WoW Monkey

What did I do today to help prepare myself for the task of being able to tank WoLK content?

Shattered Halls, Heroic, in under 45mins.

So, what better way to enjoy the day than to spend it with guildies and a good friend of mine tanking probably the easiest SHalls Heroic I’ve been in. Actually, would be kinda unfair to say it’s been the easiest, since I had never been there prior to today on Heroic mode. Then again, being able to do it in 45 minutes I think really managed to shock a few people.

Did i mention I did it in 45 mins!!!!

LoL, sorry, bit proud of it!

And, of course, screenshots:

I guess I didn’t learn my lesson with yesterday’s raid PUG. I guess in some respects it’s my own fault for joining another PUG so soon after the last one. But, needless to say, some people really need to l2play.

Today I joined a PUG for H.BF. Usually, even with a group that does so-so DPS, Heroic BF is generally a place which I don’t mind pugging. Not today though — we managed to find 2 decent dps, a spriest and a hunter (yes a good hunter, imagine that!) and one SHITTY rogue. Actually, saying he was worthy of the term “bad” or “shitty” would be giving him credit. So much so, in fact, that when he wasn’t dead, he was either hitting a target the tank and other dps wasn’t on or I don’t know where.

Now, generally, I don’t even mind someone who’s a bad dps coming along for a free ride so long as he or she doesn’t affect the rest of the group. In fact, I’m usually the last person to say anything. Today, however, I just couldn’t handle it.

The rogue, dies. Over and over and over. Several times, wiping the entire group with him. Eventually, enough is enough, we decide that we’re better off trying to 4man the place rather than keeping him along.

So, he gets kicked!

We downed the 2nd boss and onward with 4 people in the group just fine, but I thought I’d post some of his tells here for your amusement (see screenshots).

Other than the setback that was the rogue, we did quite well. While the run itself didn’t go quite as smooth as a guild run (and really, when do PUGs ever?) I was fairly pleased with the overall run.

{begin rant}

There are very few things which I truely hate about World Of Warcraft lately. Among them are the latency issues that the server suffers after a major patch. Next on the list are people who THINK they know how to play the game and really are as clueless about it as those who readily admit they don’t have a clue. And the last major thing I hate about this game are AWFUL pugs.

When two of those three elements combine, they tend to form something which is very VERY frustrating to be a part of. Today, I had the misfortune of, unbeknownst to a guildie, being invited to a PUG where the raid leaders had no clue. And I don’t mean no clue in the sense someone new to the game would have hadn’t a clue, I mean such an utter LACK of a clue that they couldn’t have organized a one man march.

But I digress.

While I generally am not one to complain, I really REALLY was looking forward to raiding after my break from it all. Generally, I do tend to avoid raid PUGS, but I thought I’d make an exception since I had wanted to practice my tanking before the release of Lich King.

We were off to an OK start. Plenty of healers, tanks that seemed to talk the talk, and a raid leader who SEEMED to be able to lead. Seemed being the key word. We cleared the trash down to Mag pretty fast and started to try to get assignments on who was going to tank what in order. Unfortunately, some IDIOT pulled and started the fight, wiping the raid. Wipe ONE.

Sure, mistakes happen, really, been there done that. Okay, I thought, let’s give it another shot and see if we can down him on try two. We get assignments in order and people DONT FUCKING CLICK when clicking is called out. Seriously, WHAT THE FUCK. Wipe TWO.

Yea, so, all in all it was a miserable pug. Half the raid left after wipe two and the raid leaders decided to call it.

{end rant}

You’ll notice the look has changed. Please let me know if you guys prefer it to the old one or not in comments. Still a bit undecided myself but I’m way too lazy to make my own template at this point and I feel that time would be better spent working on Shadow anyway.

So, yea, let me know please!

Truthfully, I wasn’t expecting to get quite as much done as I did today. Was off to a slow start with mail management. Luckily a few guildies and I decided to get two heroics done later on which went pretty awesome. 23mins for Heroic Slave Pens and another 30mins or so for Heroic Setthek Halls. Also 2 more heroic achievements down.

On the personal progression front, I think I’m a bit less squishy overall. I also noticed my tanking, while still not to the point where I’d like to be by Lich King, is a bit less rusty than I was. My own fault though, I really should have focussed more on this toon instead of trying to play a million and one different alts. Owell, live and learn.

And a few screenshots.

Goals for tomarrow:

More heroics. Practice my tanking before LK.

There are many aspects to the World of Warcraft which we tend to take for granted. Item drops, dailies, and farming in general tend to consume the many hours that we spend trying to advance. In order to make the best use of our time in-game, it’s important that we have a system in place to deal with the clutter, the chores and the other aspects which may not be quite as fun as the rest of the game. Below, I’ll outline some of the steps, which, i hope, will lead to a better system for my own mail management.

1. Create a system.

No matter what you want to accomplish, it’s very important that goals are set in place for things to be successful. Personally, I’ve been trying to set certain characters mail and bank slots for certain items. I’ve bought my 3rd tab today which will be devoted to pots and raiding food only.

2. Stick to the system.

While I’m generally fairly good at managing my mail, it’s gotten to the point where I come on late at night, at the end of the day, just to see whats expiring. If something is expiring and isn’t going to bounce back, I place it in my bags and move it to a character’s mail which isn’t as full as the rest. This is the wrong thing to do. It’s very very important to keep things at the proper locations or the system will fall apart.

3. ??

4. Profit

Yes, it is still possible to profit. Sell whatever you feel will give you the most profit for time invested. Again, my problem is I have been a packrat. Part of this is due to having one character of each profession and many many lowbie alts which can always use the item drops. However, now that I’ll be raiding once LK comes out, more and more of my time will be devoted to my main toon, Shadowshiftr, and less to my alts. As a result, I’m hoping that I can vendor the vast majority of my lowbie crap.

