our weekly KZ raid by 4:30 and I can anticipate that it ain’t gonna be pretty.

Last night our former MT buzzed me – we’re actually becoming good friends – to say that the raid leader over there was pulling the harassment routine on her for leaving our disintegrating guild. She had even offered to continue on as MT until we found one to replace her.

Bear in mind now that this raid leader left the guild and expected to still be the raid leader – friend of a friend of the GL sorta thing. And yeah, I cringed the first time I heard that too but by then the guild was dying so I said nothing.

Anyway, Mr. I'm20andGirlTanksEmasculateMe called her a liar, a cheat and a few other worse things (she told me what he said - blech, guys shouldn't talk to girls that way). When I logged in on my bear I had several notes from the guild’s officers waiting for me – I’m not sure what they hope to accomplish but they wanna talk tonight. I have to say that my recommendation tonight will be to call this raid and disband the guild. Rarely have I seen such venom in a game.

The notes were mostly asking me to step in, or get into a convo with them – I have enough stress at work, if it weren’t so sad I’d be laughing at the incompetence I’ve seen on display here. At the very least I'm not raiding with this kid anymore - his obnoxious, childish narcissism has all but ruined the experience for me. If we run with him tonight I'll have to go along one last time. The demands of honor require nothing less than a full effort - but I'll let them know I'm not coming back - for unspecified reasons - there's almost no point in even trying to discuss this - it's a hole without a bottom.

Oh, one final note for you soap opera hounds – I noticed today in my morning perusal of the WoW forums, all but one of the officers has an ad up on the realm forums looking for a new group/raid. – most of them posted 2-3 weeks ago….

Gosh, I sure hate burning bridges but there seems to be a serious double standard here.

On the good side I am working my pally again. I’m taking a serious look at bringing him up to 58 when I finally run outta rested on my mage. At the very least I can get some decent work done in alchemy.

I’ll let ya know how the emo goes, it should be good for a cringe or mebbe a laugh or three.

Grinding to Hellfire

2008-01-24T11:45:00.000-06:00

I hit 56 on my magus last night. Tiny little gnomes are fun to play. Not sure I’ll be taking anything else into raiding. I am enjoying the raids on my funter – (yea I said funter – that’s Fun+hunter – and I’m not a tard either) – but in truth, raiding is overrated. It’s fun with the right group, but there’s a ton of effort involved and it’s very time consuming. I’m planning on getting what I need to get on each toon as it approaches 70, tailoring my leveling experience so that each is essentially prepared to go nearly anywhere at a moment’s notice and then leave it at that.

The raid guild my bear is in lost yet another 2 people. Down to 24 now so we’ll have to wait and see if it stabilizes any time soon. The last to go was our main tank for KZ. She’s starting a diff kara group this week so adios darling and good luck! I know you’ll do really well for them.

I’m not in the least bit sad either. I’m happy for her and I have lost faith in our own group so if we can’t field a group this week I’m cool with that idea. That gives me more time to level my mage Osrik, anyway.

In the rush to gear up and run a raid, I’d completely forgotten how much fun I’d had leveling my alts. Yes, I know a lot of you are probably scratchin yer noggins right now but I have to admit – I do like the questing.

Sure Un’Goro is a pain, as is running all over hell and gone on stupid errands, but when you get those quests done, there’s a definite sense of accomplishment.

My current goal is to get Os to 58 and head him into the outlands. Once there I’ll backtrack and bring up my pally or my lock. I’d like to get 2 above 58 so I have some options when it comes to rested xp and instances.

Frankly – I‘d also love to be able to say I leveled 2 toons together. Sure it’ll take longer but I think it would be fun too.

My leveling buddy Cam hit 57 and is within striking dist of the Outlands. I’m sure she’ll hit it today or tomorrow. She’s outta rested XP tho so I think she’s thinking about parking Cam for a bit and working on alts as well. We cleared Un’Goro yesterday and have most of Winterspring and all of Silithius to do yet. Neither of us has even ventured up to WPL or EPL yet either so we have a lot of options open to us at the moment. Silithius is boring for me – I don’t mind Tanaris and the desert setting, but Sil is just – ugh. Maybe it’s the bugs.

I know a lot of people don’t like Winterspring either, but I do. Maybe that’s one of the effects of growing up on the tundra but the setting is fun and the quests are okay too.

WPL/EPL – I can take them or leave them. It’s nice to grind through a lot of stuff there. You can definitely get a lot done in a hurry with a partner, but it’s depressing – sorta like the high-end version of Duskwood. It’s a bit gloomy for me.

