Stood in the Fire

Just wanted to share my experience in getting the achievement of being killed by Deathwing. I had just zoned into Twilight Highlands via the portal from Orgrimmar and was flying over the base to hit the elementals for the jewelcrafting daily when the entire zone changed to the orange-ish color you see in the screenshot above. I could see Deathwing tearing through the forest on his way to The Krazzworks, and when he got there he just hovered and lit that shit as you see above.

I didn’t get the achievement at first as I was chasing him from the moment I saw him, but when I later re-traced the path of destruction I flew through one of the fires still lit on the ground and received it. My health was only cut in half from the fire, so I guess I can say I’m so badass that I lived getting the killed by Deathwing achievement.

Shandris Feathermoon in Orgrimmar

From my thread Thursday on Shandris Feathermoon came an email submission of the occasion happening again, as training her to Orgrimmar is apparently becoming a daily event on Bleeding Hollow. After checking Youtube for her – I guess we’re not the only ones unleashing elf hell on everyone.

Video by AfterLife:

Screens sent by Mandazar:

Garrosh Hellscream vs Shandris Feathermoon

• Title: “Warchief of the Horde”, formerly “Overlord of the Warsong Offensive”, “Leader of the Horde Expedition”, “Son of Hellscream”
• Gender: Male
• Race: Mag’har (Humanoid)
• Class: Warrior
• Health: 898,200 (103 Mp Cataclysm)
• Affiliation: Horde, Mag’har, Warsong Offensive
• Occupation: Warchief of the Horde
• Location: Orgrimmar

vs

• Title: “General of the Sentinel Army”
• Gender: Female
• Race: Night Elf
• Class: Warrior (RPG), Sentinel, Priestess (Novels)
• Health: ???
• Affiliation: Sentinels, Alliance
• Location: Feathermoon Stronghold, Feralas

Place your bets ladies and gentlemen for the greatest faction leader bout since Jaina Proudmoore fought Warchief Thrall nearly two years ago in Orgrimmar.

The result?

“whatwas with the ally elite boss in org today”

…the world may never know.

*EDIT 1-22-11*
Video & Screens

I’m Not Dead

The frequency of my blog updates since the release of the expansion sucks and I know this. On top of what is probably the normal holiday blog slow-down period, my honor grinding that prior was a tank gear grind which was preceded by level grind has left me with little incentive to do anything but play the game. Well, a light is at the end of the tunnel in terms of my honor grind – but I’ll get back to that again later.

For those that visit for one thing or the other, allow me to provide “PVE” and “PVP” titles at the top of the thoughts in order to best make your visit to this post efficient. God help you if you read both.

PVE

One thing I have found that works to generate traffic to the site is to do guide posts. The most viewed posts on my blog after 92k hits are “4.0.1 Death Knight PvP Spec(s)”, “3.3 Unholy PvP Spec (2H)”, “3.2.2 Unholy PvP Build (2h)”, “4.0.1 Frost 2H PvP Results” and then “Level 69 DK Beast”. No where do you find any of my battleground stories, character history or anything of that nature, they are all essentially guides of some point that catch Google and generate an assload of traffic here. Where this leaves me is in a slight identity crisis, as originally I set out for web space to host pictures and stories of my exploits online. Instead I find myself wanting to provide information as I experience it, and I think that is what my now audience of approximately 700 unique visits a day wants to see more of as well.

At any rate, this post is essentially serving as a grab bag of what is going on, what I have planned and – you know I’m sure you’ve figured all this out already.

Anyway back to the guides, I said in a comment a few days ago that I would post a tanking … uhh something and I failed miserably at finishing it. Believe me I have written on it, but what I think is going to happen is that I am going to do it in phases and then link it in the sidebar as well. The first post will be DK Tanking Essentials (or something along that variety), attempting to simplify multiple tanking sites/guides aimed at the beginning DK. As always I’ll provide links to sites I value for information, and always remember that they know better than I do because I really could care less about testing the finer aspects of PvE. I don’t parse or overly test information, I find it and generally let you know if it worked or not.