A few tips:

* Mails can only show up to 50 pages at a time. Items past the 50 mark will not show and CAN and WILL be deleted after their 29 days pass.

* If you need more bagspace, or storage space in general, guild bank tabs are a relatively cost effective means to store items. In addition, if you have an addon like Possessions, tracking items becomes easy and effective.

* Guild Bank Slots aren’t cheap but new mules are! If you’re running out of space, make a new mule and form a guild. The first bank slot is only 100g and the 2nd is only 250. Easy 200 slots extra!

Anyone that has played World of Warcraft can attest that after some point, mail management becomes a nightmare. The expansion pack is coming and now more than ever I really need to get a handle on my mail. One of the reasons for all of my alts, was in order to have mules so I could send items back and forth in mail to eliminate the clutter amongst my bags. Unfortunately, now that mails have an increased capacity (they hold 12 items instead of one — both a good and bad thing), when the mails are about to expire and will not bounce back to their sender, they tend to create even more clutter than they were eliminating in the first place.

Items have been sent from one character to another, sometimes as partial stacks so now my inventories and mails are cluttered up beyond belief.

Needless to say, I spent about 4 hours today trying to get things under control, managed to get Shadowshiftr’s mail empty 100% and started to work on another bank toon — but barely scratched the surface of the amount of stuff I had.

For those that are curious, I’ll attach some bank guildtab screenshots to a private post later. So, what do you do about bank clutter? Do you AH it all? Vendor it? Send it back and forth in the mail? Comment

They say first impressions are the most lasting. So far, Resolve has met and exceeded my expectations. Granted, I’ve only been with them a day and a half,  but so far so good.

In the past day and a half, I’ve already managed to run several heroics, including:

Blood Furnace

Ramparts

Durnholde

Black Morass

and Heroic Magister’s Terrace.

The last one I’m particularly interested in because I had only been there 3 times total, on normal. Heroic, while being a challenge, was fun.  We had a bit of a rocky start, but a few near-wipes were avoided.

Gonna share some screenshots I thought were pretty cool too, loving the new swipe mechanic:

So, so far, I’ve run more heroics lately than I have in the past, trying to get back into my tanking role. I’ve also been working hard on getting my toon properly gemmed and enchanted.

added the following:

15 agi gloves

12 agi cloak

6 stats chest

and the following gems:

2x Delicate Crimson spinels

1x Beaming Fire Opal

Goals for tomarrow:

More Heroics. 12 stam on boots. Figure out the last 2 gems I need for bracers and helm. Possibly buy the season 2 shoulders but undecided on that yet.

All in all, had an awesome day and awesome time. See you tomarrow!

Kudos to a good friend of mine, and he doesn’t know it yet.

“Any monkey can follow a guide, written by others — I want to be the monkey that writes the guide”

And so we shall. And SO we shall!!

First of all, welcome! So if you’re here you probably know me or one of my alts. If not, I’m Shadowshiftr of Alleria (US). I’ve been thinking long and hard lately and decided to make Shadowshiftr my “one and only” main toon once Lich King is released.

So why start a blog? Well, the reasoning is two-fold — I want to document my progress for myself and friends and see how far I manage to get.

A little history for those who know me, think they know me, or just are bored and want to read along:

I originally started playing World of Warcraft before it became the “cool” kid on the block. Back in 2005 I rolled a warrior (Warli) on Alleria to try it out. I was inspired to play this game from a class I was taking at the time about persistant online worlds. Yes, you read right — Warcraft was a research project (heh!).

Truthfully, I didn’t like it at first. I had come from a background of normal multiplayer and singleplayer games and was not used to the MMO aspect of the game. Eventually though, a friend managed to convince me to roll another toon, another warrior, on Mal’Ganis. Eridius was born.

Through and through I played that toon but taking some time off because I had still not gotten into the game, I managed to miss out on raiding pre-BC. I rolled a few other toons on Mal’Ganis, a hunter, a mage, shammy and a few others but never really got into the game on that server. Eventually, the server started to suffer from long queues and the long waits that went along side them. In addition, I was also elected to become officer of a friend’s guild but because of some drama, things weren’t going to well there.

Before I knew it, I was back on Alleria, bored of my other toons, I decided to roll a druid. And wow I am glad I did. At the time, I had been getting a bit tired of the tediousness that my warrior had become and needed a breath of fresh air. I started to explore my options by rolling and playing many many many alts. I rolled a rogue, a lock, but nothing could compare to my druid.

Flash forward, December 2006. The Brethren.

What an awesome bunch of people I thought! And so they were. They opened their arms and took in my baby druid, to, what was then a full-time raiding guild. Boozefighter, Aelith and many others really extended themselves. I managed to get my druid to 70 eventually. Upon getting geared through heroics, I eventually managed to help form a raid that ran semi-consistantly with the guild.

But, all in all, while The Brethren did raid, they had started to become more and more casual as time went by.

I started to see more and more of the content I had wished I was a part of pre-BC, going by again. I surely wasn’t geared enough for anything past Gruul’s and Mag and I likely wasn’t going to get there soon enough.

What to do? Well, by now Blizzard had announced that the expansion was only a few months away. Great! I thought, I’ll get myself somehow in a position to be able to tackle the new stuff head on once it’s released. In the meantime, I focussed once again on pvp and alts to pass the time.

Flash forward, 2 days ago:

“Great news”, a friend of mine says, “we finally got you a spot in our progression guild as feral tank for LK”. So, now the moment of truth. Take it? and leave behind all the friends in The Brethren? or miss out again…. clearly I could not let this happen a third time!!

So, here I am. A proud member of the progression guild Resolve. Wish me luck!