Life Post 2.4

2.4 has not been good to me. Not in the sense that it’s not fun because it is, but because honestly I don’t have the time to grind dailies. Well not exactly true, I don’t find dailies FUN. Add to that the fact that it’s a little island that all 70s that are sick of the other content are there and the fun kind of seeps away in seconds. I’ve done the bombing quest a couple of times but the rest of the dailies? They don’t spawn fast enough to really make it worth my while to sit around and wait. Someone made note that if you did all the dailies, including the ones originally gives at the onset of BC you could make roughly 300g a day.

That’s an impressive number but you have to the desire to do them regularly. I don’t.

So instead I went and did a couple of other things.

First let me say this to all Alliance players that were gripping about AV before the patch hit, you shouldn’t have said anything. Since 2.4 I have not won ONE contest in AV, which is shocking to me since I got my entire honor that way for the pvp gear that Lubacca is currently wearing. The reason I know this is because I decided to respec Luciel back to enhancement and I thought, I’ll grind some honor, get some tokens and get him some decent gear….well that’s going to be made probably twice as hard now due to the fact that the honor and badges will take longer to get. Sure you get more honor from kills now but if you lose AV you get nil, which still means minimal return.

My days look like this now:

Log in #1: Lubacca
I log into Lubacca for several reasons. First, he’s my main and if someone wants to get a MrT run going, that’s who I’m going to use. Secondly, he’s got all my money and is my cash cow with Alchemy. At some point I’ll get the reagents for the alchemy stone, as well as the rep eventually, I’m not worried about it. I go out and do some herb gathering (that whole, Fel Blossom will drop more stuff? Yea, that’s not true.) make some pots, put them on AH and log out.

Log in #2: Luciel
Now that he’s Enhancement again I find it fun. I’m not nearly as much of a DPS guy with Luciel for some reason, I don’t think I have enough spell hit or something but I still have fun in the BGs. I run about four a day, enough for about 1k honor and some badges. Not much else with this one really. If someone is running a regular instance…which is rare, I might jump in with Luciel and hope for some nice loot.

Log in #3: Lubrona
Currently sitting at level 31, this is where I start to feel the drag of a toon until about 40. It’s the hardest time for me and I don’t know why. I’ll try to bash out as many quests as I can but honestly, I am currently finding it exhausting to deal with this one. Once I get the mount that will get better, plus I’ll start hitting some areas that I actually enjoy, like Tanaris. I’ve started to use the Drain Tank Method and it works, I just end up not having enough space for the stupid stones from draining….if I don’t use Draining Life. Suggestions?

Log in #4: McGregor
Strictly to just sit around and grind some leather in hopes of getting enough to maybe make some Drums of War for Luciel or just to put up on AH. This one has really just been mistreated.

Note: I’ve spent roughly 7k gold on getting flight for my characters.

For the Enhancement Shamans out there that enjoy PVP, what do you find will help you most with getting out the most damage against your opponents?

Honestly I knew this was going to happen, it’s the lull before the next big thing. I know that WotLK is coming around the corner, but between now and then, what? I don’t want to switch guilds but I just might with one of my toons long enough to see something fun.

How about you guys? What are you up to now that 2.4 has dropped?

Warlock, BGs and Classes I can Beat

Why are the Clothies so much fun?

So in my last post I told you that I started a little priest. My alt-itis is getting worse as I’ve decided to go ahead and make another one. This time it’s a lock. See, while I love Eriq because he’s unique, the viability of Shadow Priests in PVP has become smaller and smaller.

I’ve spent some time on the war fields with Lubacca and I can honestly say there are two classes that I find myself smacking myself against the head with, Shadow Priests and Warlocks. Those DoTs, the Fear, the pets, the mana suckage and the life drain…there’s nothing I can really do that’s going to counter it and while I have a moderate amount of resiliency I find myself getting hammered by them.

When the enemy has your number, figure out what they’re doing and try to crack it.

I have a Paladin. While I must admit that Horde Paladins for some reason strike FEAR into me, I know how to handle them. With 2.4 I’ll know how to handle them even better since the Seal of Blood is migrating over to Alliance. I know that Consecrate is a little obnoxious spell that is basically a DoT if you stand there like a noob and take it. I know that they have two spells that can mess you up and ‘sap’ you, but they cool down time is enough to let me know that it’s twice and then I’m clear to mess them up if I’m still standing.

Warriors are pure melee. Yes they can throw, shot me or arrow me to death but it’s not like a hunter. Root them, Treant them and then just straight blast them.

