Many Random Things…

Had a few interesting things go on this week.

LICH KING:
First off, we got the Lich King down to 30%.  We’re making progress every week and we can all taste it so badly it’s not funny.  Right now the second transition phase throws us off balance.  And whoever gets taken into the sword seems to just die.  It can be frustrating wiping for a few hours but it’s also exciting… because we’re working on the end boss of an expansion for the first time!  We have been scheduling a second night when we can manage but it’s dependent on everyone showing [I’m not going to replace someone and cheat them out of a LK kill].

RAID ID CHANGES SUCK
The change to the raid ids seemingly killed our 25 man but several people are showing interest in doing an alt version.  Hubby and I don’t have time [or more likely energy] to wrangle a whole new set of toons together, but we’ll see how it turns out.  Worst case, we may have enough alts to do another temporary ten man on Saturdays.

LOWBIE LEVELING
I have been leveling a lowbie disc priest again.  [Wow is anything not OP at low levels right now?].  It’s been fun and mostly drama-free.  It did become a little frustrating hitting SM- Graveyard because the tank never seems to be willing to leave combat… and that can be rough on the mana regen.  In fact, one group wiped because I simply ran completely out of mana, despite me saying OOM a couple times.  Naturally, it was my fault.

The only other drama I had was in SM-Library – a boe tanking shield dropped.  The tank, naturally, needed on it – as did the druid and lock in the party.  I took a notion/chance and needed on it myself, won it and then traded it to the tank – which wasn’t a popular move with most of the party, but the tank appreciated it and equipped that thing immediately.

HALLOW’S END
At the beginning of Hallow’s End, I had 5 toons that needed either the squashling, the helm or both to complete their violet protodrake.  Thanks to some lucky trick or treating [none was completed via the HH daily], I have finished four of the five of them now.  Only my pally remains incomplete… so I shall be working to get that for her.  I will be helping hubby as well.  One of his toons is short by toothpicks of all things…  And a couple more need the helm.  So I’ll be hitting those to trick or treat some during the day for him.

HORSEMAN’S MOUNT
My shaman and Askevar2 have both gotten the horseman’s mount.  My mage has snagged it as well – twice.

TANKING
Tanking on my DK is feeling better and better – probably as I get more practice :P.  Rune regeneration isn’t a problem any longer [annoyance if that].  I am probably going to swap my paladin’s main spec to ret and her offspec to prot…  I no longer enjoy pally tanking.  If anyone thought DK rune regeneration was bad… go try pally tanking…  Sitting there and WAITING forever for abilities to come up so you can have something to do and praying you hold aggro is annoying.  I have yet to really test druid or warrior tanking.

PLAGARISM
is bad mkay?  See this and a few other most recent posts on treebarkjacket.

LINKS TO STUFF
BBB has a great post musing on the expectations we had for the quality of 4.01.  Though he got a troll or two [what blogger doesn’t occasionally?] the discussions and concerns raised in the post and the comments are worth reading.

Don’t miss Bee Pit Bingo over at Murloc Parliament.  Given that I’ve got a lowbie toon again, I might have to make more bee pit jokes…

NoMoreNoob has the work around macro for the Horseman DC issue.

For those still working on their candy buckets, Revive and Rejuvenate did a candy bucket tour post for the alliance for Eastern Kingdoms and Kalimdor.

And this post is a couple weeks old, but it doesn’t get old “How Leading a Raid is Like Coaching Little League” over at Forever a Noob.

Priest With a Cause created a worksheet where you can tell just how fail your Halls of Lightning Pug is…

I also wanted to put forth Looking for More’s suggestion for November activities if you’re bored with WoW.  Nanowrimo is definitely fun and worthwhile!  I’ve participated in it several years myself and it’s fun.

Direbrew isn’t Broken, WE are.

Direbrew is stupid easy, right?

I mean literally zone in, pew pew, loot and win?

The event is exactly the same as last year.  Last year we actually saw the brewmaidens throwing stuff and putting kegs on people and adds and insanity.  This year, it’s just a zerg-fest.

But they couldn’t update Direbrew any more than they could update heroics – for the simple reason that it’s challenging for a just hit 80 group.  I’ve been the tank for two groups that… well… I [as a dk and warrior tank] was double the dps and damage of the next person.  And 2k is a generous estimate of my dps.  The fight was long and we actually had to drink the brewmaiden brew thrown at us and so on and so forth.

The Direbrew event isn’t what’s broken here.  WE are broken.  We so overgear this at the upper levels of gearing – just like heroics.  Would you really have wanted them to make it say… ICC5 instances hard?  That your new 80 alts would have to attain certain levels of gearing to do a holiday event?  It’s supposed to be a fun, relatively easy event – not something you have to plod through.

