I'm Back!/War College

Yep! Up for another round of PvE/PvP drama and excitement (what's left of it). Since I'm back now, I'll be re-opening my SoR section soon when Blizzard enables it. Just need to make some links and maybe (won't hold my breathe) some people needs them. I'll probably poke around more if people need them, but going to set up five when it starts.

Also, make sure to check out the War College, because they may have some advice on how to do Isle of Conquest. Probably not the best, but advice is advice.

Patch 4.3 and Updates

So far, patch 4.3 is pretty good. We have some people exploit on LFR earlier, but they have been reasonably suspended up to 8 days. Like volka, they apologizes for their "mistake" of getting more gear. Other guilds, such as For the Horde, are finally quitting for a weak excuse they mess upon and plan on moving to another MMO that I'm not going to mention on this blog.  Fortunately, I was not part of any of it and played by the rules.

Anyways, the new dungeons are nice, the leveling through Lich King expansion has gotten a lot easier, and the transmog open is pretty interesting. Though, I recommend using it once you're 85. Quite expensive to change to the outfit you want every time your gear changes. The only problem for me is the looting in raids. Strange things like retribution paladins can roll on agility trinkets, DPS druids can roll on both intellect and agility gear (regardless of range or melee).

So far, my feral druid defeated Deathwing in LFR and I'm plan on getting to normals after the holidays. My protection paladin is gearing nicely thanks to the new dungeons. My goblin mage is quickly getting to 85. I'm trying to hit it before Monday. That way, I'll be ready to gear her later this month. My warrior, rogue, and hunter are steadily getting geared, but I stop trying for now on my priest. I'm just not that good with shadow priest. I guess I need to try heals again. I haven't tried it in a while, but hopefully I'm not too rusty. Still, I wouldn't find myself in a raid situation.

Also, I updated my tabs with two new pages. The video section is now my YouTube channel. It'll have various videos from WoW and I'll be popping a few before Monday arrives. It'll mostly be PvE content, but I'm not sure if I'll put some PvP content in it soon. The second section is keys for Scroll of Resurrection. If you're planning on coming back, just hit that tab and click a key. If a key doesn't work or none of them don't, then just comment on the most recent blog post.

So Much Is Too Much

So one of my guild mates (beforehand, I didn't know until we were done) was making a pug raid group and asked if there is an able tank for a Nefarian kill in BWD (Blackwing Descent). Most of the other tanks were not on, leveling their alts, or waiting for Hard Modes. However, I came into the picture with my feral druid Meomeo and accepted the offer. The raid group was soon ported to the instance and I began discussing with the other tank for what to tank. At first, I thought I was going to tank Onyxia and the adds from Nefarian. But then the other tank quickly prefer that he'll do what was mentioned instead (since he had experience with it anyways). Intimidated enough, I was in an unfamiliar territory with tanking Nefarian.

At first, my health was in scary place since I never been use to being this low in health. But after a while, it just felt natural and fun taking his attention. Fortunately, the raid group was able to kill him without too much hassle (in one attempt as well). Funny enough, I think I obtain a tier item from that place and never used it. I think I should since all I got is engineering helmet (which is nice, but I prefer the bonus). I'll try to tank later on for other raids, such as Baradin Hold and The Bastion of Twilight. Hopefully, I'll get geared enough to do Firelands later on (or wait for 4.3 to do the Dragon Soul raid). Either way, more stuff to come for my druid. And even if I don't do so well with tanking, my DPS specc is pretty good.

In other news, my holy paladin Hammerwind has leveled up to 85 recently. Now, I have been trying out healing with her and all it has been doing for me is getting my poor tauren crushed under Alliance's feet 24/7. Every moment, I'm looking at the world in gray scale because I can't heal for nothing and I keep dying very quickly. However, when I switch to my Protection gear and specialization, everything suddenly got calmer for my tauren. There's only been a few moments were I die very quickly. Aside from that, I just been tickling (occasionally helping) the Alliance. At the same time, however, the worse treatment I received was from a warlock in PvE gear and that legendary staff that everyone been getting lately (that blue dragon in the sky is becoming very annoying now). Aside from that, I have been very helpful with a few BGs. Of course though, this is just a few. I bet in many more, it'll be a lot worse. Hopefully though, I should probably live up to my tauren's name.

