Happy New Year!

Just wanted to take a moment to wish all of the readers a Happy New Year!

Next year is looking promising as I'm going to be advancing on into more End Game content.

WotLK comes out as well, something to look forward to.

On a personal note, I hope to finalize the adoption of my son, who is now three years old. Praying that my marriage continues to prosper and that Mrs. Hooved continues to put up with my love for WoW, Comics, Movies and Music.

A blessing on you all that this new year brings you growth, happiness and light.

See you next year!

Spider-Man Rant

Activity Abounds

I know that I focus mainly on the World Of Warcraft scheme of things, I think partly because I’m comfortable giving up some of my in game experience to you, the readers. (There are some readers out there…right?)

Most of my posts up to this date have either been about my Shaman, Shaman building or talking about the Paladin, McGregor (He hit 70 this weekend while he was completing the ‘Cipher of Damnation’ quest chain.)

While I will continue to do that, as I am going to be doing the much awaited Restoration tree here soon, I promise, I wanted to touch on something not of the WoW thought process. So I say this as a warning to those of you who come here for that when I post, this post will mainly be about something else that is in my heart, Comics.

You have to know firstly that my mother was an immigrant and I was the first person in my family to learn English. When we watched movies, before DVDs, I would pause movies and translate for them what was going on. The way that I learned my language was two fold. The first was cartoons. Show me a child that isn’t plugged into cartoons most of the day and I’ll show you a parent that has way too much time on their hands or is trying to home school a kid. I would walk up at the crack of dawn to watch, Alf, the Smurfs, Transformers, G.I. Joe, C.O.P.S., Lone Starr and Thundercats. From them I learned a bunch of sayings that some times to this day come out in my speech. The other thing that taught me A LOT was comics.

I was a Marvel Zombie for the majority of my teen years, X-Men, Spider-Man, Hulk, Warlock, and Daredevil to name a few. While many captured my imagination, Peter Parker was the guy that I could relate to. A complete geek from birth Parker was picked on non stop by his peers, much like myself. (Shocker, a gamer who was teased! It wasn’t as commonplace back then as it is now, the gaming I mean.)

I stopped following Spider-Man when the Clone Saga hit. If you don’t know what that is, it’s a storyline that was followed through the mid-nineties where it was believed that Peter Parker was really a clone of the true Spider-Man who had been in suspended animation for years, Ben Riley. What this did is that it allowed for Spider-Man to be a hero without any baggage of having a wife or family.

Thankfully this was later re-written and Peter Parker was once again given the mantle of the one true Spider-Man. The damage was done however and the sales of his books went into the toilet.

Until about six years ago.

J.Michael Strazynski, does that name ring a bell?

How about Babylon 5? Or Jeremiah? (For comic fans) Midnight Nation? Rising Stars?

This is a creator who has had a plethora of awards for his work in television and in comics. About six years ago he took over Amazing Spider-Man and put it through a renaissance where it was THE must read book of the month for hundreds of thousands of fans out there.

On Friday, he wrote his last Spider-Man story for the foreseeable future. His tenure on the comic has seen several ups and downs during publication but his swan song was mandated by the editor in chief of the company, Joe Quesada. Joe Q was a fan favorite artist for a long time before he became EiC for Marvel comics. During his stint he has made no bones about the two things that he wished he could rectify. The first being that there were less mutants running around in the Marvel universe, he took care of that two years ago.

The second beef that he had was that he felt that a married Spider-Man was not a good Spider-Man and that he would find a way to make that an error he could fix. One More Day was a four part story that ended the run of JMS and also brought to fruition of the idea that Joe Q had, a single Spider-Man. In it, Aunt May is in critical condition after a sniper took a shot at Peter and missed, hitting May instead. He spends three issues looking for ways to help his aunt. From friends, to enemies to magic and comes up zeroes. At the end of the third issue, Mephisto, ruler of hell comes to call on Peter and tells him that he will give his Aunt May more time in the world, for exchange he wants the marriage of Peter and Mary Jane. He would make it so that the couple had never been married and that was his payment.

They both agree. With Mary Jane asking Mephisto to let her remember that they were married and not Peter, the hell lord agrees.

So now twenty years of Spider-Man stories are in question.

I hate to sound like a nerd, though I am, but I’m kinda pissed. All of the stories that I grew up loving might never have happened now. Peter is single and STILL living with his Aunt (Get a life guy!) and Mary Jane is the girl that got away. This January Amazing Spider-Man is going to be running three times a month with this new storyline and while part of me is excited I can’t help but wonder, what does that do to the stories and the growing that Peter Parker did during those years of his life that he was supposed to be married?

I feel like a character that I grew up loving has been sullied by the ideas of one man that thinks his idea was better than the product that was already on the streets. Time will tell what Spider-Man will be in the future but it’s a bleak future that almost holds no appeal to me.

I’m in mourning my friends. I feel that a great character has died and been replaced with a lukewarm copy. Sorry, I had to vent.

Introductions and Guild

So if you’re a reader you’ll notice that in my character list there is a new name added. After talking with my guild, we decided it would be a nice idea to go ahead and make a new Horde chapter of our guild in the Nordassil realm, DHF. I went ahead and brought over my 70 Shaman from the depths of hell and made him the guild leader.

If you click on old Gamgam you’ll notice that he’s got pretty decent gear, probably the best geared toon that I have. He’s my first shaman and I love him for it. He’s gotten to see some stuff that none of the others have ever experienced. Still, I’m not bringing him over to do more end game content. I’m bringing him over to help my other guildies who have alts in Horde, level up faster and get the things that THEY need to keep progressing forward.

I’m going to keep him Enhancement since I know that I’ll be running instances for the low levels. It’ll be fun for me to give something back to the community that has shown me a lot of respect in my time with them.

Luciel, however, has been switched over to Restoration. My thinking behind this is as follows. While I highly enjoy the DPS angle of Shamans I know that my guild has other high caliber players that are equal to the task or better. Healers are a different story. Not only are we short on healers, many of our druids being tanks and priests being shadow, but also it takes a special dedication to stand back in a group and just watch health bars and heal on command. Many feel like nothing more than a glorified monkey with one trick to pull off. I’m comfortable healing, heck I was healing on some of the instance runs we did since level 65. It’s easier to just say, “We’ve got a healer” because then everything else just quickly falls into place.

The unfortunate thing is that I have a piecemeal healing set. So I’ve taken things that I know will help my healing stats but aren’t exceptional when it comes to armor. With my healing set on I have about 766 plus healing. A shaman going into Kara trying to heal should have at LEAST 1100 healing. That’s a big chore. So now the question is two fold. First, where do I get gear that is befit for a shaman healer, and not just a cloth wearer and the second is, how do I make sure that the gear that I get for that is going to amount to plus 1100 healing. Yes there are some enchants and of course there’s some drops from bosses as well as some quest rewards that may help along the way but…it’s tough.