And you know what?  I don’t care.  I’m rather enjoying the chance to gear up a couple toons a little better in anticipation of Cataclysm where the mobs are going to hit at least twice as hard as they do now.

Don’t worry – hard heroics and events will come soon enough… and the QQ from that will be epic.

Getting the Jump on Hallow’s End…

Later this month, Hallow’s End will begin.  Several of my toons need an achievement or two [darn pet and helm!] to finish out their violet protos.  Lots of people are working on finishing these achievements pre-Cataclysm.  One of the achievements you can do now, with a little luck.

Check Your Head involves placing a pumpkin head on a person of each race.  I had a bunch of [Weighted Jack’o’lanterns] from last year [Headless Horseman on 7 toons or so hee hee].  Anyway, I sent them to my husband’s alts and he ran around, with his pick of people to toss them on.  There was no competition, no one with the 60min horseman buff not removing it so you can toss a pumpkin on them.  It’s a minor annoyance to 10 people now and is one less person who’ll be throwing them that week.

I also did it on Askevar2.  I bought a stack of 10 off the Auction House for 10g – which that cost of doing it now as opposed to struggling and begging for help that week is well worth it to me.

I got the idea for this the other day when someone was running around Dalaran and tossed a pumpkin on my toon’s head.  Again, your competition is non-existent and people are more likely to shrug it off as someone running around with extra pumpkins having fun rather than screeching at you after the event starts.

Harvest Festival is Here!

Just what is Harvest Festival?

It’s a time when we honor our hero, the great Uther the Lightbringer!

You can pick up the quest to do so just outside of Ironforge.  There’s also a guy selling neat fireworks [I love the Ground Flower myself – set about 5 of those off in the Auction House sometime!].  And you can collect free food from the tables there that restores a percentage of your health/mana – [harvest boar, harvest fruit and harvest fish for health; harvest nectar for mana].

Once you have the quest you fly up to Chillwind Camp and run over to Uther’s Tomb.  Once there, lay the tribute down, and fly back to IF to turn the quest in.  In return you get 13g23s [at 80] and a book – For the Light.

Why should you do it?  Free XP for toons not at max level.  And free gold if you are.  Also the RP factor/lore is there for those interested.  I’m still trying to figure out why my death knight felt compelled to honor Uther…

No achievements associated with this specifically.

But this means Brewfest is near!  [Monday]

ETA: A couple days after you do the quest you’ll get a [Bounty of the Harvest] in the mail.  It provides 4 harvest food on a 12 hour cd.

Be Ye Kind To Mages!

Whilst I ponder other things, it has been noticed the role of mages in holidays.  For the first holiday event EVER I have a max level mage!  Which sort of poses a dilemma… how does that help me get my crew around Azeroth?

Easy!  Second account!!!  Make a toon on the second account a raid leader [so your toons aren’t automatically kicked from party], set them all in the same spot, turn off all your addons, have the mage toon pop a portal and then cycle through as quick as you can and have them hop through the portal – do all the quests at that location on all toons and rinse/repeat.

It also comes to mind that a lot of people take mages for granted and/or abuse the ones that exist.  Mages seem to be becoming absent more and more on the server… almost as much as the rogues [they all went into hiding I think].  Whispers such as “port me now” and “gimme port” are exactly why.  If you want to use a mage’s porting service and they AREN’T one of the ones adverting in trade, be kind to them [well be kind to those too, but you get my point here].  Most will be happy to port you somewhere if you ask nicely, and give them a tip.  1g is pretty standard but I’ve received as much as 10-20g for a single port.  I’ve had people tell me that I owe them portals because portals are free.  For those not in the know, portals use reagents and reagents do cost money, granted, not a whole lot.  The sense of entitlement is worse than it was on my warlock regarding summons.

Mages can make your life a lot easier during this event, so be kind to them!!!

In summary:

1. Be kind.

2. Ask, don’t assume.

3. Tip well.

In other news, all my toons have the Pilgrim title and pet!  Woot!

Tanking Pet Peeves, Random alt stuff and Healing Not Memes… Where is the tanking not meme?

First, I want to draw everyone’s attention to this post about Tanking Pet Peeves over at Druid Main.  Even though my main tank is a dk rather than a bear, I can totally relate to this post.  My hubby, the pally, can relate to it as well, so I think it’s an excellent post overall about the random things people can do to tick us off and/or make tanking for them more difficult.

I’ve noticed the healing NOTMeme floating around there… someone should so start a tanking notmeme…  I’m just sayin’!

I’ve been helping the hubby do the Grand Arena Master Trinket thing in STV this week. It’s been so easy that I’m quite tempted to go do it on my death knight.

