On the fifth day...

He hit 60.

I really do have a problem. I really like the way this is going, I'm leveling quickly and smoothly and having quite a bit of fun.

I'm not sure why I'm doing this though. I mean, the rogue- while a fun class- isn't a very interesting class to play while soloing. Most of my work involves spamming Sinister Strike and then hitting Eviscerate. If I see too many mobs, I either Shadowmeld or Vanish. Or, if I think I can take em, I hit Blade Flurry, Adrenaline Rush and Lifeblood before going back to my normal rotation.

I don't get awesome procs, like Hot Streak, I don't get a pet, I don't get ridiculous crits, I can't even aoe for my life.

But I really am enjoying leveling this toon. Perhaps it is the breakneck pace that I'm leveling him at. Perhaps it is the change of pace from doing a ridiculous number of instances on my other toons. I mean, my main is a tank, and the vast majority of what she does is instances, then my warlock is just to help out other people who need a dps for their instance, my DK was leveled as a tank in the RDF and continues to tank instances, without much questing involved.

My druid is currently being leveled as a feral tank and so he is tanking instances. Perhaps its the fact that I'm not tanking, or that I'm not in instances anymore. Perhaps its the fact that it is something new.


By that reasoning, I should love my new job. I've never had a 9-5 before. I've never had an office job before. I've never been an intern before. I've never worked in the publishing industry before. Thus, if I like new, this is going to be fantastic. Now. Sleep. Because you get to wake up early for 9-5s.

The Clown Effect

Back when TBC came out, many people had either the standard, dull looking armor from 5-mans and others had the uniform, excellent looking armor from the raids.

Then they went to Outlands. There, they picked up greens and blues that were vastly superior to what they had and put them on.

They turned into clowns.

I don't have any Outlands toons at the moment, but look at Erthu:

His gear doesn't really go together. Admittedly, he is still in old world, but his gear is not set gear.

Compare what he has, to Alenena:

Her gear goes together, its not all of one set, but in Wrath, gear began to look less clownish, and return to the earlier armor styles in WoW- simple, semi-realistic looking. The earliest armors were unadorned, plain sheets of metal. Now, while the armor has advanced, players are no longer expected to wear a mish-mash of red, green and purple as they were in TBC. Anyways- the clown effect.

Blood Prince Ranged-Tanks

After running the Blood Princes and having our Keleseth tank we a specialized tank spec/gear, I came up with some specs of my own:

Warlock
http://www.wowhead.com/talent#IcxMbhbhoZ0GchohZVfhVbhuhcb:jdw
In the affliction tree, I wanted to get to Siphon Life and thus put points to improve corruption where I could. I put points into Suppression to decrease the frequency with which the warlock would need to life tap and to increase hit chance so that they can garner more threat. Soul Siphon and Fel Concentration make it so that the lock can cast Drain Life, to make the healers' lives easier. Grim reach allows the lock to hit Kinetic Bombs (disco balls) and the Dark Nuclei from a greater distance. Also, if he gets knocked back, he can get back into action faster. I chose to glyph Siphon Life because it will increase the self healing by a good portion.

In Demononlogy, I didn't put points into the improved healthstone (nor did I use the Glyph) because I feel that it is not as useful as some of the other available talents. Demonic Embrace is an obvious choice and Fel Synergy will help keep your pet up via Soul Link. The pet of choice for this spec would be the Voidwalker and Demonic Brutality helps him immensely. You'll be using him mostly to soak damage via Soul Link and Sacrifice. Fel Vitality gives the Voidwalker a lot more health and increases the mana and health of the warlock- more survivability and less Life Tap. Demoic Aegis helps with Demon Armor. Demon Armor increases armor as well as healing received, a 30% boost is fairly significant. Finally, Soul Link will reduce all incoming damage by 20% and with the glyph, by 25%. This essentially makes your Voidwalker an extra Dark Nucleus.