Oh, I suppose Azshara is left for us yet as well. That’s an odd place – sorta all out in the open. The colors are strange too. It’s nice if you wanna be left alone though, there usually aren’t too many others out that way so you can get a lot done if you stay focused, but my pref is Winterspring and prob WPL. We’ll see how long it takes me.

Cheer for the little squeezer

2008-01-22T16:07:00.000-06:00

My cub turns 1 today - so my head hasn't been on WoW or work much - it's a big deal. I should post a picture but I'm never sure if anyone else thinks he's as cool as I do and I hate being intrusive.

Emo update

2008-01-22T16:03:00.000-06:00

I feel obligated to post a quick update on some things. I’ve said in the past I’m a member of 2 guilds. I’m an officer in a quiet casual guild and I have a bear tank – for which this blog is named – in a newish raid guild.

I also said I’d been promoted to officer in the raid guild – which on further investigation I discovered isn’t really true. I was promoted to Veteran – which is a step short of officer, although I can see officer chat and have a lot of the same privileges – so I’m not really sure where I stand and for now I’m not asking since its kind of a moot point. Since the big melt down last week we dropped to 25 members. That’s down from 60. I forgot to look last night so it may be plus or minus that now – still not sure what’s going to happen there.

I feel like the unofficial chronicler of events so I suppose I’ll hang ‘til the end and provide an update on the official Time of Death. I really wonder if we’ll manage to field a regular KZ run this week. KZ 2 is down – probably for good.

That’s is from the bubbling slag pit of guild emo – I’ll let you know if anything else pops up.

Shifting gears

2008-01-22T11:06:00.001-06:00

Since I’ve been all but swamped in theatrics for the last week I am taking a pass at doing much of anything with my druid this week. I did manage to farm up a few hundred fel iron ore so I could make my flying machine last night, but over a few days that didn’t amount to a lot of time.

Instead I worked on one of my various alts. I am currently sitting on 4 that are above 50 and a shadow priest who’s at 44. The list includes a fire mage at 53, a tankadin at 52, a demo-lock at 51 and a fury warrior, also at 51.

Last night I broke out my mage and went questing with my long-time questing buddy Cambrai, a 55 Spriest. Cam’s main is a 70 hunter and we’ve been playing MMORPGs together since City of Heroes came out a couple of years ago. She’s a co-officer in my casual guild and her son is the GM – eh – it works for us. Cam and I have leveled 2 toons each to 70, mostly together, though her main, Opharion (lvl 70 funter), was a level 60 when I started WoW.

Osrik, lvl 53 fire mage: What fun. I love melting stuff and blasting things outta my way. We are currently in Un’Goro and as big a pain as that is, I fully expect to hit 55 there within the week. I’m dropping out of a lot of other things this week in order to level my mage to Outlands so I can hang with Cam again. My raid schedule got so hectic that we’ve not had a lot of time together since I joined the new raid guild. I fully anticipate dropping raiding on Ag for a while as the other guild I run him in disintegrates – the way things are going, probably within a week or two I think I’ll be done with that guild and if that happens and our regular kara raid folds, I’ll park him for a while or maybe pug a kara once in a while.

Un’goro Crater, as many of you know, is home to lots of annoying ‘gather’ quests. So we’ve been spending our time whacking bloodpetals and dodging the giant T-Rex critters. At some point I’ll need to jump on Ag again to make up some mithril casings for the ape escort quest but for now we’re having a good (if repetitive) time crashin through all the fun stuff there.

As soon as I hit 55 we’ll bust a hump up to WPL and clear that, then cross into EPL and hammer out some Argent Dawn rep. I’ll probably need to head back to Felwood and finish those as well. I’m sure somewhere in there we’ll need to find a few dungeon runs, or maybe get someone from the guild to lend a hand.

One lament I have as a mage, I do sorta get tired of the constant requests for ports and conjured items. I really wouldn’t mind if the people asking were kind about it, or if they tipped, (reagents aren’t free ya know). But some of the requests are more like demands, demands that go unanswered for the most part. My M.O. has always been to show up for whatever prepared. Bring food, water, Band-Aids, bullets etc. Expecting someone else to provide for you is sorta needy and holds up the group.

I’ve taken to hiding out of plain sight at whatever area I’m currently in. I’m sure all mages have the same lament and I am probably spoiled since I’ve never had a toon that had so much to offer to other players. I’m hoping Cam can be around tonight as well, I’m looking forward to grinding out Un’goro and getting it over with.

