80, the new 70. New instances.

Mintaka hit 80 around 8:00pm server on Monday night. He celebrated by letting off some of the fireworks in the nice package Rhonin sends you, very cool Blizz.

I’ve been finishing up some quests I have still not done as I’m enjoying them. I’ve been leaving Ice Crown for the last, still not gone there. I had intended to last night after leveling my Engineering but about 15mins after logging on I was invited to run Lightning Hall, cool, not done that. Cleared that with only one very strange wipe (3 pets, Mittens, a ghoul and a voidwalker all went after the same mob in an attached room at the same time, very odd bug). Then we decided to try Caverns of Time: Stratholme. The experience was decidedly meh. It was very easy but also cool from a lore perspective. Mind you, helping Arthas on his road to Lcihkinginess was somewhat troubling. Then we decided on The Occulus, part of the Nexus. Very cool instance with some interesting mechanics I’ll not spoil for you. Another clear but we wiped 4 or 5 times on the end boss until eliciting the aid of Wowwiki for some tips.

I had a very good night gear wise, new bracers, shoulders, hands, head and neck. All replacing previous epics. Mintaka now has only 4 epics to his name (back, chest, weapon and trinket). I even replaced my T6 gloves, a sad day but also a very good one.

Being one of few 80’s in my guild now allows me to establish a good roll within the team and also gives me an opportunity to get loot early so my decision to race to 80 seems good right now. I just need to level engineering at some point, lol. I am really looking forward to new heroics and raids though.

I also need to buy a tabard for Knights of the Ebon Blade as I need their rep. for a shoulder enchant. I’d have gotten some in the level 80 dungeons we ran last night had I been wearing it.

The new instances and game mechanics have really freshened up the game for me, I think Blizz has done an amazing job on this expansion, well worth the wait.

Northrend rocks!

Mintaka is 4 bars away from 75 after an exciting four days of leveling. I love the new areas, I love the quest progressions, I love the new types of quests and Dalaran is amazing.

I’ve replaced an epic trinket with a green and my Kara shoulders with a blue but that’s about it so far. Watching my crit chance drop to 17% has been the most frustrating, I’m looking forward to some new gear in the late 70’s and 80.

Blizzard has outdone themselves.

Now, if you’ll excuse me, there’s shit to kill.

Well that sucked

Well that one last chance to run ZA and get the shoulders I crave fell through as the 16yo server technicians Blizzard employs managed to FUBAR the servers once again, the day before a major launch. How can a company who runs a huge MMO and is so creative with that side of things allow a bunch of wankers to run the servers I’ll never understand. Yes, I know they’re complex, this is why you hire the best of the best to run them. Maybe they don’t have enough funds to hire…. yeah whatever, lol.

My only other “must do” before the expansion is complete, I’m at 375 cooking on Mintaka. I can make my own stat food as I level so that’s good.

I picked up a Belkin hand controller and finally got it all set up yesterday so the day was not a complete loss. I even wrote some macros to assist in the monotony of leveling. Just need to test them out and assign them to keys if they ever have a server for me…. Gorgonnash never did come up before I went to bed at midnight last night and I see they’re down again now. bastards!

I’ll be picking up the game tonight at midnight and playing to the wee hours as I have Thurs. and Fri. off. I’m hoping for level 73 by Monday but we’ll see how much wife aggro I generate, I think my guilt trinket’s cooldown is up and I’ve given much warning and spent time with her yesterday so all should be good. She’s really the most understanding wife you’ll ever meet so I’m not too worried.

Have fun with the expansion people. For the horde!

Disk Crash, ftl!

Yesterday my hard drive started making some odd noises and packed it in. It’s a 150Gb 10k rpm drive and it’s only 6months old but apparently this is normal as they run so hot. I replaced it and thanked all I hold dear that I keep all my data on secondary drives. Didn’t take long to get it back up and running and I was even able to get WoW running without reinstalling so that was cool.

The silver lining to this is huge, it could of happened Thursday morning…

Friday night we ran ZA with some guildies coming back to the fold. Nice to have a female voice or two in vent for a change too, no more masturbation and “…your mum…” comments, well less of them anyway.

I’ve decided to level cooking on Mintaka as well as he’ll probably be on his own in the high levels for a while, I went from 7-344 over the course of the weekend and only bought a few mats. With the achievements being listed in guild chat as you get them I got many comments about making people sandwiches, an added bonus to achievements.