The remaining posts will likely be a pre-heroic gear list as well as an intelligent way to spend your justice points, followed by a heroic gear list that will serve as a pre-raiding gear list. While I don’t see myself gearing this way for quite some time, you know at some point that I will do it and I am pretty good at using gear lists to plan ahead. I have also considered putting together a strategy guide for heroic raid bosses, but that screams a lot of work and I’m not going to commit to that. I will do the gear and basics posts though.

PVP

In addition, I have a bajillion thoughts on PvP at the moment and I’ve managed to produce absolutely zero of those thoughts on here. Well, I finished my honor grind last night in a sense that now every piece I wear has resilience on it, though I only have the 2 piece Gladiator set (+400 resilience) and boots with the rest being Bloodied Pyrium gear. In addition, about 3 wins tonight in arena and I will have the 3400 Conquest points necessary to obtain my Vicious Gladiator’s Decapitator – so what grind I’ve had to this point is about to pay off tonight in my first epic item in the Cataclysm expansion.

The whole plight to get here has been a bit rough. Horde queue times throughout the first 3 weeks has sucked – I mean, 10 minutes on average for a queue, only to get in and face 10 people in a premade because the Alliance can do so despite the 5-man group limitations. While I can’t fault the Alliance for doing this, I can say that this shit wasn’t a problem before they combined all the servers. As a result, dedicated Alliance PvPer’s (a.k.a. Horde rerolls cause we all know the Alliance would rather skin their own dragon than PvP) geared much quicker than the Horde, making the long bg queues turn into 5-minute murder fests once inside the instance. I can say that I have had a bit more luck as of recent in running them, however I am not sure whether to contribute that to the dedicated Alliance PvPer’s already finishing their honor grinds, God, the RNG or assistance of 4 other Drunk PvP members when queuing.

On top of amazingly easy battleground queues, Bleeding Hollow’s most well-known guild at this moment is the Alliance side’s ‘Tasty Beverage’, which steals the headlines for all the server firsts and whatnot since ‘Tempest’ left shortly into WotLK. While Tasty Beverage accumulates PvE server-firsts and farms content long before most guilds even progress to middle-tiered bosses, they also contain a decent amount of Gladiators that simply prove a little too much for the Horde to overcome when Tol Barad is being fought for. Bring together the coordination of an excellent end-game guild alongside a few guilds claiming emphasis on PvP as well as the current Tol Barad mechanics and you have an island of daily quests that many Horde have yet to experience.

Ya, you were probably wondering when I’d get into Tol Barad. Even though I have wanted to scream about the difficulty of accomplishing this (I know how, just convincing 39 other lemmings is difficult) I have just taken my lumps with the intent that I would become exalted with Hellscream’s Reach at some point. Well, apparently Blizzard is now offering up 1800 honor points for a win, and 180 points for a loss. Well, we’re not stupid, Tol Barad just became an impossible to get into 80-man Honor Point farm-fest. Instead of adjusting mechanics of this historical island (seriously, read the link), they create equality by urging both factions to simply alternate possession in order for all to get max-Gladiator blues in a relatively short amount of time. Well, I now know what all those before me have complained about when they said that “Blizzard is dumbing down the game”.

I mean holy shit. I’ve spent the last 2 weeks suffering ugly defeats, getting 30 honor points from a bad loss after a 15 minute queue only for you to start hand-delivering honor to bots and people who relatively could give a shit less about PvP? Why? This is your answer to fixing the current imbalances of Tol Barad? I sure am glad I spent the last 2 weeks grinding honor I could theoretically get in the next 2 days by simply sitting in Tol Barad on cooldown.

On top of that the Conquest point system sucks too. I mean, you can theoretically fill your Conquest cap per week by winning 5 or 6 matches of anything per week. Where’s the grind in that? If you have been playing as long as I have you have seen continual references made by the developers that they didn’t want the masses to migrate to the path of least resistance, and I applaud that sentiment. However, you make Tol Barad a piece of gear every 5 hours and people are going to be giving less than a shit about heroic dungeons they may or may not finish because of the intelligence factor required over the WotLK versions.