Add-on feature

2008-01-21T10:31:00.000-06:00

With all the nonsense of guild drama raising it’s head last week I’ve decided to move on to greener pastures in terms of topics. There’s only so much to be learned from watching a guild self destruct.

So, in the spirit of helping out my fellow players I’d like to highlight something you may have missed. There’s a blog called The Khorium Toolbox that looks suspiciously like my own (except he’s been around longer) and last week WoWInsider highlighted a nifty post regarding Cartographer, a mapping add on for WoW.

Cartographer is a neat way to replace your world map with something that has a number of extras that don’t come with Blizz’s UI. I used to use Cosmos’ AlphaMap, and in fact I still have it loaded while I test out Cartographer. But I’m quickly becoming a convert.

The piece focused on Cartographer Routes – a small section of the module that allows you to plot, in a visible format, a patrol route for your gathering needs. Need to find Fel Iron? Use CR to plot your trek through Hellfire. Couple that with the Track Minerals option for miners and you’ll get not only small icons on your minimap that show deposits, but small circles that show where they can spawn, much like Gatherer does. But, and this is a big but, you can also get an optimized path showing you the best way to fly/run along a route. I installed this over the weekend and spent most of Sunday mining Thorium in EPL – I cleared 150 ore in about 2 hours that way.

So friends – go check it out, this guy has the smarts this bear doesn’t!

The Khorium Toolbox

WowInsider story on Cartographer Routes

Theater 101 (redux)

2008-01-18T12:48:00.001-06:00

I had a post called Theater 101 up here a bit ago and I’ve decided to pull it – I think I am letting the guild emo affect me too much so I’ll pull it for now and see how I feel about it in a day or three.

Suffice it to say that guild emo raised its ugly head last night and it’s the first time I’ve had to deal with it since joining WoW – remember I’m a noob and I have been a lucky one at that.

The end result of all the emo is that a couple of people left – one gquit without notice and later, one of the guild officers told me we might fold. Dumbfounded all I could do was frame a request that the officers immediately begin discussing this so they can come up with a unified announcement for the guild’s general members. I mean – we’ve been recruiting for a while now and some of these new 70s are well geared and came based on the rep of some of our leadership – if we’re folding common courtesy would demand an immediate response.

It seems only fair they get the skinny on what’s happening. As for me, I was promoted to officer last night – somewhat unannounced (and unknown to me – I found out when I noticed I could see officer chat) and sort of at a bad time. I got clued into a conversation I’d rather have skipped. I don’t think the people discussing realized I was seeing their stuff either – I logged to save face and feelings just in case.

Guild emo is a shame. While these folks have some great qualities, they are of an age, and that age is slightly under experienced when it comes to handling delicate social situations I think. Not that they can’t get along or that they are in any way poorly adapted to work through them, I think it has more to do with experience at learning how to handle themselves and others in such situations. That’s not an easy thing to learn, in fact I’m not all that great at it either, but I’ve had some exp with this and I know what I’m seeing when it happens. I also know a few ways to get around it. The one thing I never learned was how to address these without sounding like my grandmother or a gruff old platoon sergeant - neither of which would work in such cases.

In fact, I’d rather just be a solider. I was a sergeant for many years and I never made it higher than leading a group of about 20 or 30 people. And all I was ever responsible for was their care and well being, making them get to places on time, with food and water and the necessaries. I was never a logistics planner and I never wanted to be the guy who wrote the orders, I’d rather be on the team that carries them out.

It may very well be that I’ll be forced into moving again. It sorta sounds like several of the guild’s officers are considering leaving for better, more established guilds – if that happens I’ll land on my paws, but it would sure have been nice to know that last week.

Theater 101

2008-01-18T11:12:00.000-06:00

This one has been moved off the main page for now. see the one proceeding it.

Shiny

2008-01-17T16:48:00.001-06:00

I got my new shinies last night - +35 agil to my 2-hander, all decked out in all kinds of enchants etc.

And, thanks to BBB for some of his archival posts on daily quests, I should be able to replace the dent in my gold supply fairly soon. I'd only been doing a few of the dailies -the cooking BG and Skettis quests - now I'm heading to Ogri'la and will try to max my dailies.

Kara this week should be interesting with all the new stuff. We're starting Gruul's soon too, but the guild wants to run on Sat night, which I can't and won't do. we raid on Friday, Sat and Sun nights - often going all night on Fridays and Saturdays. That's too much - I need time with my cub - who turns 1 next week btw. So, sorry all, no Gruul's updates from me, but KZ should be fun.