While Gam’s got purple pixels, he isn’t geared to do anything but dps, so while having purples in some sense could basically put me in an end game guild, nine times out of ten they want the Shamans to hang back and heal, not something that I’m inclined to do really, at least not with Gam.

This is day three stuck at 69. Part of that is my own fault since I was REALLY excited about getting Gam over and starting up DHF. I spent a lot of time on the WoW website finalizing the transfer and whatnot.

The next post that I’m going to do is going to deal with the Restoration Tree. It’s a pretty clear cut tree that will obviously make you a trained monkey and while we’re not as versatile as a druid healer, we are the next best thing when it comes to group heals and over time heals. You’ll see what I mean.

See you then.

New Blogs

Sigh...I just typed something and it got wiped.

Lame.

Ardent and Honor's Code are two new blogs that I'm going to link. They deal with the Prot Pally in both factions of the game. I find that both players can shed some nice light on the game, build and overall atmosphere of WoW as we know it.

While this blog is the Hooved Shaman, I am going to start intergrating some Paladin information as well since I am going to be working on my MT Paladin for the near future. I need to get him ready for Guild runs.

If you enjoy this blog, if anyone reads it, then please continue to stop by and check in. These two characters are my mains and I will be jumping topics back and forth depending on my interactions with the game and the people in it.

On a side note: I will also be linking GamGam (Lv 70 Horde Shaman) to my toons shortly as I have decided to start up a Horde guild in Nord. should be up and running in the next few days.

More tomorrow.

Quickie

Short one today.

McGregor hit 69 during the Christmas break, this morning actually. I did some tanking and that was fun. Now I’m looking at upgrades for when I hit 70. I know that there’s things that you can get from PVP-ing and some that you can get by doing Heroics or even getting them crafted.

If there are any readers out there, what have you done for your toon that’s hit 70?

Also, after some thinking, I’m building a Horde guild on the Nord server. We already have a bunch of horde toons as players in either Gilneas or Nord, might as well have them under the same banner. It should be an interesting experiment.

I’ll do a real blog entry tomorrow, I’m debating on whether I can actually pull off hitting 70 today….

Building a Better Shaman: Down the Elemental Tree

I know it’s been a bit since I’ve continued on this series. I’ve been so focused on getting my tank up and running that I’ve put this on the back burner and for people that are actually reading this, I’m sorry.

Today we get back on track and we’re going to focus on the Elemental Tree. Now if Enhancement was the melee build then Elemental is the Caster build. It’s built for high output dps through casting. With ranged weapons being the main focus for this build, the talents that are available to you will reflect that.

Please keep in mind that I’m breaking this down with the assistance of some Elemental Shamans and have very little interaction with this tree in my Shaman playing days. So, take what I say as you will.

Convection and Concussion are the first two talents that are available to you on this tree. Both give an advantage to you with your ranged spells, just in different manners. Convection is the talent that reduces the cost of your spells (Shock spells and Lightning spells). So the mana pool that you have will not suffer as much as it could. Concussion is just like it sounds; it’s about increasing the damage of those same spells. Now it can be said that you can go ahead and spend ten points on these two talents right away as they are pretty much useful both ways but I urge you to look at the rest of the tree before you make that determination. Keep in mind that these trees are built for characters that were only going to reach sixty and we now have a level 70 cap. So you will have more points to put in other places later on.

Let’s move on.

Earth’s Grasp is the next talent and what it does is that it gives more health to you Earth totems, more precisely your Stoneclaw and Earthbind totems. Stoneclaw is useful to get a mob off of you, it distracts a mob off of you but is only good for that as long as its health. So if you’re going to become dependent on this totem then giving it more health is probably a good idea. I do know there’s a cooldown for Stoneclaw but I can’t recall what that is at the time. Earthbind is great because it slows down your mob. You can use it to slow the mob down coming toward you, giving you more time to range attack or keep the mob from running away and getting more mobs to pay attention to you.

Elemental Warding reduces the damage taken from Frost, Fire and Nature effects. So those mages that blast you with a frost spell will not slow you down as long. While this is good, I don’t really consider it something that’s incredibly important. However, that’s just me.

Call of Thunder, this is something that I consider important. It’s a five point talent but it increases the chance for a critical strike with your lightning spells. Since lightning is your bread and butter, it’s a must to have this talent filled. This also leads to a later talent that you’re going to want to fill up as well but that would be jumping ahead.

Improved Fire Nova Totem, I’m going to be honest and say that I used Fire Nova A LOT when I was in about level 50 to 59. It’s a cheap and easy little totem that gives a concentrated blast of damage to a mob. It’s on a delay, so there’s a chance to have a mob destroy it before it has the chance to go off, so there’s a bit of a set back to it. This talent will shorten that delay by a second per point put into it. So instead of a five second wait, it can go down to a three second wait. While that sound great, you have to read the rest of the talent, it increases the threat of your Magma totem. Magma is also handy as it ticks off damage for a certain amount of time. However, it’s already libel to get attacked and what this talent will do is increase that possibility, which will really just set you back. So you have to consider the good and bad of it and then decide if you want to sacrifice one totem for another.

Eye of the Storm is an incredible little talent. It’s a defensive bonus, so if you get attacked and receive a critical strike, it produces giving you Focused Casting. That means that no matter how many attacks you have on you, it will not lengthen your casting time. So you get a critical strike on you, you can cast a healing spell without having to worry about it getting lengthened because of another attack.

Elemental Devastation is weird. I say that in the sense that it gives you a higher percentage range to get a critical strike on a melee strike, after you get a critical strike with a spell. So it could be any spell, Shock or lightning, as long as it’s offensive. I don’t really know that an Elemental Shaman would really benefit from this…. It’s like they ran out of space on the Enhancement spec and just stuffed it where they could.

Storm Reach is a great talent. It gives more range to your lightning spells. They can increase as far as six yards. That’s a good clip longer.

Elemental Fury increases the critical strike possibilities for your Shock spells and Fire totems. This could work well with Elemental Devastation. It’s a 100% increase, that’s disgustingly good. This also leads into another talent later on in the tree.

Unrelenting Storm is a good way to keep your mana pool up and heavy. It’s five talent points deep. It will regenerate Mana, but it looks at your Intellect total. So depending on your intellect total, it will give you back 10% of that. Good way to keep a flush pool.

Elemental Precision gives you the better chance to hit a target with a shock spell and it brings down the threat level as well. This is something that you want if you’re running an instance and you’re dps. The last thing that you want is to pass the threat level of the tank, bringing the mob right to your doorstep.

Lightning Mastery is the talent that Call of Thunder leads into. This talent helps bring down the cast time of your lightning spells. Remember that I already explained to you that this spell was going to be your bread and butter, bringing down the casting time is something that you should really look into.

Elemental Mastery, if you took Elemental Fury, then you have the ability to take this talent. This is a spell that you activate and it has a 3 minute cooldown attached to it. If you use it, it’s a free attack basically and the attack has a 100% increase chance to become a critical strike. This far into the tree you can see that things are beginning to stack up. It’s all about getting a critical strike at the right moment for everything else to fall into place. This is a spell that can make everything else that you’ve given points to come together.