For Destruction I put points in Bane for faster cast times, meaning that if the warlock needs to hit something quickly- ie: Disco Ball, Nucleus or a runaway boss, he can. Molten Skin increases survivability and Cataclysm is a going to be a great expansion. It also means that the warlock Life Taps less and so he is less likely to get insta-gibbed by an incoming shadow lance. Aftermath helps a little with maintaining threat via Immolate as well as keeping the disco balls up. I put a few points into Ruin, because a big crit with Searing Pain will garner a lot of threat, and that threat will be useful. Intensity again allows the Warlock to cast through being hit by a lance and so can hit what he needs to hit sooner. Searing Pain is probably the best way for the warlock to grab and hold onto things as it has a decent increase in threat. Devestation will also help with Searing Pain and with the Warlocks DPS. Improved Immolate is a point-dump, but it does help with damage and disco balls. Nether Protection can also act as an emergency Dark Nucleus- after getting hit by a shadow lance, it is possible that the warlock will take significantly less damage from the next (of the same class). Keleseth's cast time is about 1.5 seconds, so in an 8 second period he can get off five or six Shadow Lances, more likely than not, one of those will trigger Nether Protection, so it would constantly be up- which is another great damage soak. Soul Leech helps with healing via crits and I chose pyroclasm over emberstorm because it also effect corruption.

Priest
http://www.wowhead.com/talent#bVcbuhh0oZfVtZGbcVRfzff:hbfVMc
I need to preface this by saying that my only priest got to level 21 before I stopped, so you priests probably know a huge amount more than I do. Like the Warlock spec, this is just a huge mish-mash of useful talents all thrown in together.

In the Discipline tree, I focused on improving Power Word: Shield, as that should be a useful buffer to have as it essentially adds to your current effective health. If there is a Disc priest in the raid, I don't think that it will be necessary to go that far into the tree, but it could be helpful. Imp Inner Fire is a point dump to get to Imp PW:S. The other points in that tree may not be entirely necessary if the caster does not have any mana problems or there is another Disc Priest in the group. The glyph for the shield just makes you last that little bit longer.

For Holy, I focused on getting some talents to help improve direct damage spells and healing. You can stick renew on yourself and any of your spells that have cast times- Holy Fire, Smite etc... won't be as slowed down, so you can hit the Nuclei more efficiently. Desperate Prayer should be very useful as a 'tanking' button to push when you get almost killed. I'm not sure how good the glpyh of renew is but it can be traded out for Glyph of SW:P.

For Shadow, I focus on more mana regen and getting those DoTs to work. Sticking SW:P onto the Nuclei should bring them to you. Spirit Tap increases mana regen and Darkness helps with threat. Shadow Focus drops mana costs andmakes you more likely to hit- which in turn means more mana. Imp MB lets you cast it more often, which we always like. Mind Flay will probably be the main workhorse of the spec, grabbing Nuclei and the bosses and potentially hitting Disco balls as well. For the rest of the shadow tree we continue to improve Mind Blast and Mind Flay while picking up Vampiric Embrace and Devouring plague for the healing abiltities. We stop before picking up Shadowform, because of the immense threat reduction that would make it very difficult to hold off other players.

As a final note on priests, it may be possible just to get a PvP Shadow spec to do the work and hit dispersion when he begins to cast his empowered lances to avoid that damage.

Mage
http://www.wowarmory.com/talent-calc.xml?cid=8&tal=03202520012003212300000000000000000000000000000000000000000533030310203103230132211100
This is Kyabetsu's build exported straight from his armory page. I definitely don't know mages as well as he does, so I'm going to throw together my own and compare the two

http://www.wowhead.com/talent#ocbfbubhdfZZVIccobksfzTbk:Rj
Here's what I came up with. 

The Important talents in Arcane are Prismatic Cloak for the damage reduction, Presence of Mind, in case you need to toss out a huge spell to grab aggro back, Improved Blink to dodge more spells and Arcane Shielding to increase the effectiveness of Mana Shield. Arcane Focus allows more hits and consequently more threat.

Fire doesn't really have any damage reduction talents, so its not necessary to go into that tree.

Frostbolt is the main nuke of this, so most of the points are in frost. Precision fills the same roll as Arcane Focus. Arctic Reach is our usual range increment, useful for reasons already mentioned. Frozen core reduces your damage taken further and Cold Snap can refresh the cooldowns on both Ice Block and Ice Barrier. Finish up by improving your frost spells some more, and poof. A spec.