Bear's (buyer's) remorse

2008-01-16T13:24:00.000-06:00

I mentioned in my last post that I had transferred my lvl 70 bear tank alt to a new raid guild, run by old school raiders. Everything else I own including my main officer/hunter is in a casual, friends ‘n family guild – one I still think of as home.

Now I firmly believe we all go through something called buyer’s remorse whenever we make a big change or spend a LOT of cash. Like when you buy a car or a house. There’s always a period when you think to yourself in the small wee hours of the night, ‘omgwhatdidIdo!’

That’s natural. At least I think it is. And I’m having those … okay – let’s make this perfectly clear … I don’t have “feelings,” (blech). But I’d say I’ve been thinking about that lately.

The guild I joined was formed from pre-burning crusade raiders – the people who spent 100 hours a week on the game, those who had no lives but BWL and Naxx. I can relate but I do have a life outside WoW. (I do so have a life outside this game and all you people who know me, SHUT IT!).

I sorta know what those ‘omg’ ppl go through ‘cause I think that about the new guild. I'm not unhappy, but I'd say the shine came off that gold coin within the first week. They have some great people, fun to talk to, access to vent (so much nicer than in-game chat), will have a very nice web page for resources and scheduling etc. I said just a moment ago it's stocked with old school raiders, which is true, but I probably should have said old middle-school or maybe old high-school in relation to my idea of "old school."

Now that's no dig on them, it really isn't - young they may be (I think the avg age is 20-22) they aren't noobs. But I'm over 40 and one of the sad facts of older GenX'ers who game is ... we have to get used to playing with ppl who could be our kids – no lie bud. I have a buddy who hits Halo3 hard every weekend – he’s 53 and does IT troubleshooting for stratosphere execs at one of the largest insurance companies in the world.

What's that mean the GenX compatibility thing? Meh, it means I see in them things I've been through already. The over anxiousness, the awkwardness of youth, the overzealousness of new relationships, the overstating the virtues of a game or car or brand of pizza - all the rambunctious BS of youth. It's not unpleastant, it's just ... old news ... to me anyway.

But all in all, they are cool. And even though they aren't noobs, they are wet behind the ears in lots of other ways - and that to me is almost as much fun as the game itself. That probably sounds odd but the way I see it is this, I came into this group as "the noob" at least to their thinking. And as far as the game goes, they know more than me .. but life is a game worth playing too and my progession through that game exceeds theirs.

So while I'm listening to the saga of my 20-something raid leader's hour-long gush to a recent 5-man guild group about how beautiful, warm, sensitive and good smelling his new 18-year-old beau is, all that went through my head in no particular order was – Daayuum!; gratz on hittin that!; Ugh, PLEASE STOP TALKING!; make sure you get her HIV test results; get her to sign the pre-nup; and while you're at it, get a gander at her mom 'cause you know that'll be her in 10 years....

I dood it

2008-01-10T11:46:00.000-06:00

After a bit of hemming and hawing I finally made up my mind. I moved my druid to a new raid guild, staffed by people who seemed to have been around long enough to see the proverbial elephant.

So if you come looking for me I'll be in Absolution. So far the guild is small - 30 people or so, which I like a lot. But I don't know more than a half dozen of them. All in all they seem like nice folks though. One or two are a bit young for me - early 20s, but there's plenty of old salty bears like myself so it's a nice mix.

We're in the process of getting a second kara team off the ground -so far we have 70% for that and they are running on Sunday's with PuGs in the open spots.

I'd like to comment on moving guilds. It's probably not a wise choice to move a lot - I know some of the more serious ones look at your history and frankly - it's sometimes harder getting into one of those than it is to find a IRL job. I'm sure they have their reasons and they are good at what they do, but I tend more toward the less bossy side of things. I'm a paranoid at heart, but I'm old enough to let other people make their own foolish decisions too. If someone creates a problem that's the time to deal with it - not before. Otherwise you look like a bunch of stormtroopers.

I'm not German - (I'm actually Irish/Austrian - so yes, I can drink beer AND plan a military campaign)
so I tend to shy away from bossing people around - it's hard, sometimes my natural tendancy is to shoot first and ask questions later, but for all that I think of the other guy a lot too.

Even so, in moving guilds you need to be a little sensitive to the idea that /gquit can burn bridges if not done correctly. If you plan to move your toons around - talk to folks first. You don't have to tell the whole guild, but you should plan on talking to a leader or the GM. And if you have friends there you should let them know rather than letting them see you bail.

