The Farstrider Scout

And just like that, CrackHorde is born!  Sure, it’s not an entirely original name, but it works for its intended purpose.  Hopefully we’ll run our first match tonight, but we’ll see.  I still have to finish off Sunken Temple for my wife’s shadow priest and continue her training on how to work with raid markers.

We didn’t go there last night, which frustrated her, but I have things that I want to do as well, such as get the Dire Maul Crescent Key, and finally get Revered with Thrallmar, allowing me to purchase the [Blackened Spear].  The bad news about this upgrade is it drops my health down below 7k again, so I’ll probably continue using that ugly axe in PvP for the time being.

Now comes the big debate: +35 Agi, or +70 AP enchant?  I’m tempted to go with the agility, since it would balance things out a bit, giving me a bit more crit, but double the attack power with Savagery is tempting too…

I’m gonna keep this short, because my head is about to explode, but things could have gone about a billion times better today.  Starting with being moved to the day shift for a “training” (read: maintenance, no training involved) day, which screwed up my sleeping schedule, it just went down hill from there.  Going to have to stay up for another 24+ hours to reset my sleeping…

Got home, internet goes down for 3+ hours, and has been sketchy ever since.  I’m really not liking Mediacom right now, as it’s been like this for the past 3 weeks or so.

Got a group for Steamvaults…  And misdirected a patrol of water elementals on the priest instead of the tank.  We managed to survive, but I wasn’t pleased with myself.  On a good note, the [Beast Lord Mantle] dropped, so I now have a 26 second cooldown on my traps.

Got a group for Black Morass…  Forgot to get a beacon, so when we downed the first boss, I asked if I could go pick one up.  They said sure, even though you apparently can’t once the script is started.  I got turned around, went the wrong way, aggro’d half the map.  Vree bit it right off, and I made it out of the instance with 30 health left… And portals had already started popping up.  Combat rezzed Vree and moved on.  Clockwork the rest of the time, but when we were done, I bailed.  I’m surprised I didn’t get booted for what I did.  /shrug

Here’s hoping that tomorrow is better.

I had another post all thought up for today, but after what happened this evening, I’m throwing that out and MAYBE saving it for another day.  Anyhow…

I may have stated this before, but this has got to end.  I have been having too much luck, and eventually karma is going to come around and bite me in the ass.

Probably not even an hour after logging on, I was in a Black Morass group.  It took a little wrangling, as the healing paladin and rogue had to leave before we even got started, but we were quickly able to change it up with the current tank, a warrior, now doing DPS, a new prot. pally tanking, and a priest for healing.  It was a first time thing for me again, but the people I went with were pretty experienced, it seemed.  We cleared out a sizable area, but the warrior accidentally tripped the event while dragging a large pack of crocks and spiders over to the main group, so we just let Medievh die.  We finished clearing and were still waiting for him to reset, so the warlock and the warrior went AFK.  A short time later, everything is reset, the warrior comes back, and the warlock summons a healthstone shindig (can’t remember what it’s called).  The warrior asks if everyone is ready, and everyone except the paladin and the warlock say that they are.  Mistake #1.  We start the event anyway, and the paladin moves up to the first portal to tank…  And the warlock doesn’t move.  2 portals later, the warlock goes “AFK quick…”

…  What?!

Needless to say, we continue to 4 man the portals, slowly getting overwhelmed.  The warrior eats dirt, and we decide to withdraw.  <sigh>  Medievh resets, we start again, this time doing well now that the warlock is actually with us.  The first boss goes down, and [Melmorta's Twilight Longbow] drops!  Woot!  We ask to need, and roll on it – even though it’s got slightly less DPS, it’s got a higher end damage, and +stamina which will help in PvP.  New bow in hand, we rest up briefly and move on to the next set of portals, eventually coming face to face with Temporus.  The paladin says he’s using his beacon, and a bronze dragon appears… and immediately dissapears.  Shortly thereafter, everyone except for me is dead.  (Yay for FD.)  The priest is soulstoned though, so we get everyone back up, and the warrior, paladin, and warlock decide to call it quits.  /shrug, oh well, no great loss, I pretty much got what I wanted from Black Morass.  I’ll have to go back later for my Kara key quest, but hey, I’ll be better geared, plus I’ll probably, hopefully, be running with people I know and can trust.  Either way, the day is starting off really good.