Now, this next moment has been on my mind lately and it's quite irritating to the point I want to be unprofessional right now. But for the sake of keeping this blog up, I'll be calm and explain the situation. Last night, I was on my shadow priest Wilda while searching a group to do BH before today's reset. I found my first one and tried to sample out that someone was saved. So I went back and forth and suddenly, my computer just gave up on me and froze the game. I was rushing my computer to start up the game again and it was just acting very slow. Eventually, I log back on only to see that I'm out of my group. So I search for another group and it was taking a while. Eventually, someone made one and I joined a second group. The same intro to the scenario of someone being saved happened. However, I didn't disconnected this time and the raid leader eventually found out the saved person. We booted him and finally started to get through the raid zone.

Then we got to Occu'thar. Now, we made two attempts on this dog. First attempt, people were being bad and standing in middle of the area were we suppose to group up and kill adds at. For the uninformed that never did this boss, don't stand in the area were people need to stack up. Otherwise, he focus on a random player and place a lasting AOE on the ground. What's worse is that some people that group up while that AOE was below them just sat there instead of standing near each other. Not only the healer is using even more mana to heal people, but they're most likely dead in a few seconds. Eventually, our DPS was too low since people kept dying and had to retry. However, I'm use to stuff like this because I'm quite patient with bad players during gameplay. But this is clearly not the worse part of this ordeal.

On the second attempt, players were still doing poor, but the job was done. And when I went to check loot, T12 DPS gloves dropped. I was quite happy since there was another priest and she was just heals. But soon, my happiness turn into so much endless rage, that Ragnaros would be afraid of. The raid leader (reading only the Spirit part of the gear) gave it right to the healing priest and said priest disappeared. Gave the poorly-geared healing priest T12 DPS gloves...all I wanted to do was express myself in such reckeless and violent rage to quench this anger, but the best I can do is make inappropriate swearing. 

So I learned a very valuable lesson last night. Do my BH runs earlier. Most likely, the smarter players will be trying to get it done as soon as possible. Or worse comes to worse, do my own.

So I filled the Moonwell...

And this happens:

Apparently, these chains events cause Leyara became Druid of the Flame (and sadly die as one). But it goes to show you that anger can run deep into the family. Quite tragic for a night elf, but she shouldn't hurt Hamuul in the process. Big mistake.

A Quick Update and Patch 4.1

Just letting you know that my rogue ding a while ago. It is take a while to get use to playing a rogue since they're like butter compare to other melee class. It's not an easy class, but I am getting the hang of how they play. This class seem to be weird to play in PvP sometimes. Feels like I'm not hitting certain people hard enough, even casters are a little awkward to kill. Still, I manage to take them down. The only classes I have trouble with are hunters and (Blood) DKs. Hopefully, they won't be too hard to take down when this patch comes up. Speaking of which, here's a preview of the new patch:

Seems like people will be trolling trolls again. Man, I lost count how many times they have been getting killed. It's getting to the point they're wiped out. But anyways, what I'm most interested about are the new stuff and changes coming in. I'm liking the Rogues and Feral Druids changes they got going. Looks like they're going in the right direction of being decent again. However, Warriors are getting some abilties toned down a bit. Colossus Smash loses 50% armor reduction on PvP targets and Spell Reflection went up by 15 seconds on the cooldown. However, Lambs of the Slaughter change is pretty nice. Whenever Mortal Strike lands on a target with Rend, it refreshes the duration. That's actually a good benefit since I usually lose the duration every moment or so and it's kinda irritating if I miss a Rend. Although our Intercept's stun is toned down to 1.5 seconds, that ability and Charge has no diminishing returns, which isn't too bad.