Elemental Shields gives you a bit of a break by bringing down the possibility of an attack against you being a critical one. Of course if you put points into Elemental Devastation then it’s counterproductive to even put a point on this one as you’re wasting your points on the other.

Lightning Overload is a free attack. It gives you up to a 20% chance to get a second attack that will not give you any additional threat but only causes half the damage of your original spell. So if you crit for 3000 on a lightning spell, then this talent will give you a second attack against the same mob for 1500.

That talent leads into Totem of Wrath and let me first say that Warlock and Mages will LOVE you if you have this totem and drop it for them when you’re in group. It increases the chance to have a critical hit by 3% and the casters love this totem for that.

This takes you through the entire tree but only up to level 60. The rest of the point available to you, those are up to you where to put them.

This concludes the Elemental Tree. I’m taking a couple of days off, spending time with the Hooved Missus and the little hoovies in my house. I hope you guys have a happy holiday and I’ll see you later this week!

Tanking to 68

McGregor has made it to 68. If you look real close at my last post about him it said that I was just starting work on him in earnest, he was 65 at the time. Now about half a week later, he’s a level 68 and he’s tank several instances in the mean time. If you click on his name you’ll notice that his gear is….alright. He’s over 10k armor and about 9k HP, so he is built to last a long time with elites. He usually runs about three or four mobs at once in an instance and the same out soloing. It’s a BIG difference from watching everyone’s bars to just watching my own. So far I’ve been able to tank: Underbog, Mana Tombs and Crypts. I did Tombs a few times, in hopes of getting that shield to drop from the first boss but to no avail. Rather unfortunate but what are you going to do.

The other endeavor that I tried to take on last night was helping another paladin get their epic mount. Now let me just say that the invite was out of the blue by a player that I’d never met before. I tried to be polite enough to pitch in considering that they were at the end of the chain.

Once we got to Scholo, where they are supposed to summon the horse and we’re supposed to destroy five waves of mobs, then fight a death knight to gain the ability to free the warhorse, it was obvious that this crew had a bit of an issue.

Example: A common term like, “Wait for the pats.” Was completely disregarded and the group went for a standing mob that was then joined by a pat, that was then joined by ANOTHER standing mob. After the fight was over I read, “What do you mean ‘pat’?”

Now take into account that these are not low level characters. The lowest level that was with us was a level 63 Warlock. So we had, 65 and two 68 Paladins, a 66 Hunter and a 63 Warlock. This is a high 50s to level 60 instance. We should have been sweeping the floor with these mobs, I mean SERIOUSLY not having any type of issue at all with this area.

We had one wipe.

Once we reached the basement, which is where the event is supposed to take place, this group was lost on what to do next. They ran around for while, and then decided that they were going to go to a completely different area of Scholo. I was done.

I hate leaving a group; really I do, because I hate leaving people in a situation that they are going to have a hard time taking care of. Still, with this group there were a couple of things that didn’t sit well with me. First off, they knew I was a tank but didn’t want me to tank a tanking role. They wanted me to hang back and let the hunter take agro. Huh? Right. The second thing that didn’t sit right with me was communication, as in, there was none. So they would leave a room and you were just to follow but no explanation was given.

Those, to me, are two factors that must be done well for any instance. I spent an hour with them, they didn’t even know about the event, and once they left the basement and decided to do something else, I bolted.

I pray that won’t come back to bite me on the read but you know what, that’s life.

Today I will put up the Elemental Tree, or at least the first part. So you have that to look forward to.

My Favorite high level area.

When I was leveling my first 70 what I heard from everyone that had already hit 70 was “Go to Shadowmoon, go to Shadowmoon.” Of course they meant Shadowmoon Valley, a place where many of us grind our teeth at. However we all grind those teeth for different reasons, for me the reason is that I feel like I got spoiled with the lush scenery of Zangarmarsh, the Forest and Nagrad only for them to pull the run RIGHT from under me and throw me back into a hell looking environment. It’s not one of my favorites, can you tell?

While there are some great quests in SMV, I don’t like the look. In Nagrad, however, I feel completely at home. You know it might be that it’s because Nesingway is out there hunting wabbits…er I mean, hunting wildlife. (Why do we have to do all the dirty work) but I will say that’s the area that most reminds me of Azeroth in the manner that I remember it when I was working my way up to 60 and then 70.

It’s a bunch of kill quests. You have to love quests that you give you experience on top of experience for finishing the quest. (The only thing that was missing was a quest collecting pages) I have found that I love this area the most. Yes grinding can be a pain in the rear BUT think about it. If you’re a leatherworker, this is heaven. All the creatures that you kill either drop Knothide leather or scraps that you can turn into leather, you can get some feathers and other odds and ends that you can sell for a bit of profit (I can turn in 20 feathers for a little over a gold.). Add to that the ogres. Sure they’re ugly and hit hard BUT two things happen. Usually you’ll get a decent amount of silver and netherweave cloth. I have to healing classes and I still use the stuff.

I’ll even give you a little secret most people don’t even consider. If you sell a stack of cloth you’ll get about 2 gold. If you turn the stack into bandages you’ll get 6 gold from the vendors. (So instead of 4 gold for 2 stacks of 20, you get 6 gold for that same 2 stacks turned into bandages. Hey that’s an extra 2 gold!)

The other aspect of this place that I truly enjoy is the rep grind. You have to grind rep to even get all of the other quests available to you. Of course this is made easy with two starter quests that ask for some silly stuff. There are also three different ogre areas where you can kill them all and gain experience, rep, gold and cloth. It’s really the Wal-Mart of WoW.

Dailies and the Paladin

I started doing dailies the moment that I went and hit 70. To a lot of us this is nothing new. Obviously the dailies are supposed to keep us entertained until we do some end game runs or get a new expansion.

I went to Skyguard (Man, getting there is a bit of a pain isn’t it?) and started looking through the quartermasters gear and saw the pretty mounts and realized that they were epic mounts. (Not sure why I didn’t even know they were epic.) I had a moment of doubt because honestly, while I think that an epic mount is really sweet and everything, do I really want to spend over 5k just to be able to fly faster? It’s not very contusive when you can spend that money on other things, what those might be however is lost on me.

Then I took a look at the reward that was given at the completion of a daily, 11g 99s. Almost twelve gold to run around killing some eggs. Now I’m not a math wizard but I can tell you that you’re going to be getting A LOT of gold between neutral and exalted just to be doing this quest. I wonder, I wonder if the reason why the grind takes so long is to try and give the player the money that he needs not only for the mount, which is crumbs when compared to the training. Is it plausible that the rep grind is supposed to help pay off the entire purchase of both skill and mount?

It’s possible but I know that the costs of repairs when you hit 70 aren’t a laughing matter either. I’m going to try and save up the money that I get from these daily quests to see if perhaps that will cover the bill. I know that doing the Skyguard quests for a fancy mount are much easier than the Netherwing line. It’s just going to be a matter of wait and see I suppose.