Few more random thoughts:

1. Nice to see Pheraldrood resurrected on the battlefield, amazing how you all hid behind a tree or lived to blow me off ledges during WotLK to now go out of your way to track me down to go 1 on 1. Sure, apply your bleeds and go bear form – I look forward to you again donning your feathers and watching you cluck like a chicken after the nerf bat is swung.
2. Can anyone provide me a reason why Ring of Frost has no way of telling what side cast it? In a 5v5 Blade’s Edge Arena last night we had a mage on our side with 2 opponent mages, with rings placed not only on the main gauntlet but on both side ramps as well. I honestly couldn’t find my ass with both hands; I was just running around hitting frozen people until we dropped a healer. Can we color-code that shit or something?
3. Am I the only one that thinks warlocks should maybe try tanking instances? Talk about hitting a sponge. I used to target warlocks early in group PvP and now I’d almost rather attack a protection pally.
4. Blizzard addressing DK mobility? Thanks, but I’d think rogues have a bit more reason to bitch about this than we do.
5. 31k, 18k, 44k! What? Oh sorry, I just died to a warrior.

I’ll get to Tol Barad later in more detail, but I’m going to try to allow the urge to curse pass me by. At any rate my expansion/holiday hibernation is coming to an end.

My Illustrated Blitz to 85

I have a lot of things that I want to post, but I guess it goes without saying that I hit level 85 last week and am really yet to post anything regarding the trip to do it. While I normally don’t expound upon such things and would much rather be using the time to farm the crap out of honor gear this weekend, here goes my illustrated journey to level 85 – you know, minus all the things I didn’t take a picture of or it sucked way too bad to post.

This screen actually comes before the Cataclysm, but it was one of the first in my folder and I liked it enough to post it. I love the new Horde dark-iron architecture implemented under Garrosh Hellscream, and while observing the mining camp just north of Orgrimmar you get to see both that and the Horde robbing Night Elves of their environment…how can you not love Garrosh?

This was the first dragon head I saw impaled for everyone’s amusement, and again with the architecture. How much cooler is the new Orgrimmar?

This picture is just me thinking I look badass. While I never upgraded any piece to Sanctified minus my breastplate, I still pumped out more DPS than people with much better gear. This is the last image I have of the T10 PvE armor set alongside crafted legs and boots. Oh, and while I’m on the subject and so I can say I said it before at a later date, Orc boots like these are badass – the wrathful ones that look like slippers? Not so much. If I could have come up with any justification for wearing these boots in PvP over the Wrathful ones, I would have in a heartbeat.

You with me so far? Hmm, wonder what could come out of this…

Ya, I was as surprised as you – though I don’t know about her saying I gave that to her…

I found it humorous that I got to be shark bait for a quest. While I thought the whole line was a general pain in the ass while I was doing it (there were also 8.2 million Alliance in the area as well), the way you work to kill this thing with the crazy sailor was pretty awesome.

Even though I was very adamant about Garrosh becoming the new Warchief, I’ll always have love for Thrall. In The Shattering you get to follow him re-discovering his shamanistic roots and come to realize why he had to leave his position in favor of Garrosh, but it was relatively hard imagining him in only a robe after coming to know him wearing the armor and swinging the weapon of Orgrimm Doomhammer. Nice to see him and Aggra doing something worthy of Thrall’s legend out at the Maelstrom, and if I remember correctly you run across them in the Goblin starting area as well. Ehh, I really don’t play alts, and I don’t play anything but Orcs…we’ll see.

Did I say earlier was the last shot of me in PvE gear? Well, this one I think looks better – but how much better are the quality of my screenshots since getting this new video card 2 weeks ago?

From Vashj’ir I headed to Deepholm and apparently had to snag a shot of the ugliest thing I’ve seen in Warcraft, and from listening to guild chat for the last week apparently I should work that faction a little bit. How awesome were the graphics in Deepholm though?