Hunter
http://www.wowhead.com/talent#cVcGzxRZcZe00i0fMhxhA0so
Again, this is a class that I'm not very familiar with, so I had to look at all of the talents and figure out how to best alot them.

In Beast Mastery the Important talents are Endurance Training (for the HP), Imp Monkey (for the dodge), Aspect Mastery (5% damage Reduction), and Spirit Bond which increases heals to you(and has a steady HoT on you).

The Marksmanship talents are just for the hit- if you're capped without em, put em into Surv, where most of the points are. 

For Survival the Important talents are Hawk Eye, for the extra range to snag the Nuclei and K-bombs, Survival Instincts for the Damage Reduction, and Survivalist for the 10% Stam.

You could take all the points in Surv out of there and stick them into BM if you think that filling up that tree would be more effective than what I did. Again, since I don't know Hunters all that well, I don't know what would be best at holding aggro.

While doing this, the hunter pet can either be attacking the main target, or, using a simple macro, can be chasing after the falling K-Bombs:
/tar Kinetic Bomb
/petattack

Shaman
http://www.wowhead.com/talent#hec0qcdIthfzqo0xxbcV:s
Finally, another class that I don't know. I'm going to look to amph to point out any obvious deficiencies.

I put points into Enhancement to get Anticipation and Toughness, for the survivability.

The (imo) vital talents in elemental are Elemental Warding for the damage reduction, Eye of the storm for fewest interuptions, Elemental Reach and precision for the normal reasons. And after that I just tossed in points to fill out the tree.
It may be a good idea to specialize in making the shocks really good so that you can just snap one out on a Nucleus (or a K-bomb) if you absolutely need to hit it immediately.

Druid
I ruled out Druids because of class mechanics. The useful talents in the Feral Tree would not affect the druid when it was in a caster for (either normal or boomkin). However, it could (in theory) be done. I just don't know how.

First Toon

This is Arugal. He is a level four Nelf Warrior on Nazgrel. He was my second toon I ever made. I haven't logged on him in at least a year. One of my friends (whose name I no longer know) had convinced me to get WoW and roll a toon on his server- Nazgrel-A. So I did. I even gathered up the ridiculously expensive price (30c) to mail to his main, Palanar. Never heard from him again.

And this here is Crugar- Eitrigg-A. He was my first toon I ever made. My friend (mentioned above) told me to make my character on the Server Nazgrel. But at the time I was a noob and the game told me to pick a realm. I thought that that was different from a server. Yeah, I was a noob. So I made a Nelf Druid. As of now he is level 26 and I hadn't logged on on him since patch 3.1.

I had some friends on Eitrigg that I made through playing, but at the end of August, they all disappeared. One had been on a trial and two went on vacation. I tried solo play-totally disconnected from the world and it felt weird. So I rolled some more toons- Alliance and Horde on Eitrigg- but never got into them (I think the next highest was a level 7 Orc Hunter).

Anyways, I then managed to find Ursin, home of the Sluggy Freelance guild, and rolled a toon there:

And the rest is over 41 days /played on this toon. 27 /played at level eighty. 79 /played over all toons. Gawd.

Death by Druid

Part deeux!

Balance: Well, your primarily get blasted about by arcane and natural energies- nothing too fancy, but there are a couple nasty bits in their collection. First off, they're Owlkin. They look so cuddly they don't even need a stealth mode. You think they're friendly until they shoot you with hundreds of bees in the face. Yeah, you get swarmed by insects, in a thunderstorm, while some trees claw at you. All the while your child-hood teddy bear is blasting you to death.

Feral: Not much to say here. First you get ripped to shreds. Then you get clawed, mangled, lacerated, bashed, swiped, mauled and more. Then you get charged, magled, torn and shredded. Again. And again. Until you bleed out.

Resto: If you die by resto. Well... it would be like a tree beating you up with its branches until you died. It would be pathetic. Thats what. Yeah. Nub. A tree killed you. And not by falling on you. By beating you to death with its fists. NOOB.

Anger Rising

We've had tuskar here before, but never one so ferocious and angry. Never have we had one casting hurricane!