As I told you last time I’m working on leveling McGregor, my Paladin, to make him a tank for my guild. I switched to Prot and I’m still working out the kinks. I noticed right away that fights take A LOT longer than they did when I was in the Retribution tree. I have to work on my mana regen as it seems to suffer the most. But I have been able to take on 2 high level mobs without ever really breaking a sweat. I just miss my totems.

The thing that I did notice that I’m going to enjoy is that I actually remember a lot of the quest lines that can be done between 65 and 70 so hopefully that will cut down on my leveling time.

Anyone that reads this have any advice for a Tankadin please be sure to let me know!

Our Shaman series will continue shortly.

Building a Better Shaman: Enhancement Spec Part 2

Alright so last time we did this I only worked on the first part of the Enhancement tree.

(Note: A reader let me know that what I called the ‘Grounding Totem’ is really the “Earthbind Totem”. Thank you for the correction, I forget that they have actual names and not just what I call them)

This time I’m going to try and finish up this tree so that I can make way for the other two builds. I’m going through the tree to give you an idea of what each talent is going to give you. I’m mostly familiar with Enhancement and Restoration; however I have some Elemental Shaman friends that have been willing to give their input on that build as well.

So we’re going down to the third section of the Enhancement tree, from left to right, the first one we’re going to talk about it Enhancing Totems. Keep in mind that several of the talents that you can find in this tree are Totem focused. This talent gives more effectiveness to your Strength of Earth and Grace of Air totems. Strength of Earth is another one that’s good for when you want to put more muscle behind your hits, this is especially good to put down for a tank if the need arises. Grace of Air is the love of a lot of dps classes out there. It grants an additional amount of agility to the party radius. When you look at these two totems they’re more suitable for when you’re in a five man group than when you are alone. These are built for battles that may last a while, like the 4 and 5 mob pulls from Shadow Labs.

The next Talent is Shamanistic Focus, a newer talent that was put in place of the two handed weapon specialty that had lived in this tree for so long before. This is an awesome talent to take up if you do a lot of melee, which you will if you’re enhancement; this is almost a free hit…almost. This spell is dependent on a Critical strike, so once you have a critical strike this will automatically appear on your shaman. The basis of the spell is that after a critical strike this will lower the price of a shock spell by 60% (so, Flame Shock, Earth Shock and Frost Shock). So it’s basically rewarding you for having a good strike in against your opponent by not forcing you to pay full price for an additional attack, very nice. I took this up the moment it became available after 2.3 and never once regretted it.

Anticipation is great for mitigating damage being dealt to you. It’s really just a fancy word for ‘better dodge’ and for someone who does a lot of melee it’s almost a must. At the end of you stacking five points it gives you an extra five percent to dodge. I know that some might giggle at this but keep in mind that most tanks have at least 10 percent dodge rating and you’ll realize that it’s something that you don’t have to go out looking for gear to try and get. You’re getting a good basis for dodging right there. I know that long ago Shaman were also used to tanking, that’s no longer the case, however this would be one of the reasons that they did back in the day. Five points into this talent without a second thought.

Flurry is another Critical Strike reward. This one works well with Windfury and basically stacks with Shamanistic Focus, so that they both go off during a critical strike. That gives you additional speed to your attacks (Up to 30% if you put in five points) and you get a low cost shock to cause more damage. This is a GREAT talent, it went off for me more than you realize. Be forewarned that you must have put in five points to Thundering Strikes before you’re able to take on this talent. They work in combination.

Toughness is good as it adds more armor to you without you having to do anything except exist. If you’re this far into the tree and don’t pick it up, you’re doing yourself a disservice.

The next three talents: Improved Weapon Totems, Spirit Weapons and Elemental Weapons are bigger buffs to the spells that you have to make your melee weapons better. It needs to be pointed out that you can do all three, just one or just two. It all depends on which spells and totems you rely on more in your game. As you’re reaching this you’ve put in twenty points, so you should be level thirty and have an idea which ones help you find your groove better. The two that are the start to a more advanced talent are Spirit Weapons and Elemental Weapons. So if you want a talent that’s connected to one of those, then you need to max these out first.

Mental Quickness is good to try and bring down the cost of an instant spell (Like a shock) and bring up the effectiveness of your other spells (Healing and otherwise). So if you’re keeping track, you can put a point in Shamanistic Focus, get it to produce (Bringing down your shock value by 60%) and max out this talent, that would make it a 66% reduction for a shock spell at any given time. That’s great mana conservation right there.

Weapon Master helps you deal more damage. Straight up, there’s nothing more to this. Max it out and you’ve got an additional 10% damage done with each strike that you land on a mob.

If you maxed out Spirit Weapons then congratulations, you now have the choice to Dual Wield. Some people laugh at the thought but it’s not a bad thing to have. There are a couple of reasons for this. Firstly, even if the off hand weapon doesn’t strike as often as you might like, most weapons come with great stats that would work nicely. Add to that the fact that you’re also going to be getting some great weapons from Outlands that are one handed and not main handed and you’ve got yourself some dual hand goodness.

Dual Wield Specialization tries to circumvent some of those off hand misses by giving you the ability to have a percentage of how well you can dual wield, leaving that solely on your shoulders.

Put points in Elemental Weapons? Stormstrike is your present. It’s a free strike at any given time (Please take the GCD into equation). This has no type of rule to it, so this free strike may be critical and set off all of the other talents that you’ve thrown points into.

I had all of these maxed out. It made for some great grinding.

The last two that you have are Unleashed Rage and Shamanistic Rage. The first is more for your group than for you. It’s a reason for them to keep you around, if the totem buffs weren’t enough that is. If you get a critical hit, this talent increases the percentage of the groups attack power, within twenty yards of your character. So if you look at this tree, many of the aspects and talents at your disposal are incumbent on you getting a Critical Strike, something that I did quiet often with this build.

Shamanistic Rage, in theory, sounds really good. It’s a spell that you initiate. It reduces all damage taken by 30% and also gives you the chance to generate mana back to you equal to 15% of your attack power. Honestly though, this talent pretty much sucks. How much attack power do you really think you’re going to have? If you have 300 attack power, that’s not much mana back if your pool is about 6k. The damage reduction is nice but it only lasts thirty seconds and then it’s on a two minute cool down so you can only really use it once every three or four mobs. It’s a point that could very well be used in someplace better like Restoration or Elemental with the points that you’re going to have left over. (Keep in mind that the trees were built for a character that would only reach sixty.)

So there you have it. The Enhancement tree in all of its glory: I will say this again, this is a melee tree. If you don’t like getting your hands dirty and would rather have ranged attacks, this really isn’t for you.

Questions? Comments? What was your favorite talent in this tree?

Next time we’ll go Elemental and peek at what that tree holds.

Luciel comes of age!