I couldn’t help but feel like a pervert, but didn’t we already cross this bridge? These perverted shots should go a long way to prove the sexual frustration of Blizzard employees while working the long hours to develop this expansion. Ahh, who am I kidding – I laughed.

How badass was fighting this thing Yogg-Saron style in Twilight Highlands?

Speaking of Thrall, was awful nice of him to resurrect me right…

…into Deathwing. Now perhaps I have a beef with Thrall here, but while I was screenshotting the crap out of this whole ordeal being my first time to see the dragon and all, Thrall turned and yelled at me that the world was – I dunno, going to die and that it was my fault. Was I supposed to put foot to ass right there?

And I guess bringing an end to my PvE days would be me being involved in the first ever Drunk PvP guild heroic in Cataclysm. As I mentioned in a comment on my last post, I hope to put together a post on DK tanking by the end of the weekend, so look forward to that and hold my ass accountable if I don’t deliver.

(death to dial-up internet connections on this post, amirite?)

Thrall’s Balls, It’s Been a Week

You have to admit that “Thrall’s Balls!” has to be amongst the greatest ways to express “Holy Shit!” in a video game that you’ve ever heard. Had it not been roughly 5:45 am last Tuesday morning I would have had the presence of mind to snap a screenshot of what was going on, but ya – pay no attention to the dirty blood elf screen I pulled off of Google.

Oh and *EDIT* – I did have my Thrall’s Balls pic:

So a week into the Cataclysm expansion has me weary and sleep-deprived. With one day of vacation left for the year I pulled a 22-hour marathon online that began at 3:40 am Tuesday morning and went to 1:30 am Wednesday. I made well into level 83 the first day and perhaps a bit more realistically grinded out the final 9.2 million experience finally on Thursday night, but I sadly still find reasons to maintain non-sustainable hours.

I decided to tank this expansion for the usual cast that gets mentioned here quite a bit, and the results of that have been pretty favorable. I was initially a tank when I started the game, however since returning I’ve been DPS ever since. Upset without an indispensable role should I want to do PvE content, I decided to tip the scales in my favor and the result has worked like a charm. I am currently sitting as 1 of 2 heroic-capable tanks in my guild, my dungeon queues are instant and the ability to get other guild DPS past the 40-minute waits for dungeons is a decent feeling. I’m sitting at a 335 item level and close to 145k health in five-man dungeons, but I’m sure I’ll post on this some other time cause tonight all that PvE stuff is about to go right to hell.

Tonight Rated Battlegrounds are going live, and despite my lack of desire to PvP much over the past week I am frothing at the mouth for a chance to try out the new battlegrounds. I know, I know – sellout – but switching specs to non-PvP friendly setup has had its effects on me. I don’t PvP as a protection spec (though am sort of thinking maybe…), and rolling on DPS items throughout this first week is basically dick-move. I’ve accumulated a few things in reserve, but essentially my gear is resilience-less and PvE defense – I didn’t have a weapon without a defensive enchant on it…

…until last night.

As I sat and considered the dungeon and reputation grinds I’ve endured throughout the past week, I decided I need to have a head-start entering the battlegrounds. I glanced at the Bloodied Pyrium PvP pieces and with current pricing I would end up spending around 20k to outfit myself. While oddly worth it in my view, I likely made a decision that will benefit me even more in the near future – which was to just spend the 20k leveling my blacksmithing from 450-525.

Bloodbathed Frostbrood Vanquisher

The biggest thing that I wanted from the Wrath of the Lich King expansion was a frost wyrm mount. I mean, maybe Blizzard was going for this look originally (Winged Steed of the Ebon Blade), but they failed miserably with their version of the duck skeleton. After first seeing these wyrms appear following the Furious Gladiator season I had the goal to get one. Unfortunately the only real season we were all of level and item level, Halo, Ciampo and I came to the realization that our arena comp wasn’t going to get the job done. The last possible chance at getting one was going to be Bloodbathed Frostbrood Vanquisher, and I wasn’t about to let that opportunity go.