For all that... I found it really hard to leave my guild. There's something about playing with a group of people day in and day out that made that one feel homey. I've still got loads of alts and my main hunter there, but the actual decision to move even one toon was tough. Esp my tank. I've got no regrets. I'm sure I'll learn a lot in this new group, and I know they can handle themselves well so it's a good fit. But I'm going to have to make an effort to play on my alts a few days a week to keep in touch.

Back to the salt mines

2008-01-07T15:09:00.000-06:00

Ok, starting off the new year took a bit longer than I had planned on here. I normally write these over my lunch breaks at work and I haven’t had a lot of time lately, coupled with the fact that I had nearly 2 weeks off for the holidays and last week was a short week.

But in that time I’ve had a chance to do some comtemplatin. I’ve mentioned a few times I started raiding on 2 toons. What I haven’t said is that’s the pressure is on to move at least one of my toons to a raid guild.

My hunter’s raid has been really cool with this and has never even so much as asked me to move. I think they’d be cool if I did but they know who I am and while they are really good and are among the server’s oldest raid groups, they aren’t pushy either.

My druid, on the other hand, gets a request a week – sometimes more often. Usually I re-describe my goals, offer to step aside if that is a requirement and will even help them find someone who is willing to move. But I’m not willing. Don’t get me wrong, I like these folks. A couple of them need a whack upside the head once in a while but nothing too serious and there’s nobody among them I wouldn’t pug for. But the requests are getting a little old and they are stepping up a little too. Last time someone said they really wanted “everyone in Kara 1 in the guild” to make it easier to contact everyone. They have a web page, and a list – how much easier would it be to contact people?

Meh… like I said, the pressure is increasing. I may have to have a chat with someone – or they may ask me to go. Or maybe I should just join them. My own guild is cool, but they aren't into raiding. I think i fI explained it they'd encourage me to put a toon there, so long as I don't abandon my own roots entirely.

Kara on Friday – What … a … mess

Apparently not everyone was ready for the run last Friday night. (our first offical post-holiday run) There was a lot of chatter on vent, making it hard to hear anything I needed to know. The RL looted himself a cape that I think at least someone might have rolled on (we run open rolls on non-tier 4) and we wiped more than usual … okay ... we wiped a whole lot, especially on the bosses leading to Curator, which no raid group our level should be doing at our stage of progression. All this happened the week after they cleared Kara and 1-shotted every boss, in a single night. (yeah they ran while everyone was on vaca – pug’s from TK I think).

After we got the giant mechanical wonder, “The Gallery is for museum guests only…” we called it. My bear’s raid has a lot of experienced raiders in it, most of them know each other. They all said – thanks for coming – we need to have a little chat and we’ll talk to you all next week.

Apparently the raid officers had a very long chat – some 2 hours or so. The upshot was that our RL got his head handed to him for not controlling the raid, the loot thing etc. Now, I’m not one who likes to see someone lose a pound of flesh, but I came ready, spent the dough to be prepared and was on time. So yeah, it was annoying. The whole danged night was a shambles and I went to bed mad. So I’m glad they worked it out.

I ran into the raid leader on Sunday and pugged his Kara 2 group with my hunter – since that one hadn’t been saved yet this week. It went okay – though I must say I think it can still go better.

I like the way my hunter’s raid works. The RL is nice, not afraid to lay the smack down if called for, but not a jerk either. He also calls out a lot of little perks, like reminding ppl to use trinkets, or when to use a certain spell in a certain fight, etc. I think one could learn from the other.

Some days you get the bear

2007-12-21T09:56:00.000-06:00

And some days the bear gets you ....

Yesterday's Kara run was my 'bear' and it got me good. We ran with our reg group (my hunter's raid) last night due to holiday scheds. - not a great night for drops - same tier 4 dropping over and over and over.

Tired raiders make for tough runs. I'm confident that we can get nightbane with our reg raid, we had to PuG a couple ppl in but they did okay. We even picked up another hunter - I think he had a PvP spec, it was evenly split between MM and Surv - but he didn't have Exposed Weakness or even the good shots from MM - sorta made me wonder what was up with that. i thought I knew the basics for hunters - shot rotations, specs etc - that was one I hadn't seen. I won't discount it 'til I can check armory.

Kara again

2007-12-20T15:20:00.000-06:00

One of the Kara raids has been moved up to tonight, so maybe something interesting will happen. To tell you the truth I'm sorta absorbed with IRL things lately [work, holiday, bear cub] so my heart's not exactly where it oughta be for this one.

In a related item, my raid leader has asked a slew of friends to join him for an old-timey Naxx run on Sat. Now THAT should be fun. I'm a post-BC bear so I'm lookin forward to seeing that before they bump it to Northrend.