WoW in Real Life: Compilation

I've finally finished all the WoW in Real Life pieces- at least the first round. When the next expac comes around, I may have had enough experience to fill out this list better- but who knows. Anyways, they are as follows, in alphabetic (and chronological) order.

WoW in Real Life: Death Knights

WoW in Real Life: Druids

WoW in Real Life: Hunters

WoW in Real Life: Mages

WoW in Real Life: Paladins

WoW in Real Life: Priests

WoW in Real Life: Rogues

WoW in Real Life: Shamans

WoW in Real Life: Warlocks

WoW in Real Life: Warriors

WoW in Real Life: Druids

So a couple days back I went ahead and posted what DK abilities I would want in real life.

Since we are being formal and alphabetical Druids are next on the list, as you may have guessed from your knowledge of the alphabet and the title of the post.

As a disclaimer. I have nothing against healers of any type. However, I am not likely to ever list any healing spells in this series, because frankly, I find them ho hum. They don't do amazingly cool things, they just heal. They're magic band-aids.

While magic in and of itself is cool, if I could only have one ability, I would want it to be something outrageous. For a similar reason, I will not be listing spells like fireball.

Right, so without further ado (I use that term too often):

First: Swift Flight Form. You can't argue with that too much. You turn into a bird, instantly. AND you can fly really fast. If you can IRL runa 6 minute mile at 100% run speed, with epic flying you're a almost four times faster. This means that you can have a 1.57 minute mile 1:34:02 minutes per mile which turns out to be 38 miles per hour. If you get a better mount and have a paladin friend who gives you crusader Aura, you can bump that to 43 MPH.

Second: The rest of the forms. I did leave out travel form because that is much the same as cat form, except without the claws. Now, under the rules of the game you could only have one of them, but any one of them would be a lot of fun.

Finally: Hurricane. It is a fun spell. It causes a hurricane on target. Now, I would modify the spell slightly to make it more practical. First off, it would cover a larger area and secondly it wouldn't hit whoever you didn't specifically want it to hit. Having a drought? Call up a hurricane. Having relatives over? Delay them with a hurricane.

Again, if you have ideas for druid spells or abilities, post below.

If you have ideas for other classes, email me.

Dancin' Bears

Not only can I dance, but I can hover as well. Yeah. Dancing in mid air. As a bear. Beat that.

Cat!

A cat. I like cats. CAT CAT CAT.

The Beauty of the Sea

I'd like to think that this is one of my better FP screenshots. In my early days of WoW when I didn't have Peggle, Bejeweld, AtlasLoot, Altoholic or Talented, I spent my flights taking pictures. This was a wonderful return to those idyllic, addon-free days.

The Bunsen Burner Problem: Why Paladins are so good

At yesterday's deathfest my given character was a Bunsen Burner. He had the ability to cast flames. He could also hit 3 targets he had already hit with flames with more flames. Or he could make one target easier to hit and take more damage from flames. Or he could cause a gas leak and do more damage with his flames.

He had no other abilities. This would become a problem when he needed to distract an enemy or to heal himself. Because he couldn't. All he could do was blow everything up.

This actually does make sense in the context of the subtitle- trust me.

See, what makes paladins very powerful is their versatility. In a pinch, with all the other healers down and the boss at 1% a ret or prot paladin can just drop whatever they are doing and start throwing heals on those who need it.

They can also manage other players threat, damage intake, and diseases, magic and poisons through the use of their 'hand' spells and cleanse. Their various seals and judgements allow them even more versatility when raiding or PvPing. They can change their playstyle abruptly with a few quick changes in their choice of seals, aura and judgement.

Very few other classes have such diverse functionality. Druids can also jump into the healer's spot or in some cases the tanks and shamans can do healing as well.

However, the pure classes have a very difficult time when it comes to doing anything other than hitting the boss. Warlocks, for example can't really help the party at all except for using fear- which often doesn't work and often is not actually helpful.

Levitate

Levitate has got to be my favorite spell in the game (except for maybe DI or bubble). And bears look so awesome just floating in the air.

I are tank.

My first toon ever was a tank. He was a feral druid and right now he's sitting in the Menethil Harbor Inn, as he has been for pretty much a year and a half now.