Hunters…these can be tricky. As a Moonkin, what I do is Cyclone the hunter, sleep the pet, root the hunter, blast, blast, blast. I have a buddy, Grimlok, who’s an incredible hunter. He does awesome and has much better gear than me. He recently got the Bow drop from Prince in Kara. We’re standing outside of Kara and he drops the duel flag on me. I smoked him. The reason is that when is comes to dps, I can out gun just about anyone! However when they come up close and melee me I’m at a loss.

Which is why I hate ROGUES! These troublesome little bastards can just destroy me. The come up behind me, kidney shot and then the rest is history and because they can keep up the kidney shot I never get my feet under me again. (I need to get one of those damn trinkets). If I can see them coming, I can root and then just blast them from here until next week, spit on their bodies and laugh on my way to the next flag.

Against Druids, well it’s not a stalemate, I’m equipped to be a caster, I can turn kitty or bear just fine but it’s NOT going to be the same thing. I can hold my own but in the end, if it’s a bear or kitty druid, I’m down. If it’s a Moonkin I can hold my own and usually end up winning! (This is mostly due to the generous healers that see me fighting a good fight and feel within their hearts to heal me – To them I say thank ya.)

/Ramble Off

Back to the Warlock

So I had an itch last night and I wanted to play a warlock for a little bit, born was Dotinursix (Dotting your Six, Six meaning the term that most military heads say instead of ass…so like Watch your Six, watch your ass….I’ve over explained it.)

In any event, I’ve got several guildies who have high level Warlocks and this is the conversation that went on:

“What type of build should I use?” Me

“I used Demonology but it really depends on what you want to do.” Aliester

“I used Affliction, it’s great.” Thog

“I’m a Moonkin and the only thing that I HATE is Locks in PVP.” Me

“Why?” Al

“Because the fight usually goes like this: Dot, Dot, Pet, Fear, Dot, Dot, Life Drain, Me dead.”

About three minutes of straight LOL, ROFL, ROFLMAO, ROFLMFAO, OMG, Tee hee, Titter…

“That’s Affliction. You can Drain Tank with that build.” Thog

“What?” Me

“What they do to you in BGs is called Drain Tank. If you have a healer with you, you can spam Seed of Destruction all you want and cause serious damage.” Al

The rest of it was basically laughter at the thought of my feathered ass running around like a chicken with my head cut off to just end up dying somewhere with a lock standing over me, spitting in my eye and laughing on his way to someone else.

So, I will be trying the Warlock class for a bit. The way my playtime is breaking down recently is I either run a Heroic or a Battleground with Lu and then switch over to a lowbie for about an hour or so and then call it a night. So…there you go. I will be talking to you about tales from the lock pretty soon. I do want to say though that I think it’s SICK how I can already take on things 3 and 4 levels above me with relative ease…I’m only level 10.

It's AV weekend!

I love AV weekend. It’s the best time for PVP honestly. It’s a time for you to grind out ridiculous amounts of honor in a short amount of time and get gratification for it.

This weekend has been AV weekend and I’ve enjoyed it immensely. Although I will point out for the Alliance players that it seems that Sundays is the day that casual Horde players come out in force and you’re going to be harder pressed to win one of those matches, otherwise it’s like a duck shot. You just sit around and wait for the honor to come in.

Between Friday and Saturday I was able to grind 15k honor, enough to get my Gladiator Pants and spent a little gold to get an additional 20 stamina put onto them. My resiliency jumped up to about 131. While many say that this mechanic has destroyed the way that the game is played, I’ve enjoyed the benefit as it seems that it’s taking a little bit longer for the opposing players to bring me down to my knees. Looking at the stats for most of my fights, I was only killed about one or two times per battle as opposed to the seven or eight times I would bite the dust when I first started doing PVP hardcore.

This morning when I logged on to check where I stood, I had about 7k honor sitting around, I have tonight left to try and earn the other 7k I need in order to get my helm. That would bring the resiliency some more and I have two jewel slots that I can put some more stats into.

While its pvp gear, I still find that it’s useful when it comes to doing some raids.

How about it guys, how have you fared with the PVP this weekend? Do you also take this time to try and grind as much as possible to try and get some nice upgrades?

AV Goodness!

I promised you some PVP pwnage goodness tonight, here it is. In one I placed first in damage and tonight I placed third in a quick AV. I'm really beginning to love PVP! lol

Talk to you more tomorrow

Moonkin Battleground Diaries and Macros!

I’m almost positive that I’ve mentioned before my disdain for PVP. Now that doesn’t mean I turn my nose up at people that play PVP. I honestly think it takes a certain mentality to play PVP non stop and I respect the players that can do it day in and day out for hours on end. I inspect a lot of the players that I run with and admire and notice that many of them have gone out and spent time in the battlegrounds because its PVP related gear.