Getting down to bidness

2007-12-20T10:57:00.000-06:00

Okay, that’s enuff with the bear hugs. Let’s get down to the bear tracks.

I’m a wannabe raider, well – kinda. I AM raiding but I’m just starting out (1 month under muh hide) so I’m what I’d call ‘green’.

But in my travels I’ve managed to find a ton of good things that I think lots of folks could use so I’ll start putting references to ‘em up here.

One recent find was a great chart over on TenTonHammer that shows the minimums for Karazhan. Things like, how much OOM an oomkin or preisty should have, what sorts of armor or stats to look for in a tank, be it bear, warrior or pally. Check that out and use it to help you gear up if you wanna go.

Elitist Jerks I’ve mentioned before – they had a fantastic theorycraft section on bears, and some very solid posts on a lot of classes – I am hoping more people head over there cause I’m looking for a really nice set of posts for all of my alts.

Here's a quick list of sites I used to train myself and also to gear up - some are a little dated so keep in mind when it was written and any changes more recent patches may have had.

The Bear Meatshield Guide
Feral Druid Preraid Tank Gear Guide
Feral Kombat
TBC Bear Tanking List (gear)
Of Teeth and Claws' blog had 3 nice posts I used
Druid Tanking Guide
Pulling for Maximum Threat
Rage Efficiency

I'd also like to throw out something I found incredibly useful - Nihilum's BC rep calulator. It's a neat item that calculates your rep from Armory stats and gives tips on what you need for the next level of rep - i.e. which which zones have quests that give faction rep, so many runs through SV for exalted Cenarion, or XX number of item turn-ins for Aldor/Scryer. Use this in conjuction with Wowwiki to find which quest chains are tied to rep in the zones and you should be a golden bear.

Another thing that many folks use is wow-loot.com. I highly recommend this site. It helped me not only with my own gear but also in directing my guild-mates to good information for their own sets.

I’m not a GM, I’m just an officer in our tiny guild. We have something like 18-22 people and everyone has at least a single alt, some of us are guilty of having more than one as well.

But I take a quiet sense of pride in helping them out. I had always heard “the game doesn’t start til 70” and of course I think everyone has heard that too or perhaps has an inkling its true. But it really is a different world when you hit 70 and can wrangle a spot in a raid like Kara.

I know there's a couple of schools of thought pervasive throughout the game. One seems to think gearing up for something like Kara too hard, too much effort etc. The other set seems to consider it old hat now. While I can see that side of the tree I have to say, if you’ve never been there you’re short-changing yourself on your monthly fee. And if you have - well you know what it's about and best of luck to you on your way to BT. Just remember - the game is about fun. There's no set of rules that says you HAVE to raid, or if you do that you HAVE to act like a member of the Jr. Atilla the Hun Club.

Kara is just… well it just is. It’s new for lots of people, it’s cool lookin, it’s got great music and fun stuff like ghosts dancing the Hokey Pokey AND you get to fight the Big Bad Wolf. Also, it's not that hard though it does take a decent raid leader and a bit of concentration and you’ll probably be there a few weeks with your group – but after that comes so much more to do. If you aren’t PvPin – I’d recommend you at least try it. This ain’t your mom’s cooked spinach.

Come On You Apes! You wanna live FOREVER?!

2007-12-18T16:08:00.000-06:00

I’ve made a great deal of noise recently about a bear who gave me quite a hand when I went looking and I owe him a lot for his patience and knowledge.

But in all deference to him I need to roar a bit about another candidate for legendary raider status as well – though I’m sure there are many, many others I could sing bear praises at (get yer bearplugs out).

i mentioned that my hunter got PuGged into a Kara raid by way of a guildie who knew I’d been looking for a while at the time. When I first started I could tell these cubs knew how to get the huny out of the pot so I kept quiet and took all the advice they felt like imparting.

That’s a good rule of thumb for you cub-lings out there. If you get invited to something, even if it’s nothing more than a small group for quests or a 5-bear instance, shut yer berry hole and let your swipes speak for you. I’m no great shakes as a hunter, I have to make macros for half my actions or I’ll forget what I’m supposed to do next, but my raid leader, Zorlos, seemed to think I was worth something so he’s invested a bit ‘o time in my alter ego. He helped me with my spec and had all sorts of suggestions, all the while being very careful not to act like the south end of a northbound Missouri mule.

I know he hates reading forums and blogs so he probably won't see this. But I have to say - I feel pretty lucky to have met two decent raiders in as many weeks.