Saturday I ran Kara twice on 2 different toons. Lots of cloth caster gear dropped on the run with Mintaka but when I ran my warlock through as the only clothy nothing friggin dropped, typical. I want to give a huge shout out to my wife for putting up with me gaming for 14hours Sat. and even brought me a plate of food. She’s the best, really she is.

Saturday night I got an achievement I’m the most proud of so far, completion of The Battle of Mount Hyjal. Nothing dropped and I was unhappy with my performance but still very cool.The elitist teenage bastards we ran with took great pleasure in the failure of the “bads” as they called those of us they pugged, even though our guild had 7 people in the raid so without us nobody would get loot.

Although I didn’t get any drops on the weekend I did get exalted with the violet eye so I’ve got the top ring of theirs and I got enough rep with the Scale of the Sands that I can now buy Mysterious Arrows. Expensive (1G80S) but worth it I think, they provide 53 extra dps. In our ZA run I was averaging 1750 dps on one boss, badass!

So, with 3ish days to go I’m hoping for 2 more ZA runs, maybe a Gruuls run and probaly one or two kara runs. Hopefully the servers are back up soon tomorrow as I’m off work.

I have T6 gloves, omfg!

Got into a Mount Hyjal PUG purely by chance last night. I will say this, the more I deal with raiding guilds the more I wonder how children these days make it past the teenage years without being smothered in their sleep. Five of us from my guild spotted in to help these jerks and were referred to as “the bads” the entire time, made fun of and were generally tolerated at best. Oh well, it was funny how seriously they took themselves, really funny.

The cool hunter shoulders dropped, the ones with the blinking eyes. I rolled a 3. The rolling Gods hate me…

Or so I thought. Two sets of hunter T6 gloves dropped and I rolled a 94 to take second spot, I love them. I really want new shoulders, probably the ZA ones, before Wrath but I’m OK with what I have now at least. I may get to run one more Gruuls and maybe one more BT or something beforehand but if I don’t get any drops before then I’ll be OK in Wrath.

We didn’t finish Hyjal, have the last boss to go. I’m not sure if I’ll go or not, the group we went with are wankers but I’ll see what the rest of the guild is doing Sat. night when it’s scheduled. Who knows, maybe a BT will come up?

So I’ve got to see the last 2 big instances in the game, places most people will never see, and I’m very apprectiative about it for sure. Bring on Wrath! 80 before Xmas is my goal.

The trolls, they be mockin’ me mon

The guild needed a body for a ZA last night but my hunter was saved so I dragged my squishy ‘lock into trollville and proceeded to die at an alarming rate and missed Mintaka greatly. The first smack upside of the heed came when the bear boss dropped the hunter shoulders I’ve been drooling over for weeks. These babies are better than T5 and look friggin’ awesome. I sobbed, I cried, I stomped my feet and threw my mouse….

Well no, but I was mightily vexed. Yes, you read that correctly, there was vexing.

Then a lovely cloth head piece dropped, a real upgrade to my blue one. A leather wearer rolled need on it also and won. Now I was vexed and perturbed.

I chatted with the roller and GM after and while I think it was a mistake for them to go to a leather wearer I understand no harm was intended.

But also know that I will be watching how things go in the next few months as I’m serious about raiding in Wrath and don’t want this to colour my experiences.

One week to go, one week of PUGing the cool instances and then it’s back to the grind of 5-mans and leveling. I’m looking forward to it and dreading it at the same time.

More raiding, no loots, hellza fun

So a quick Gruuls before supper even last night, my T4 shoulders didn’t even drop and that’s fine as the roll spirits are not looking at me with any favour of late anyway, I’d rather something not drop than have it drop and roll an 11, again. Unfortunately 11 is not one louder.

After a quick bite and a peck on the cheek to my very understanding and wonderful wife I went on a guild run of ZA. one and a half hours later and 6 bosses one-shotted and I’ve got a few more badges but no more loot. Which is fine as it’s just fun to raid right now. We even dragged two people through who’d never seen it before. Oh, I did get the trinket that summons the 3 witch doctor guys but that’s really just a novelty.

Tonight, who knows, perhaps a Mags, Kara… hell I’d even stay up all night and do a BT if I could, lol. This all ends in less than 8 days and the painful grind to 80 begins, I’m enjoying it as much as I can.

So I did get some new gloves from badges last night after the run, the Gauntlets of Rapidity, threw a nice +5 crit, +10 AP gem in them, added a +15 hit enchant so I’m back over 140 without food and I’m a killing machine!