So, I take my new bow, scratch up the materials for a new scope, even though I just made one (finally) yesterday for the Valanos, and it’s off to Dr. Boom!  I wanted to see how much of a difference the new bow actually made.  Just for shits and giggles, I throw myself in the queue again for Shattered Halls and Steamvaults, plus the 5-man portion of the inital Netherwing quests, and start plinking away.  200 arrows later, we have our results – Valanos had some higher peaks, but Twilight was much more steady, and match the average peaks that the Valanos put out.

I’m sifting through the Recount results from our testing when I get a tell – interested in a Steamvaults group!  Hell yes!  We get in the group, and it’s a mage, priest, warrior, druid, and myself.  The priest/mage is apparently two-boxing, and wants to swap out so that he only has to do one job, so we pull in Sheru, a rogue friend of our that does some good work.  Things go smooth as can be for the first third.  Naga just dropped into my traps like ants into honey.  A few traps broke early, but Vree managed to offtank long enough for me to get my mob under control, or get to range and burn it down.  (Is it me, or are naga extremely squishy?)

The second portion started getting a little hairy – Sheru got spotted repeatedly while trying to sap and eats dirt (sorry Sheru, couldn’t resist. ), but we were able to hold things together with the druid doing some amazing off-tanking/off-healing and dps, seemingly all at once, and me trapping, scattershotting, and shutting casters down with silencing shot/arcane torrent.  POW! second boss is dead, dropping the [Recoilless Rocket Rifle X-54], which is promptly sharded.  /cry, no rocket boots schematic for us.

We move on, only to wipe on Kalithresh.  Probably mostly my fault, as he had started going for the priest, so I misdirected on the tank, fired a distracting shot, and began the pull for an aimed shot.  Mistake #2.  Big time.  At that exact moment, one of the naga tanks is triggered, and it was too late by the time I switched targets.  The damage had been done, the tank was dead, and the druid was now trying to tank it out, but we just couldn’t hold.

So, we run back, pick up the pieces, and start all over again.  Things go like clockwork this time, and we down him with only three tanks used.  New record for me – the last time it took 4.  The tank loots, and lo and behold: [Beast Lord Leggings]!  Holy crap!  Needed it, got it.

Now what was I saying about Karma?  2 upgrades in one day?

It’s got to end sometime people.

The word looks odd when you write it more than one time, but that’s why this post is so late.  Started off this morning with nothing to say, decided I’d have something later on…  And so I put it off, and ended up getting so wrapped up in the game that I forgot about posting until it was time for bed.

The morning started off rather slow, with just a few BG’s – EotS for the daily, and a few AV matches with 1 win, 2 losses.  The last match had over 8 people sitting AFK in the cave!  Got fed up with that, so I moved on to other things.

Went up to Netherstorm to have a whack at “You, Robot“, and, as I was essentially petless, Negatron stomped us soundly.  Apparently when it says 3 are recommended, you probably need 3 to do it.  So I put myself up as looking for a group to do that, and threw in Steam Vaults and Shattered Halls for good measure.

The Steamvaults invite came first, so we went, failing to get anything we really wanted aside from the second Kara key fragment.  I’ll be going again, I’m sure… and again, and again, and again.

By that time, several guild mates were on, so I enlisted their help in downing Negatron after bringing them up to speed so we could all do the quest.  It was a close fight, but Negatron was toppled, and the three of us walked away, victorius, wearing our [X-52 Rocket Helmet], and I now have a macro to be paired with my flying machine:

/s Engine failure!
/panic
/s We’re going down!
/s EJECT!  EJECT! EJECT!
/em pulls the ejection handles.
/dismount
/use X-52 Rocket Helmet

Trust me, the results are spectacular.