This weekend Luciel, my Alliance Shaman, came of age and hit 70 on Sunday Morning. He spent eleven hours on level 69 before getting the ding that ended his leveling until the next expansion.

I spent the last three levels bouncing from the three points of quests in Blade’s Edge Mountains and Shadow Moon Valley. I’ll tell you now that the Cipher of Damnation quest, was a HUGE chunk of not only time but also XP for me this time around. It helped that I had a group of guildies that were willing to do the Damnation chain with me. While most of the quests a player can do solo, there are two instances in which you need a group. One of them being Ruul and the other is the main event itself.

If you’re wondering how the event starts, you have to go to the Altar of Damnation in Shadow Moon, the first piece of the quests is the angry rock and fire essence captures, then water and then you are sent to the farm stead where the chain begins in earnest. I would say that the quest chain takes you about ¾ of the way through 69 if you do it alone. Yes, I’m serious.

While this blog will continue to focus on Shaman and anything to do with them, I’m now moving to leveling my Paladin. I respecced my Shaman for healing (Currently sitting at Plus 733 healing) and will make the Paladin a tank (Just respecced to Prot) so there will be a little on Paladins on here from time to time.

I haven’t forgotten about my Shaman series, I imagine I will have another post for that series tonight.

Happy Slaying!

Deconstructing the Guild

You’ve all heard about my guild issues in the recent past. How we’ve had some people leave and had to kick some people out. The departure of one of our main guild officers and his return; it’s really been an interesting couple of months for Divine Forsaken. While I continue to reach 70 (Ding’d 68 last night) and my brother has already hit 70, the structure around us continues to change.

The group that left us a couple of weeks for an end game guild seemed to run into a snag. From what I understand they did indeed join a raid guild…for about three days. After which, it seems, both sides came to the conclusion that it wasn’t the best fit for either of them. So those that left made a new guild. Good for them actually, I was impressed that they would rather work on their own than have to work under the auspice of another group they don’t entirely agree with.

At the same time DF came to its own conclusion, we’re just going to relax. Literally we’re not going to worry about end game content at this time and just have fun with the game again. Enjoy playing with our friends and remember what it is we play WOW for, to have fun! Understandably some people get wrapped up into Epic gear and making their toon the best that it can be but honestly, it’s just a game. For me the thrill has always been reaching the pinnacle in levels. That’s why I have as many alts as I do, because for me it’s about getting to 70. Once I’m there, meh. I enjoy being a high level and farming gold and such but that’s all that toon is now, a farmer. He’ll be farming supplies, gold and various other things for my low level toon.

So in an officer meeting this week, Monday to be exact, the ground work was set for us to just enjoy ourselves for a while. Give Kara a break and remember what makes us, us.

Unfortunately this happened at the same time that the raiders who left our guild started to recruit from our guild. The two things met in the middle and we’ve lost a few other members of the guild to this new raiding team. My question is, if they liked playing with the guildies so much, why didn’t they just stay? They could have easily led a Gruul’s Lair group from our banner. There were enough 70s to do that with. Why leave? That’s a question that I don’t know that I’ll ever get an answer to really. No one’s going to sit and tell me, “well the thing of it is…”

I’m okay with that.

There was one person that left that I’m shocked to see leave and still unwilling to believe it to be true. Darkzealot came back into DF with much fanfare. When the guild decided that it was time to put end game content on the backburner….he left and joined the new raiding guild. The same people that he condemned for leaving, the same people that made him want to quit WoW are now his guild mates. I don’t understand that one. How can you go from condemning someone to joining their ranks in the passing of a week?

I know that I’ve told you that DF is my guild and I think I explained to you that it’s a gaming Community. So he’s still part of the community, he plays other games with us and still works with us but not in WoW. So it’s not really a betrayal. He’s not leaving us completely but he’s desperate to see end game content as much as the other guys in that guild are.

I don’t see the dram, but that’s just me.

In any event, our guild is still big. We might not have as many 70s as we did at the beginning of the month but we’ve got some good players working their way up to that apex and when they reach it, DF will raid again. We’ll be more prepared for what lays ahead.

For now, Luciel is 2 levels away from 70, McGregor is at 64 and I’ve got several alts that are calling my name to have fun with them. Life, life couldn’t be better.

The guild will flourish again, it's all about the fun guys, it's all about the fun.

Thank you for reading, the Enhancement spec articles will continue shortly.

Building a better Shaman: Enhancement Spec (1 of ?)

Each class has a particular build that they feel is better suited for leveling up. A build that they think is better suited for the grind of getting from 10 to 70. For most players that play a Shaman, Enhancement is that spec. It has been for as long as I’ve been playing WoW and it doesn’t seem to want to change anytime soon.

One of the main reasons that players choose Enhancement for so long is because if a player wanted to use a two handed mace or axe, pre 2.3, they had to put points into that tree until they reached that talent, then they had to train up that skill to the point where it was viable for the player to use in combat. Not the most fun thing in the world but since we know that a two handed weapon can deal out more damage than a one hand and a shield, well then that works.

Right before the release of the Burning Crusade, Blizzard tossed Shamans another bone. They allowed us the ability to dual weld. This, of course, was a great idea but you couldn’t learn that ability until level 40, no matter how you placed your points on your talent tree. The dual weld aspect of this tree is still there but the two hand specialization is no longer a problem. Since 2.3 we Shaman have had the ability to train in two handed weapons at a weapons trainer (Yay!).

What I’m going to do is talk about where those points that you’re dying to spend would be best suited to help you gain the levels that you desire and also make you more of a melee machine than you already are or are trying to be. (My thought process with the help of a couple of other Shaman. This in no way means that the way I’m showing is the ONLY way or the BEST way out there, just the way that I feel is best for me.)

The first choice is always the hardest and let me say that I’ve put points in both in the past. The choices that you get are Ancestral Knowledge and Shield Specialization. If you think about it both of these choices are very good.

Shield Specialization is great for a low level that’s going to rely on that extra armor on them because it boosts the blocks that you’re going to have with your shield. So, yes it will draw out the fight but honestly, in the long run it’ll save your hide more than you know.

Ancestral Knowledge, for when you’re higher level and are relying more on your long range spells is awesome. It boosts you overall mana. By the time you’re done putting five points in, you’ve increased your mana pool by five percent. I know it sounds like small potatoes but trust, that five percent goes a long way.

At the moment I’m down for five with Ancestral Knowledge.

The second set of choices is a little trickier. It’s almost as if they built trees to be redone after hitting level forty.

Guardian Totems is good for a low level. It gives you the added buffer against attacks coming to you. It gives you a ten percent reduction of damage. Put that with Shield Specialization and you’ll be taking on same and higher level mobs with more ease than some other classes at your same level. Add to that the fact that it also decreased the time you have to wait to use grounding and it’s a joy because it helps with running mobs. So it’s giving you two advantages.