I’ve tried to PVP. Honestly I have. I tried with Luciel, that didn’t go too well. I tried to McGregor but since he’s protection specced it’s not the best way to PVP. I know that there’s certain ways to spec for PVP but am I willing to spend 10, 15 or even 50g to respec every time I want to do something? Um, that would be a no.

So Bosque is close to 60, 56 at the moment and certainly 60 within a matter of days. I decided that I wanted to get him a PVP mount. Why? Well, I have a cat mount and I’d like something different for him to set him apart from the pack, so I want to get him a Ram. It’s 30 battle tokens from each battleground that’s available to me at the moment, with no honor points being spent. Have I mentioned that there’s a nice staff that I want to get him once he hits 70? Not to mention some nice idols that would be perfect for him?

So the last three nights I’ve gone into the battlegrounds. I’ve gone in with some hesitation because honestly, I feel like I suck at PVP. Even dueling friends I get schooled constantly. So going into PVP, you either have it, or you don’t. I love to play PVE because once you memorize the way that the script is written, well then you’ve got it beat. With another player controlling a toon it’s different because you don’t know when they’re going to pop a pot or when they’re going to stun you, backstab, backstab, pounce, evade, pot and then backstab again. There’s no rhyme or reason to his game play that you can see and then not only are you stuck figuring out what your own strategy is going to be but you’re forced to figure his out as well in the short amount of time that you’re going to be confronting that person. (Is it me or am I over thinking this completely?)

With Bosque, I’ve found that I’m a pretty decent at PVP when I’m working with Bosque. The reason being is that I’m a hybrid. While I am specced Balance and I TOTALLY love it, I still have available the other skills of the different trees available to me. I’ve been focusing on two battlefields Arathi Basin and Alterac Valley. Before I had focused on Warsong Glutch but I’ve begun to notice that it’s almost like a solo battleground when you’re doing WSG because everyone is doing, whatever. You have fourteen people on offense and one person on defense, the flag is almost always taken and we, Alliance, have this RETARDED sense of having to turtle when we have the opponent’s flag!

The first Battleground that I did with Bosque, Alterac Valley, we won. I mean we straight just won. Three tokens in my bag right off the bat. I think I ended up in about five battlegrounds for the day and had about 150 kills. Pretty decent for a first day try at least I think.

Yesterday though was the kicker. I work late on Tuesdays, until 8pm and then have to turn around and go back into work at 8am. So my time is short Tuesday evenings. The missus is still recovering from her hospital stay so she was sound asleep. With little time to really do quests, I turned to Battlegrounds again. I ran Alterac Valley three times last night because I want to have the experience of some one on one fighting as well as taking some bases.

I wish I had a screen capture for what I’m about to tell you but you’ll have to take my word for it. We won two I believe, but on the second one, the one that lasted the longest, when the totals came up I placed tenth on damage. Tenth out of thirty. Remember that I’m still a 56 and there were more 59s than anything else on the board and I out damaged twenty of those players.

Can you say shock? Can you say awesome?

With the love of PVP in my heart at the moment, I decided to throw the druids that are Balance and mosey on in here a bone with a quick script.

/castsequence reset=5 Entangling Roots, Moonfire, Wrath

This is a PERFECT battleground macro. It puts the three bread and butter casts that you’re going to use at the touch of one click. At least, if you’re a caster. After this you can just Wrath, Wrath, and Wrath away. It’s the one that uses the least mana and the quickest cast you’re going to find in your repertoire

For Feral, it could go either way.

/castsequence reset=5 Prowl, Pounce, Shred, Claw, Rake, Claw Rake, Rip

If you don’t have pounce yet you can just omit it and just use shred as a starter. If you don’t want to deal with prowl or being behind someone just use Claw, Rake, Claw, Rake, rip.

For the Bears.

/castsequence reset=5 Charge, Faerie Fire, Maul, Swipe, Demoralizing Roar, Bash, Swipe, Maul

Again, if one of the first two aren’t available to you yet, you can change those out or even add on as you get higher in level, likewise with Cat form. The joy of these kind of macros is that the spells cast are incredibly interchangeable and allow you the flexibility to switch them on the fly. So, say you try this combo but you don’t have Ravage and you want it, simple, if you get dusted, which you will with a battleground, as you’re waiting for the spirit healer to bring you back quickly open your macros window and write it in.

Let me know Druids if these work for you. Like I said, I know basic macros and I know there are other macros to switch forms on the fly but damned if I know what they are.

Think I might have to change my logo to, what do you guys think? I want some responses or emails or something, geez!