I should tell you some of the neat things I’ve learned in the past 3 weeks with this raid. I said earlier that I’d met a near-legendary bear raider, well I shoulda said I met two near-legends. Zorlos’ been around just as long and it sorta turns out that these folks were all in the same 2 or 3 guilds back in the day. Zor’s team sounds like they’ve been with him through thick and thin as well so I’m feeling doubly blessed. No wonder we can one-shot Aran - btw we down Prince regularly now too. Nether made hunter goo outta me but, meh, I feel pretty squishy wearin mail and it's still one cool lookin dragon.

I guess it sorta happens that people and guilds change and grow in different directions, it’s the way of things. That probably explains the splintering of all the old guilds. But any way you swipe at it, my bear buddy is one kind of great raider and Zor's just as good, they're just different. I think it’s a rare treat to see two good raid leaders at work. I marvel at how they can keep a raid rolling in the right direction with goals and objectives in mind, while not losing people or pissing in everyone’s cheerios.

It’s like watching my old platoon sergeant or seeing the guy from Starship Troopers, the one-armed Lt., ‘Everyone fights, no one quits. If you don’t do your job I’ll shoot you myself.”

Of Bears and Legends

2007-12-18T15:41:00.000-06:00

The more astute among you probably noticed I’ve posted a few things on the same day this blog launched. I was writing a few thoughts out trying to decide whether or not to launch Smelly Wet Bear when I finally took the plunge. Don’t worry – I probably won’t be posting quite so much when I clean out my computer a bit more.

Anyway,

Good Day, Eh, and welcome to post three.

I wrote Kara Conundrum a short while back and in that post I mentioned that I’d found a raid as a bear OT thanks to the efforts of a polar bear that is in what is probably the dominant raid guild on my server. He ran with his Shammy alt as main healer and picked up a few of his pals to fill out our ranks.

Our first run was Friday and it went fairly well for what amounted to a well geared semi-PuG. I say that a little tongue-in-cheek since slightly more than half of the raid knew each other – though some only a little. We managed to clear Attu, Moroes (though it took a bit longer than it should have) and Maiden. We even took down Curator on our first go – so that should give you an idea of where we were at gear-check wise. Then, feeling good, we ran up to Aran and he very quickly littered his floor with us. So we moved on to Chess and pounded the Horde into the floor for some easy loot.

All in all it was a fun run, if a bit long. I also mentioned in a previous post that my polar friend organized a guild dedicated to the pre-BC raid content as a means of training raiders. I felt a great sense of gratitude toward my bear buddy so when he said he was gonna run AQ40 as a follow up I decided to bust a hump on over there to lend a hand.

Now I should say that while I’ve owned WoW for about a year and a half, I didn’t have a level 58 to take to Outlands when BC hit (alt-itis). So I never saw Molten Core, or Naxx, or AQ20/40 or even ZG pre-BC. Heck, I never bothered with BRD, Strat or Scholo either since I hit 58 after the launch.

So this offer was sorta cool. I could go take a peek at some parts of things I used to hear about and see what all the hubbub was about and maybe learn a thing or two.

It was fun – we had a T5/6 warrior tanking for us and ran through a lot of it in about two hours (even took down a boss they said had only been downed once before, pre-BC), then moved on to MC for a complete run. I even grabbed a 66 pally buddy from my guild so he could see it as well – his brother is the raider in that family so he hadn’t seen MC either. That was also a lot of fun for a post-BCer like myself, but we ran really late so I bailed at 4 AM when they moved from MC to ZG for a mount run – man those cubs wore this old bear out!

I’m really looking forward to our next run but I’ve started noticing a potential issue – raiding on two characters is fun, but I’m getting a little wore out. I might need to cut back on the pre-BC content for a while to catch some needed Z’s. Thank goodness for the week off I’ll get over the holidays. I might even be able to farm up enough to pay for all this raiding.

The Kara Conundrum

2007-12-18T14:05:00.000-06:00

Over the course of the last several months I hit 70 on two characters, my hunter and my druid. I was anxious to get into some beginning end-game stuff as a hunter but kept hitting proverbial walls. I’m not in a raiding guild, though we do have raiders, so that was hurdle one. I wasn’t geared right, hurdle two. And finally, I thought I had the right spec, but I didn’t – at the time everyone was looking for MM (I’m BM). Hurdle three ... so sad.