Thundering Strikes is good for those who like to melee up close and personal, like me. Each point that you put into this talent gives you another percent at a critical strike. I know that sounds like no big whoop but trust me; it’s a nice boost to a stat that you don’t really get to work on until later on in the game plus it’ll help with one of the talents that you can pick up further down the tree.

Improved Ghost Wolf, I consider this a MUST for any low level Shaman players. Why? Simple, unlike Druids who have some limitations on when they can use travel form, Ghost Wolf does not. You get into a pinch that you don’t think you can survive? Use Ghost Wolf and RUN. Of course you don’t get that until level 20 but still, IGH brings down the cast time pretty good and allows for you to have a little more health when running away. I don’t have it now, epic mount and all, but I used this up until level fifty or so, I thought it was THAT vital.

Improved Lightning Shield. I’m using this at the moment. You put three points in and you get an additional fifteen percent damage done to a mob. For, what is basically, a defensive ability, this is HUGE! Think about it. Lightning Shield and you’ve got Windfury prots on your weapon. Suddenly that full health mob is down to half, with just one swing. It’s truly an amazing thing to see and it’s a lot of fun to see that happen. Trust me, you’ll love this at a higher level.

It occurs to me as I write this, I’m begin REALLY retentive on how I do this so this is going to be a multi part series. This concludes the first part of the tree for now. Tomorrow I’ll try to finish out the rest if I can.

Aloha!

Building a Better Shaman: Corrections

I want to thank the people that have stopped by and made a couple of comments.

First:
Urthona of Cenarion Circle was nice enough to point out that there is indeed a Shaman trainer in Ironforge. Seems that the trainer is on the opposite side of the gryphons inside a house. So you actually have to look for him, just go in and out of the houses until you find him.

Second:
Girl meets WoW stopped by for a second, even in her sick condition (thank you!) and reminded me that the totems go up to level thirty. So for you that are reading this, here is a list of the totems you’re going to receive and the level in which you get them:
Earth Totem – Level 4
Fire Totem – Level 10
Water Totem – Level 20
Air Totem – Level 30

The last two totems are very good for when you’re grouping, the first two are INCREDIBLE for when you’re mostly working solo up until 20. Sorry for the gaffs. But I like to correct my mistakes. Hopefully my next entry will be up to par. Thanks again!

Building a Better Shaman: Low level Crap

Last time we talked about survival; more importantly the way to survive the first levels of a new Shaman without the benefit of a large mana pool. When you start hitting the mid teen levels you should have enough money to start spending on some upgrades or you should start getting some green drops.

Let me make it clear that when you’re a low level, don’t be picky. If a cloth or leather green drop, use it. If it’s got better stats than the whites that you are wearing you shouldn’t pass it up. When I say stats I’m not talking overall armor. At a low level it’s impossible to get high armor anyway, you should be looking at the plus stats that it gives you that will hold you over until you’re able to properly set yourself up.

Ashenvale has plenty of green drops in both ruins areas and the quest givers also give some nice green rewards for a shaman. However, since this is the only race that will have Shaman your best bet really is to stay on the isles until you complete all the quests. No, you’re not grounded, the rewards given out for the quests on those two isles are built specifically to fit into the classes that the race has. So you’re not going to find yourself completing a nice quest and finding out that you can’t use ANY of the greens offered to you. The other thing is that the isles are pretty deserted at this point since the new has worn off, so you won’t find yourself having competition with other people to find the mobs to complete a particular quest.

Still, let’s say that you’re strong headed and don’t want to level in the isles or have friends that rolled a human, dwarf or gnome (Why?) and you want to level with them doing the same quests. That’s fine. You should STILL wait until at least level 10 to run out of your starting zone and switching to the various other leveling areas.

If Elf country isn’t for you that means you’re headed to the human starting zone. Let me be the first to say, good luck to you. The biggest obstacle that you’re going to face, beside people looking at you funny and high levels wanting to duel you, is the Wetlands itself. Built for early level 20 players, you have to brave that run yourself at a mere level 10. Let me give you this piece of advice, when you get agro (Because you will) and you die, take the resurrection at the graveyard. Reason being is two fold. Firstly, you will probably be further into the Wetlands that you were when you died and secondly, it’s not really going to cost you anything. At level ten resurrection sickness is just a joke. Take the minimal damage that comes with it and trudge on. You’re going to run into huge spiders, angry orcs and the occasional dwarf as you run from the Wetlands to the homelands of the dwarfs.

When you see snow, you’re safe. At least for the time being. The other thing that I want to remind you of is this, get the flight points. It takes two extra seconds to veer off course and get the flight paths. You should get three heading from the Wetlands to Ironforge

Outside of the Exodar there is only one place that has a Shaman trainer and that’s Stormwind. He seems like a bit of an unwanted guest as he sits underneath the trees that sit below the bridge leading to the main gates. Kinda sad but then I think that perhaps as a Shaman he just doesn’t want to deal with the crap that the human world brings him. In either case that’s the gent you need to go to in order to train up. Sad thing is, if you’ve decided to leave the isles to level up, you still have to go back in order to get all your totems. (See, I told you to STAY in the isles!)

You should have all of your totems at level 20. You may not have all the spells that they can do but your four best friends for the rest of your time playing a shaman will be with you.

You should not really have to go out and buy stuff from the AH, unless it’s DIRTY cheap, nothing over 50s is worth it honestly and even then it’s pushing it.

Lowbie crap over. Next time we talk specs.

Shaman Building part I

So yesterday I touched base on what I think is the best class to use as a shaman on Horde (Tauren!) and talked about some of the aspects of the Alliance race that can carry the mantle of a Shaman.

The difficulty in having a Shaman at a low level is that there are no totems, at least not until level 6 or so when you get the Earth Totem and you get the Stoneskin spell totem. I know that many Shaman don’t use it after a certain level, they feel they can get better use out of the Strength totem but honestly, when you are a low level, you should be popping this out every time you’re in a fight. Let me tell you why.

You’re health is low at this point, you get five six good shots on you and you’ll be running back to your body in no time. The other part of this equation is also that your mana pool isn’t very big either. You don’t have intellect buffs on your armor, you don’t carry around Scrolls of Intellect, you’re still too low to even garner something like this and even if you do, it’s not going to amount to much. So that means that the resources that you do have you’re going to be using to heal yourself, which will take a big chunk of your mana with it.

The Stoneskin totem gives you durability. It allows you to really deal with the melee crap that you have to throw out until you start getting higher level. You look at any shaman starting area and you’ll notice that they are all doing melee damage and little casting.

So recommendation: Even before you get into it with a mob, drop a Stoneskin totem. Yes I know that it’s obnoxious, and that you have to recast every time that you move however, it’s going to help last longer in a fight, especially if you accidentally agro more than one mob at a time. You’re going to be tempted to drop the strength totem when you get it, don’t. It’s not going to give you survivability in the least. Yes it’ll help you with mobs but bottom line; it’s not going to make your health any higher. While Stonekin won’t either, it’ll help you’re survival rate.