There have been some epic Wintergrasp battles and saves these last few days. I managed to get my priest in another Voa 10/25 – as the only priest. Of course, not a priest thing dropped 😛

My druid and mage got the Hallowed title, just from trick or treating to get the last ‘Sinister’ item they needed. I really want the title on priest as that would suit her, but I’m still waiting on the helm. I really think this achievement should either be – either/or OR make the squashling and helm BoA and require equipping the helm and learning the pet. I’ve wasted 4 squashlings from ToT because the toons in question already had them. But eh, they didn’t ask my opinion on that 😛

The warrior is coming along quite well… He’s almost level 40. My hubby thinks I can get him to 80 within a month, so I’m almost tempted to try it. Leveling is easy mode now – especially since this is my tenth toon and I have discovered a wonderful thing call Alterac Valley at level 51!  Hubby just got his second paladin up to the AV levels and he loves the experience there [he wants a ret pally and he’s finding it easier to roll another pally than to try to develop a ret set on his tankadin… and he’s leveling ret – to learn it better].

Week in Review on my Toon Army

As we all know, Hallow’s End started this week, and I already have 2 of my toons with the title, Hallowed [my main – Askevar, and my former main – Carlyn]. Carlyn was lucky enough to also receive the [What a Long Strange Trip It’s Been] achievement… well I say lucky but I worked a lot on that :P. I hope to see that on my new main someday but that’s going to be a bit more work as well.

All the rest of my toons [save my level 25 warrior] are just a squashing, a hallowed helm, or both shy of the title, so I’ll keep trick or treating on them this week to see what I can get.

My mage is just shy of level 79 as I write and I’ve been doing tournie stuff with her and working on making her some decent PVE gear. I mainly plan to PVP with her, but eh, it’d be nice to heroic on her occasionally. I’m currently debating whether to dual spec her. With the changes coming to Frost in the next patch, I should be able to heroic with her alright in a modified pvp spec as I understand it, and I don’t honestly plan to raid on her –  must do more research.

Got my priest into a VoA10 and 25 – both ended with boss deaths, but the 25 had some… normal pug issues I guess you could term them.  No loot but achievements were had 😀  Also healed a guild pug of Ony10… well we tried to do it.  Let me say, I have new appreciation of what you healers do on that fight.  I’ve never sweated that instance as a tank… not really, but trying to MT heal was most interesting and frustrating at times.

Things About Brewfest I thought Everyone Knew

Over the last few days I’ve gotten Brewmaster on more of my toons [I did a second wave of them through since my new and old mains got it quickly]. People in my guild were shocked that I could make that many tokens.

I make 55 tokens per day
10 from the Dark Iron Dwarf Attack
15 from the Barking for the beers [the one you run thru IF for]
30 off of Ram racing to Kharanos.

Ram racing isn’t a daily with a blue exclamation point. It’s a daily where you talk to the guy who gave you the quest to recover 3 barrels. Yes, there is a reason you see us make trip after trip every day… and usually a line of people with us 😛

Additionally, for the ram racing: if you hit the apple barrels, it gets rid of fatigue. I never thought to mention this, but I’ve been doing the brewfest stuff for a couple years [on my old main I ground the ram two years ago], so I sorta took it for granted that people knew this. Hopefully this will help you during the last 2 regular days and 2 extra days of brewfest 🙂

Brewfast!

Hubby and I duoed Coren Direbrew last night [me cycling all my alts through of course].  Lo and behold when I brought my main in, the Brewfest Kodo dropped and my main is the only one I’d consider attempting to get it on ahead of hubby, so we both need rolled and I won 😀

My DK on her newest mount

In addition to that, my hubby got the new epic mace, my priest got the healing trinket and the brewfest ram [hubby had it already], and my warlock got the spell damage trinket.  Got a mental wishlist for the rest of my toons – dodge/stam trinkets for my pallytank;  The mace for DW for both my dk and shaman, another one of the daggers for my rogue and the melee dps trinket, and the dodge trinket for my druid’s tank set.  Probably won’t get it all but I have a good shot at getting some of it.

Brewfest yet again…

And yesterday marked the start of Brewfest ’09! Once again everyone is going to revel in the mainly dwarven [yes I’m alliance all the way] tradition of getting oneself so drunk you see pink elephants… hic…

With 8 80s and a couple 20-40ish toons, I had to decide what I wanted from it. My old main gets the title… she’s only a few Brewfest and Hallow’s End achieves from the Violet Protodrake now. My new main gets the title as well cuz I want the drake on her someday…

The rest of my toons are doing the easy achievements and then buying the little pink elekk pet which is sooo cute! [okay yes, that was my girly side shining through… all my toons wear Pink Mageweave Shirts!].

I’m finding that my altoholic side is suddenly becoming valuable as well… Everyone wants me to parade my 8 toons through BRD so they can get yet another shot at the Kodo. Heck, other than on my main, I don’t give a rip about the mounts. The loot, I admit, is nice to get on my alts… but eh, just happy to help!