I remember running around as a bear shouting I'm a Tonka Tank!

It amused me so much.

Anyways, I'd like to note that my first 80 was a Paladin, who at the time was ret but has since gone to prot and fell in love with it.

At the moment I'm in the process of leveling four more tanks.

Malkhelm[Ursin]: 74 Blood DK tank.

Nescio[Eredar]: 70 Frost DK tank.

Erthu[Ursin]: 45 Feral Druid tank.

Death*[Eredar]: 20 Feral Druid tank.

All of them have very good ability with AoE tanking. On the druid, I spam swipe. On the DK's I throw out a DnD, the diseases, pestilence and then either normal rotation for Malkhelm or Howling Blast + Blood Boil for Nescio.

It is a wonderful world to be a tank- you're nigh unkillable and you are the one who is in charge of the instance. The only thing that holds you back is the mana pool of your healer.

Tanks, good tanks especially, are a valuable commodity. It never takes me more than a couple of minutes to find a dungeon pug to run with as a tank. I'd like to think as well, that I am a good tank and I have been complimented on my ability a few times.

Anyways, I'd like to share a few important things from the tanks perspective.

1. You yank it, you tank it. Don't pull stuff when the tank isn't ready.
2. If the Healer dies, its the Tank's fault. If the Tank dies, its the Healer's fault. If the DPS dies, its their own damn fault.
3. Only healers and paladin tanks can call a water break. Everyone should just sit down and and watch them go on.
4. Don't AoE until the tank has done AoE. Because then you have threat.
5. Don't use a 'tanking' form. For example, don't turn on Defensive Stance, Righteous Fury, Bear Form or Frost presence. This skyrockets your threat and doesn't do anything at all for your dps. So don't.

*His name is spelled with fancy characters.

Bear eet fud!

One of the amusing things about WoW is that all moving bears have their mouths open. WIDE.

Druids: Check.

Random Bears: Check.

Mounts: Check.

NPC's Bears: Check.

Nomnomnom!

Wiping

I wiped on ToC 10 tonight. Five times we died on the Northern Beasts. And it was one of the most fun experiences I have ever had while raiding.

I've been in raids before where we have wiped repeatedly, Naxx, Maly, Sarth and Uld, but I didn't have much fun with those. There we were dying for stupid reasons, someone standing in the fire, someone popping AoD.

When I went into ICC for the first time (10-man, I was tanking) it was absolutely thrilling, but after killing the trash and wiping to Lord Marrowgar three or four times, I, like the rest of the pug, got bored and left.

I think part of it was that ToC is a challenge for us. It requires a skill level and gear level just about where we average out. Another thing is the lack of trash, the quick pace of the fights, and the need to be aware of several events.

The fight we were wiping on, the first one, Northern Beasts, is a three part fight where the two tanks taunt off each other because of a stacking bleed. Not difficult, but requires some attention. In many ways it was similar to Gluth.

The second part also requires two tanks, there are two different mobs. One needs to be kited, because, similar to Grobbulus, he farts out toxic clouds. The other is stationary, but on occasion, the two worms burrow and switch roles, requiring some concentration on the part of the tanks.

The final part was fun, especially because at that point the OT, one of the healers, and four DPS had died, so we had a resto druid, resto shaman, frost mage and myself, prot paladin. We could have gone on forever, until the enrage timer blew after a total of fifteen minutes of fighting.

Another part that kept me interested was a specific piece of loot that I knew these guys dropped and would have been a huge upgrade (232 Raid Epic vs. 200 Heroic Blue). Anyways, after our five wipes (hour and a half) we decided to go try our hand at Onyxia.

Me and the other tank pulled the trash outside her room to quickly and we wiped on those. Then we one shot Onyxia, with only one person still dead at the end (of course, we had three druids with Battle Rezes up, a shaman with reincarnation, a warlock who threw out a soul stone, and myself with Ardent Defender). It was the first time since before 3.2.2 that I had killed Ony, of course, back then I could solo her easily and did so regularly.

Humorous

Personally I find all of the classes in WoW to be humorous in one way or another. Lets go through them one at a time- it'll be a good laugh for me.