Black Temple? Yeah, I’ve been there

The raiding extravaganza continues as I get more and more chances to see content many don’t. On Saturday night a guildie asked if I’d like to see BT, er, duh, yeah! So I got summoned in and did Teron Gorefiend, Bloodboil, Reliquary and Mother before we called it a night. Saw council and wiped on them once just to see the fight.

All really interesting fights and I feel I handled myself quite well. In the Gorefiend fight I was 5th on the damage meters and for Reliquary I was 4th. Nobody posted meters for the other fights.

Sunday a ZA run and I got the Tuskbreaker gun, probably the third or fourth best gun in the game. I got to try it out on Mags last night and topped DPS so I’d say it works.

The only downside to the weekend were my loot rolls. Saturday morning I ran Gruuls and 2 sets of T4 shoulders dropped for hunters, 4 rolling, top 2 get them. I rolled an 11. That night Mother Shahraz dropped 2 sets of T6 shoulders, 5 of us rolled and I again rolled an 11. I like my Kara shoulders, I really do, sob.

All this raiding has convinced me that I am in fact a raider and that’s what I’m looking forward to in Wrath once I hit 80. I just hope my current guild can sustain a progression raiding schedule as I don’t want to leave them. In fact I’d like to become a raid leader sometime, we’ll see. I’m not sure hunters ever really do that though.

This week, I’m hoping more Kara, Gruuls, Mags, ZA and maybe another BT run on Saturday, who knows. I’d still like to see SSC and TK, and maybe even Hyjal, but I’ll take whatever comes my way.

Full Kara clear, 2-1/2 hrs

So on what was, I thought, a leisurely run last night we cleared Kara in 2-1/2 hours. 24 badges and I picked up the Arcanite Ripper just for kicks, hey I can equip it, it’s not as good as the axe I have in stats, but the ability to rock out is epic in itself.

12 headless Horseman runs, (using a multitude of alts) after that and still no mount. Our GM has one though so the entire guild is suffering envy.

I now have three pieces of the scourge killing gear also. Just need the second drop piece so maybe I’ll do some of that tonight. Something relaxing from all the raiding lately.

Less that 2 weeks before the expansion now and I must say I’m really looking forward to it. Not the leveling to 80 but the raiding after we hit 80. I’m really enjoying the more social aspect of the game at this point and leveling is definitely not social for the most part. When my friend is around and we level our shammies together it will be but some times those late night leveling sessions get a tad lonely, lol.

I also need to throw a bunch of stuff from my bank bags into the AH. Prices are falling rapidly on things and all those blue gems I’ve been hording will be worthless soon.

Third straight day of raiding

After clearing Kara Sunday and Grull and Mags yesterday I was pleasantly surprised to be on a guild run for ZA last night. This was a little different than most of my runs though.

I didn’t suck.

In every raid my guild has dragged my under-geared ass around I’ve felt like a fraud who doesn’t really belong there. My welfare epics I got from battlegrounds made me feel like an interloper. I ran Kara several times and got a lot better gear and replace all but one of my S2 epics but it still felt like I was the red-headed stepchild of guild runs.

Last night we threw together a ZA run and had some of our more experienced players on their mains in the group. We progressed at a good clip but I was always 3rd or 4th on the damage list. Now one thing I’ve gotten into the nasty habit of doing is using Aspect of the Viper exclusively as I figure I’m useless if I run out of mana. Sure it drops my damage a little but I can use my shot rotations better.

Well we wiped on the first Hex Lord Malacrass fight as he owned our tank and silenced our heals and when we got back I inadvertently flipped Aspect of the Hawk on. The second fight went well and when our tank threw up the damage meters for the fight I was #1. He did include a comment about me not using Viper all the time, yeah thanks man, I get it, lol. So if I learn to dance between aspects I can be a much better hunter.

So, 3 straight nights of raiding, no new loot but I’m enjoying it so much.

Which means I’ll probably race my main to 80 and get into raiding at an early point in Wrath.

Now, I just need to break the news to my wonderful wife

Goals before Wrath have changed a little. Still finish leather-worker to 375 on my shammie (he’s 299 so that won’t take long), maybe level some enchanting on my ‘lock, not sure if I’ll continue with jewel-crafting on my warrior, that was so boring and cost so much gold…

My main goals are to see as much new content as I can and maybe get a little gear. This weekend I’m going to adjust my bars so that I can be more efficient, this is a big step for me as right now I mouse click all over the place for my rotations and cool-downs.