So I shifted out of hunter-mode and threw myself full-time into bear mode and began the process of gaining rep with Cenarion Exp. and hitting all the instances I could to gear up. About then, one of our guild healers got into a regular raid as a demo-lock and got me a spot for my hunter (thanks to 2.3 updates). My luck improved when I discovered that not only did they know the raid, the team melded quickly and after only a couple of weeks we basically one-shot (not one-hit) all the bosses up through Aran. They even had me bring my bear in as a sub one week and were very happy with the results.

While I was busy hammering out rep-instances as a bear I met tons of people – as one does – and was offered a reg. spot in Kara as an OT bear. That was five weeks ago and they haven’t started. The first two weeks they were still working out the details, the next I found out that 2-3 people from another guild kept forgetting the raid or were busy raiding ZA with their own guild. Last week I didn't even see my contact on. This week I've seen him but I've been busy with other stuff and put it off - I probably shoulda said something but it sorta seems like a moot point after so long.

The thing is, I’m not a bear who jumps icebergs when the first snow melts. However, Karma must have smiled on this furball 'cause in the course of my quest for ultimate enlightenment I came across one of the near-legendary snow bears on our server.

He’s a theorycrafting bear from waaay up near Santa, with all sorts of alts. He decided to start his own guild dedicated to training raiders in places like MC, AQ20/40 and the rest of the pre-BC content, while undertaking progression through BC. We got to jawing one night and while I’m sure I pestered him more than I should have the end result was about a week later he offered me a tentative spot in a regular Kara raid starting last week. (No worries guildies, I'm not leaving our guild for another.)

I think it was tentative for a couple of reasons, one he had to talk it over with his raid leader and two … let’s say I think I had one chance to show my stuff – sort of a job interview. That was fine since I didn’t mind taking direction from someone who’s been to the Eye.

But accepting the offer meant accepting a quandary. I hate quitting, anyone or anything. If I had seen my contact from the first Kara offer on during that week I’d have talked it over with him, but for weeks in a row I waited while they kept putting it off. Weeks in a row I was at home and online ... waiting, saving myself for something that never happened.

I’m not a bear who angers easily, so no, I’m not mad, nor do I take it personally, but the weather was warm and the ice got thin last week - so yes, I told the legend from the land of toques I’d accept and I made the leap. I’ll soon tell you all about that ‘cause I landed in a whole new world.

Now in closing I think of two things, first is that I could’ve reached out to my other contact's guild and made some quiet inquires, but I feel like I’ve been there when they needed me and they haven’t returned the favor. And second is, maybe they found someone else and didn't want to tell me (meh - no harm, no foul, no big whup).

Either way it's been nearly a month since I last talked to my contact and that’s more than enough time. I’m stepped off that berg for another. When I see my contact again I’ll talk it over and be upfront with him but basically it’s time to move on.

Keeper of the Golden Toque

2007-12-18T12:42:00.000-06:00

Greetings all,

This is little more than a short introduction. I'm the Smelly Wet Bear - aka Agro to most of my guild, less desirable names are sometimes given but I'll never share those outside the den.

Given my geographic location out on the Tundra, the moniker 'polar bear' might've seemed more appropriate, but I know more than a few respectable bears that live in much more frigid zones so I leave that to them. Smelly & Wet because for reasons unknown our guild tends to greet character log ins with, "Something smells... oh, it's [Agro]!" Personally, I think it might be the fish I’ve been carrying around in my bag for a month.

One fine day I was browsing all things bear-related in my quest to get gear for end-game and I came across Big Bear Butt, also a fellow Tundran, who I discovered living in a den 'round a bend in the river from me. Well, as a rule we bears are friendly and sorta like helping each other out and BBB was no exception. Many thanks to him for his columns and several other useful resources such as Elitist Jerks. I’m a much better bear for having read through the wisdom of my forebears.

But it also sparked a desire to pass along what I’ve learned in playing and dealing with the emo that sometimes comes with teams, guilds and real life. I’m not the smartest bear in the woods but I do know my way around a bee hive and I’ve managed to make friends who are of a similar mindset. When an idea strikes me I let it roll around in the ole noggin a while, letting it bang up against a few non-essential brain cells, while I make up my mind about something. But after talkin it over with BBB a bit I realized that sometimes it's best to put your head down and charge through.

Thus was born the Smelly Wet Bear Blog. I am your host, Agro, keeper of the golden Toque. [I'll get to that later and it's of no relation to the Order of the Golden Toque.] and I welcome you to my musings. The intent of this is to share experiences in World of Warcraft, principally from a feral druid's point of view but all are welcome to the den. Troll-posters will be dealt with in the manner all bears deal with such nuisances.