Death Knight: Do I really have to say anything? At all? Seriously- it used to be huntards but now- its Stupid DKs. When you're leveling them up, they are ridiculously overpowered. When fighting Tusker at level 67- solo mind you, I started the fight at full health. I ended the fight at over full health. Even on my Retadin I didn't glide through that easily. Each of their talent trees can be formed to be a dps spec, tank spec, or PvP spec. Both Frost and Unholy can be duel-wielding specs, again for each of the above three.

Druid: I could just link you to Alamo's guide to druids... so I will. I've leveled a couple of druids. My first 'real' toon (second toon overall) got to level 26. I have one at 19 and one to 44. I've tried all the trees and have had a great time with all of them. The animations are always good for a laugh, and when leveling with bear druids... well- they like big butts... and cannot see their screen. Additionally- Boomkin. Everyone's favorite turkey. I'd love to point out this video to show how much fun being a oomkin is in PvP.

Hunter: "Don't be that hunter." "Thats hunter loot." "Huntard." All classic tales. Hunters for a long time were considered a very easy class to play- just tame a pet and make it do all the work. Because it was so easy, hunters did not really learn how to play (theoretically). Since it was so easy, all the little kids chose to be hunters. As little kids they did not know proper social etiquette. Combine all of those so you get a player who is easily defeated by a door boss, takes the loot, the accidentally pulls the next boss with his pet before dropping the party.

Mage: "Hai GUYS! I'm gonna blink!... or not." My personal favorite part about mages, when I'm on my paladin tanking around is that they are strudel vending machines. They makes the delicious free foods. Oh- and know they've gotten around to copying warlocks. They now have a permanent pet so they can be just like their betters. It always makes me laugh.

Paladin: I play a paladin. Paladins were fail during classic WoW. They were fail during TBC. They ruined everything that stood in their way in WotLK. As my paladin I was able to solo classic Ony in quest blues and greens. Once in AB in prot spec I was spamming Flash of Light on myself for 7k a hit. I have bubble, I have wings, I have a seven second stun. During some fights that don't require much movement (Instructor Rasuvious for one) I can bang on my keyboard and still be top dps. And I can bubble hearth. Sucker.

Priest: I find priests to be a joke. I've tried leveling one in full heirlooms and found that he was waaay to difficult to level. They really need someone to work with them or else they won't be able to get very far. But the best thing about a priest, they can kill someone who is two hundred feet in the air. Cast a couple dots, levitate and cast your flying mount again.

Rogue: Especially undead ones. They sneak up to you. Stab you dead. Defile your corpse. In a H-Gundrak I did today, one of our random party members asked for a summon ("Summon prz"). We could not do that because we were on different servers. We told him to use the 'teleport to dungeon' button. We told him where it was. He quit the group. We had cleared up to the second boss. At that point we rejoined the queue and another rogue joined the group. We began the encounter as soon as the rogue was in the instance. The rogue not only made it to the fight before we were a quarter of the way through, but managed to hit top dps for the fight and hit top overall damage dealth on the following trash pull, breaking 7k. The difference amused me- either they are like hunters or they are ridiculously good.

Shaman: My shaman, at level 13, in heirloom gear took out a level 18 mage. Even heirloom gear should not give me that much of a boost. I'm running around one shotting most of the mobs I face now that I'm level 17. Their totems are oh so pretty and they can do anything, even tank, although that is fairly difficult for them to do.

Warlock: They are, in my not quite humble opinion, the best class in the game. I mean, they can tank, they can dps, they can heal and they're not even a hybrid class! You don't believe me eh? Well then here's some proof. They were built for demolition, destruction, affliction and demonology. That there is your dpsness. They've been proven to be able to tank (at the time) the HARDEST raid boss in the game (sarth 3D or Illdian). Then they have some healing properties for their tank. Yeah- take that. And then there is Outland. See one of my previous posts.

Warrior: I'm gonna hit you with my big axe! But wait. I no has rage. And tanking Warriors are a conundrum. I get rage by being hit. And to be a better tank I need to get hit less. That way I can get less rage. And therefore I will have less threat. So I will be a worse tank. 'prz' explain this to me. I don't precisely understand this concept.

A no, I did not write this post over time. I turned it in before midnight.