If you can try to stick to the Mace and Shield combo as your weapons, the reason being is that at a low level, you’re dps is going to be low in any event. The shield will also help you in the living longer area of your gaming. I used a mace and shield until about level 50 and then went dual weld and eventually switched to a two handed mace. I can’t tell you the amount of times I was grateful for the hateful looking shields that would drop for me as a low level. Shaman can also use staves but with the exception of a stat that one might carry as a low level this is a waste. You can’t do any damage and it doesn’t help you when you’re trying to save yourself.

At about level 10 you’ll get the grounding totem. This is when you’re going to be alternating but you also have to really start paying attention. Many of the mobs that you’re going to be facing at this stage are going to be hostile and runners. The grounding totem will help you in making sure that they don’t run around and bring more friends with them when they do. It’s excellent for when you’re attacking a humanoid mob, I’m thinking of the Moonkins in Darkshore and of the pirates over in Rachet. They’re usually grouped close together and easily brought into the fight.

As you start, at least until level 20 or so, these three are your bread and butter. You NEED these in order to effectively make it that far without having to Rez a billion times during the time that you’re going to be working your way up.

While this should give you some of the tools needed to start up. Next time I’ll break down some zones for you that would best work with your new Shaman.

Shaman Business: Rolling...

I've been playing WoW for a year and a half. I've had two Shamans. One is a seventy and the other is getting there. One in each faction.

I know that there are many players who complain about the Shaman and the abilities that it is able to use in a manner which either a group or a pvp fiend can truly enjoy. Let me first say that I am not the end all be all of Shamans. I enjoy the class, alot, probably more than other people do but it's the versatility which I find both endearing and welcoming when playing the character.

On the Horde side Shaman race choice are a bit trickier as you have three different races to chose from, Orc, Troll or Tauren. Personally I have always been partial to Taurens for a couple of reasons.

First, Warstomp. It is without a doubt one of the best racials in the game. An additional stun, that costs no mana and has a decent cooldown. I can't even begin to tell you how many times it saved my hide when I was a low level and I was battling multiple mobs. It's something that I miss to this day because Dreanei don't get to have it.

The other thing that attracted me to a Tauren is really, that they made the most sense to be a shaman. When you look at the other two races that can be Shamans, they aren't very well known for loving and caring for the land. The Tauren MUST take care of the land as they thrive on it and realistically, they're a cow! What cow do you know what to destroy the world? None.

Taurens are great for herbalism as they get a 5 point boost to that talent just for being who they are. Course mine was always a skinner because I needed money for the way that I wanted to gear out my toons.

Still, Horde is not something that I play much anymore so I'm going to focus mainly on Alliance Shaman and leveling. I think it's important to note that while I might have good notes, the leveling increase in patch 2.3 has bascially made anything I have to impart either irrelevant or mundane, as I've had friends tell me that they are leveling faster than they can complete some of the ares.

Dreanei's are an interesting race. First looking at the fact that they crashed landed into our world, mutated everything around their vessel, they have somehow managed to create a trust with the land and have been able to go ahead and become Shamans. Their racial trait is the Gift of the Naaru. Another nifty little trick if you think about it. It's a self heal that continues to grow as you level. So it increases the healing done upon yourself in appropriate balance with the baseline health that you recieve when you level. Furthermore, it's also a trait that you can share with a party member by casting it on them. Automatically that makes you a great healer if you think about it. You're in a five man and run outta mana? Cast Gift on your tank and then drop a Mana Spring Totem and regain some mana.

One of the biggest things that I continually hear is that Shamans are broken because the totem set isn't working properly, that you have to drop totems all the time, to me that's what makes it appealing honestly. You have to think out what you want to drop, what you think is going to give you the most help. It's about stratergy and that is what appealed to me the most.

So the first thing I'm going to tell you, regardless of what spec you're going to turn into at level 10, 40, 60 or 70 is gather Intellect. You need it more than anything else in your life. We are completely mana hungry (not as bad as Belfs though) and you need to make sure you have a big enough pool. I have a 41 Warlock (Voltz) who has a 9000 mana pool. So I know we can get up there. Just remember that the other thing you need is Stamina.

There's some background/groundwork on the Shaman class. Tomorrow we'll talk about the best way to level (Spec) and the skillz you might need to help you along the way.

66 and more!

So I dinged 66 last night, thank you thank you (Imagining applause). I have to say that by far, right now my favorite area to go and level in is Nagrad. There's a pleothra of quests once you reach at least neutral and then after that, man it's easy to get up to friendly and so on. The fact that alot of the quests don't have to be done in two man groups or higher and you just enjoy soaking up all of that XP. I know that the ring of blood quests need a 5 man but even then, that's a small chain that can be cleaned out quickly and still made to feel like fun. I'll probably have 4 bubbles of rested xp when I get home that I can't wait to burn through. Of course Forester, my brother has already hit 68 and will be coasting to 70 this weekend and then gloating about it because, you know he'll have a flying mount. Mumblemumble.

Other news for the day, Trina's significant other, Dissection, has rejoined the ranks of WoW players. He quit a little bit after the expansion but we finally talked him into coming back. He's brought over his 60 hunter from another server and is going to level him to 70. D is a good player, he's got several toons at 60 over int he Horde side and this is his only high level Alliance. It's funny that it's his first toon that he's coming back to but it seems that he's enjoying the life of a hunter at the moment.

Also dealing with guild, Darkzealot, came back last night. I wasn't there for his return, I had to work late HOWEVER, my thoughts of him having left due to the drama that the last group of deserters gave us. He did take it personally and honestly, he has every right to. With everything that's gone on with the game and the friendships that you make, how could you not?

I don't know if I've told you but I've leveled two Shamans and my horde shaman has hit 70, did it a while ago and has purples and a flying mount to prove it. I think it's interesting that before, each person would have his/her own way of 'power-leveling'. For the longest time my brother and i would laugh. I would BURN through 1-40 and then slow down when he would pick up speed and just THROTTLE through the last 20 levels. Now with the new patch, all of the trade secrets of a power leveler are almost wasted. Even with that said, I'll share with you the things that I've done in the past to level faster.

I would post more but it's a busy day at work, yea I know that's just wrong, and I need to finish up my paperwork if I want to manage to leave this place on time.

Kara, drama and everything in between

How was the weekend friends? Was it everything you hoped it would be or was it less that you desired? For me it was a mixture of both.

While the Hooved Mrs. didn't feel well this weekend and took it easy, I was busy with guild duties.

First let's comment on Friday. As I said on Thursday, I tried to get into Kara and it was a no go because I was an hour late. Friday was different. My brother, Forester, called me and told me that they were WAITING for me because they needed dps. I hustled home, got on my hunter and headed to Kara where we lived for about SEVEN hours until we finally downed Romeo and Juilet. We went ahead and cleared to Curator and called it a night.

Saturday is when the drama started.
________________________________________________________________

I was on my Shaman, working my way up to 65 (Which I dinged this weekend and am already halfway through) when one of the pillars of the guild logged in.