Summary of other classes that I play less often or don't play as, most of Mages abilities are getting toned up, which I'm not surprised but just to be mentioned. Shamans are weirdly getting toned down for Elemental Combat and re-worked a bit for Enhancement and Restoration. Death Knights are getting nice tune-ups with Frost, and some changes for Unholy and Blood (even a Death Knight version of Rebirth). Warlocks have some changes with Affliction and Demonology, but Affliction still seems to be a little iffy in the damage department. Aside from the Priest's dispel toned down, their changes are decent at best. Aside from Feral, Balance is getting toned-down a bit in single target damage and Restoration gains more importance with Tranquility and tune-ups with other Area-of-effects heals. Not sure about Paladins and Hunters though. Didn't care too much about them.

Probably my favorite part about the new changes aside from classes are the honor points being double and using honor and conquest points to convert into justice and valor points. This will make gearing much more easier now. The least favorite would be the Call-to-Arms for Dungeon Finder. Understandable that their should be more (mainly) tanks and healers, but that's pretty much a low blow to damage dealers (mainly pure classes like Mages and Rogues). Not a fair trade off if you ask me, but this is Blizzard game. Overall though, big changes. Some are good, some are bad, but the game might be still enjoyable if you don't let the bad get to you.

EDITED: On the part where it converts PvP points and PvE Points. Yeah, it's only Justice to Honor that's being changed. It's one way for Valor to Conquest. Quite disappointing, but I don't mind since the new feature to get valor is easier now.

Meomeo

Race: Tauren
Class: Druid
Current Level: 85
Date Created: 11/??/2009
Realm Location: Ner'zhul
Current Spec and Gearing: Feral with Bloodthirsty Set

Description: This tauren was my second toon (first Horde character) to be created and now my primary toon after Alehs. Feeling stressed out from my warrior dying all the time, I went on my druid. I tried to experiment with what I wanted to do with my druid, and Balance and Restoration wasn't for me. But once I keep trying with Feral, I felt like I found my WoW sweet spot for dishing out damage.

In PvP, I died quickly but it wasn't as frequently as my warrior and I could choose my battles a little better. So gaining gear back at 80 was a lot better for my druid than for my warrior. Although I didn't get Wrathful gear during the season, I did obtain most of it when it was free. Of course, no shoulders were available, so I never had them.

In PvE, I advanced very well with gear to the point I eventually had T10 with two heroic pieces. And around late November of last year, I got Kingslayer. I understand that I had the 30% buff, but most of my groups usually don't go that far or we would be stuck at Professor, Blood Queen, or Sindragosa. So it was depressing not being in a good grouping until a good PuG came in to help us. But yeah, Patch 3.3.5 was the prime of my druid.

Then Cataclysm came in and still gave some fun for my druid after I painfully leveled my warrior. However, when I got up to 85, problems began to rise. Since it was very early in Cataclysm, I couldn't really do instances so quickly since most of my guild was on and off (the realm is West Coast, but I'm East Coast; blame my Alliance friend for signing me up there). Not to mention PvP was a severe grind fest. Luckily, the 1800+ honor points came in and support my gearing as well. But all was not too lost in PvE. As of right now, I currently have heroic gearing with 4-5 epics ready to be use. The only problem is that my guild can't pass Magmaw or Halfus when I was active. Every time we died and it only got worse each passing week. So I hung up my poor around February and went back to school.

Hopefully around late April or early May, I'll start playing again and make my druid shine. I know the Great Druid Nerfs were nasty back in February, but I seen some feral druids climbing back the ladder (PvP isn't dead, just a little harder now; can't say the same for PvE though since melee isn't too valuable for most fights). So all hope isn't lost if I play my druid a lot better.

As Of Right Now...

I'm not actively playing. Now I understand that you may call me silly and telling me you can't say much without an active subscription. Well, there are a ton of things I can still talk about WoW. Like the interesting content that Boubouille posted about the current and future updates about WoW. The plans of what I'm going to do when I get back on WoW. And maybe a few posts about my characters that I played a lot. In fact, you'll probably get to see my first one the next time I post, so stay tuned.