The excitement of receiving it was right up there with the Death Mammoth, and now with flying mounts enabled everywhere I am going to be scouring the landscape in style. On top of that, I am finally in a position where I can sit back and hope they remove an item from the game so I don’t have to be surrounded by them in hang-out circles.

(I could really care less, but you know…)

At any rate, an appropriate PvE end to an expansion. My PC died killing Ragnaros in vanilla and it kept me out until Halomoo resurrected Vikt in WotLK, so I am yet to finish a boss in a decent timeframe. Until now:

Heads You Die, Tails…You Die

In what is quite possibly the most worthless time investment in the entire Wrath of the Lich King expansion, I was finally awarded my Titanium Seal of Dalaran. Exactly why I continued to progress with this achievement ranks right up with there some of the dumbest things in my life, but it is finally over and I now have a new item to click when I remember I own it.

I guess I could always play off some Two-Face thing and base every decision off the coin, but whatever – I rarely remember its in my inventory to begin with.

I spent essentially two nights doing this (ooooh with the 2’s), the first I got all 3 types of keys down to less than 4 and I finished it the next. Do consistently flip the gold coins back into the water, as doing so gives you double the chance to catch more coins. While doing it I saw two (!) other people finish, one did it from the gold coins being the last step and the other from copper, so it doesn’t appear to always be the gold coins that are the last to finish.

My last coin took over 2 hours (not making it up w/ the 2’s) between my last copper and last gold, and it was the gold coin of Uther the Lightbringer.

Lil’ Game Hunter

One of the ways I have found to make gold throughout Wrath of the Lich King is by flipping the same companion pets I mentioned yesterday. While certainly a more time-consuming and perhaps “luckier” type of item to sell, they nonetheless payoff extremely well if treated with patience. If you manage to sell a companion for 1.7k because someone let it go for 800g – does it matter if it took 3 listings to sell?

Over time when I find decent deals here and there I have kept some of these pets – not that I ever summon it – but just because … you know I really don’t know. At any rate I have been extremely close to the 75 non-combat pets achievement for a long time, so when the rumors of extreme awesomesauce that is Lawn of the Dead and the idea of the 75th pet met each other – off to Hillsbrad I went.

Brazie’s Sunflower Seeds couldn’t have been any more fitting to be the one I got the achievement on. It certainly is amongst the coolest, and it actually took some effort to obtain. There are plenty of discussions involving strategy on Wowhead, but instead – try playing it…it’s a really fun questline and learning how to play provides some great moments along the way.

Green Proto-Drake

So with a week remaining before Cataclysm is released I am attempting to tie up all loose ends, and one thing I have wanted for months has been this drake. Well, any Proto-Drake for that matter – despite there being 9 available I still didn’t have a single one.  I obtained Onyxien the Netherwing Drake on November 8, 2009 and had used him solely since (I tend to get attached to one mount).

Since you just tried to name off the 9 Proto-Drakes, allow me to help:

• Black Proto-Drake
• Blue Proto-Drake
• Green Proto-Drake
• Ironbound Proto-Drake
• Plagued Proto-Drake
• Red Proto-Drake
• Rusted Proto-Drake
• Time-Lost Proto-Drake
• Violet Proto-Drake

Anyway, I’ve been revered with the Oracles since May – so I guess just short of 30 eggs or so to get it. Naturally as I was holding onto an egg with a 7-day timer, they changed the hatch to 3-days – which happened to be the exact amount of time I had left on my egg on the day of the patch. Three days later, the drake you see above came to be.

As a bit of advice, be sure to continue to buy these eggs for the companion pet drops, as when the majority of the population moves to the 80-85 bracket there will be a significant drop off in Cobra Hatchings, Proto-Drake Whelps, Tickbird Hatchlings and White Tickbird Hatchlings. On Bleeding Hollow the Proto-Drake goes for a few hundred gold, Cobra around 50g and somewhere in the 20’s for the Tickbirds. The quantities of these are going to become increasingly scarce as people focus on new content, but as long as non-combat pets remain an achievement you’ll have buyers at every listing.