A little history on DIVINE FORSAKEN; it's a multi-game community. Which means that while we have a guild on both the Horde and Alliance side in WoW, we also play everything else like LOTR, Tabula Rasa, CSS and anything else that might be MMO style, including Halo 3 and Call of Duty 4. So many of the players that we have, have played together for several years.

Darkzealot is one of those long time players. He's been playing so long that he has a Teamspeak server set up for us that can house enough players that we can run a 25 man comfortably and still have people in the lobby chatting it up. He also has been the one that put together our website, maintains it and allows us to have DF Radio. (that's right, we have our own tunes playing at any given time)

So, I'm questing away Saturday morning when he comes in game. He is usually the type of guy that will type something like "GET'ER DONE!" when he walks in cause he's just like that.

This is all he typed when he came in on Saturday:


Thank you DF for all the fun times that we had together. You guys are going down the right trackm just keep moving.

/gquit

I know that most of you are thinking, "So?"

You have to understand that he LOVES the guild but more importantly, he plays other games with us and uses the TS server so he would get bombarded with questions as to why in God's name he would leave. So he did what any rational man would do, he took down the TS server.

No explination.

No word to anyone.

Just gone.

Personally? I consider him a friend. He and I would go back and forth and harass each other non-stop about the dumbest things and have good laughs. His leaving REALLY took me off guard. I would not want to celebrate someone's departure. My first and only thought is, we are cancelling Kara for the night. I mean seriously why not? It's a good way to mourn the leaving of one of the important people in the guild. I tell this to some of the officers and what I get back is, "Why bother? He left us in the lurch, we shouldn't stop what we're doing because he's gone."

Granted I'm an emtional sap but that struck me as odd. I mean this guy was everyone's friend. He stuck up for the people that no one wanted to stand up for. He was always willing to help with a run, always willing to help with money in game. How difficult would it be to just take one day off when the instance is going to rest in 3 days? Plenty of time to still do whatever.

Kara was still run.

From what I understand it went well. They took down Curator and did the Chess event which garnered good pixels for all around. It was after this that things went south again.

Most of our players that were in Kara Group One suddenly said good bye and left the guild. It seems that they were the reason, the catalyst for Darkzealot to feel like he needed a break from WoW. They had told him earlier in the morning of their proposed plan and had taken it personally. These were people that he had stood up for time and again. When we booted a group of people recently, it was at the behest of this same group because they felt that the booted group was not contributing to the guild. Now here they were, doing the same to us. Yes it was hurtful, they had planned within themselves for a week but had never even bothered to tell the guild leader of what they were thinking of doing.

Of course the guild is fine. We still have a plethora of 70s, many of which are Kara tuned to run 2 groups at the same time. We still have the desire to do endgame content at some point but what alot of people don't realize is that there is life outside of WoW and that's what gets them bent out of shape.

I wanted to write all of this out to see if it made more sense. Some of the people that left I truly felt were good people, they still are good people, they just decided to take a different path.

Such is life.

Kara is a lofty goal...

Having a 70 available for me to play is almost a joke. Don't get me wrong I love the fact that I have him but because of my work schedule I get home at about six p.m. That means that Kara runs have already been going on for an hour. The possibility of me being able to attend a run is almost non-existent. I know this today.


Yesterday, yesterday it felt like the whole cosmos was against me in the pursuit to make it home for my guild's Kara run. From my office closing a few minutes late, to traffic, to having to stop and get dinner on the way home. It felt like anything that could make me late, did. By the time I got home there were already two teams in Kara, happily slaughtering their way to the Maiden.

So alas I didn't get to venture into the depths of Kara I began to wonder something, has Kara ruined the game? Sure some could argue that we already had ten mans available to us before this expansion and that end game content was nothing new but THINK about it. How many of us have 70s? How many of us are running around showing off our purty purple pixels? My hunter has a couple and my Shaman had one (Axe of the Deep Woods) before heading into Outland but it hasn't been my DRIVING need to play, it's been the fun of grouping with my friends. Now looking at Kara and at the prospect of being stuck there for several weeks or months, depending on how long we want to 'farm' it, WoW is beginning to look like a chore. If that's the feeling that I'm getting now, why would I want to keep playing?

Case in point one of my close friends, Trina. She's been in the same guild that I have for a long time, longer than me since she's been playing with them in other MMOs before WoW was in existence. Her warlock hit 70 about 2 weeks ago. She's not Kara keyed. Moreover, she's not even looking to get Kara keyed, at least not yet. She's waiting for some of the people that she's used to playing with to catch up with her so they can go in together. She's not the norm anymore. She, to many, is an oddity for not having RUN out and gotten keyed that same night.

I don't know, it'll sound silly writing it out for everyone to read but I really feel like the innocent feeling that was in WoW once has gone and will never come back. My deep thought of the week...

This weekend is payday weekend so I will make my customary jaunt to the comic book store and pick up the comics that I have waiting for me, including the ones that I need to review (I'm still debating on whether or not to add this to my own blog). World of Warcraft will be in my box, I wonder if it'll be any good.

I want to give a HUGE THANK YOU to Ryan Boussard! A fellow comic book lover that was nice enough to play with the pixels that gave me a banner, thanks man!

That's it for now...

Hitting 64

So yesterday I made my first post and my Alliance Shaman hit 64. Let me tell you that 64 was a well earned level. Out of all of the content that's in Outlands I found that getting from 63 to 64 was the equivalent of getting from 60 to 61. Not only was it difficult but it was long. Take also into account that this is the first level that I've done since hitting sixty without going out and doing some kind of instance.

The road before me looks to be a bit dicer as the days go on. I've moved my hunter over to the same server and I know have the ability to go to Kara with my guild but then that also means sacrificing good time leveling Luciel. Plus trying to juggle home life as well, the wife wants some time with me and I can't have wife aggro.

The other thing that I noticed is that I had gone ahead and banked some high level stuff for when I hit 64 but it no where near improved my stats to a better quality than what I currently have. It's a fine line between having some nice blues and better greens. I'm still carrying around the 2h Mace from level 61 because it's incredibly useful and nothing better has dropped yet. Waiting on my Oathkeeper.

What do you guys find is better in terms of loot? Would you rather have the sight of blues in your equipped table or feel better with greens that service your needs?

In the Beginning...

So as you can see, if you've stumbled onto this blog, this is a work in progress. Don't judge it too harshly as I'm trying to get looking somewhat spiffy. (Who uses that work anymore beside me?)

My guild is and they've been playing MMOs together for longer, it feels, than I've been alive. It's more than a guild, it's a community and I'll tell you what, we have some silly stuff happen to us all the time. You'll get to hear about that.

You'll get to hear, hopefully, about the ups and downs of working Kara with my second 70 Shaman, my first has gone to Kara multiple times but not with this guild.

It should be interesting. Of course what's going to be more interesting to me is whether or not I am going to continue to have the desire to blog. Only time will tell.

Welcome to my life, as it were.