That is what battlegrounds seem to be, so I’ve decided to level to 70.  The good thing is, I have all the marks I need for armor, with the exception of Alterac Valley, which should be slightly easier at 70.  I hope.

Aside from a few hours yesterday, things have been running smoothly – I managed to do a solo-LBRS run to finish off the quest “Mother’s Milk” and get the [Worg Carrier] and [Smolderweb Carrier]. This was done using a combination of sheer luck, and Koneg’s solo LBRS worg taming guide from Petopia.

What inspired this madness?  We went on a 5 man LBRS run with a friend and a few of her guild mates to get the worg carrier, kill one of the bosses, and get some blacksmithing patterns.  Keep in mind, LBRS used to be one of the instances that you had to go through to get your dungeon gear before BC…  Gear which was made obselete by Outland greens.  None of these people that I went with (no offense intended, should any of them actually read this), had any clue what it was like going through and having blues drop that I would have liked to have so many, many moons ago.  Kind of sad, really.  In my opinion, Blizzard should retool all the old high level instances for new loot, and make them able to be completed by a 5-man…  Or just make them completable by a 5-man. 

Seriously – BRD, LBRS, UBRS, DM, MC, BWL, and Onyxia were rendered useless, or at least near useless (I’ve heard of tanks using [Thunderfury, Blessed Blade of the Windseeker] on Gruul to keep aggro.) with the advent of Burning Crusade.  People really only go to places like these for specific reasons at this point, or because they’re tired of running Outland instances.

What do you say, Blizzard?  How about it?

Hit 69 last night shortly after a Crypts run, completing my goal of getting there before the 28th.  I also managed to complete some mini-goals: 375 mining, crafting my [Dimensional Ripper - Area 52], [Zapthrottle Mote Extractor], and [Goblin Rocket Launcher].  Finally got to break out the [Crystalforged War Axe] I’ve had sitting in the bank for a month (Man, is it ugly.) thanks to a friend, and I’ve just hit 800 gold on my bank mule, thanks to the mote extractor and finding a [Schematic: Adamantite Arrow Maker].  [Primal Air] sells for around 18-20 gold on Moon Guard, and no one seems to sell the arrow makers (either that, or they go so fast that there are never any up). In a day or two I could buy my flying mount and associated training if I wanted to.

So now I have a new goal, and with it, a dilemma.  I would like a full set of Gladiator gear.  I would have preferred a full set of the old High Warlord’s chain, because I think it looks better, but that’s gone now.  In any case, I have a choice – hit 70 in the few days of leave I have left, or hit the BG’s and start farming marks and honor?

Either way, I’m going to end up levelling eventually, because Vree still needs to level up, I’m going to have to keep mining for adamantite to keep my arrow supply stocked, and I don’t really plan on not doing instance runs since some of the gear I have could still use improvement.  It’s still a tough decision though.

Servers are down, oh what ever shall I do?

No more trying to post before I go to bed, for starters.  At least while I’m on this holiday schedule.  This is the last one.

I promise.

Today was yet another good day.  This karmic goodness has got to end sometime, but I don’t want it to just yet.  Went on an Underbog run with a good group, and managed not to wipe at all.  It came close a few times, but not quite.  I ended up being in charge of crowd control once we got past the Naga.  Hooo boy, what insanity.  The druid wasn’t able to Hibernate things effectively, so I ended up using Scare Beast in addition to my traps.  It worked out well enough.  The Black Stalker was kind enough to drop the [Shamblehide Chestguard], which pretty much just added 3 gem slots I didn’t have before.

I finally managed to collect enough [Oshu'gun Crystal Powder Samples] for my first [Halaa Research Token], and hit a dilemma.  I’ve got over a hundred [Halaa Battle Tokens] already, courtesy of Golavar’s Halaa events, so I could either purchase a [Marksman's Belt] now, wait until I get another Research Token, and get the [Marksman's Legguards], or stick with what I’ve got: [Dreadhawk's Girdle of the Hunt] and [General's Chain Legguards].  Neither is much of an upgrade, but they’re the first items available to me with resilience on them, and in the case of the pants, it has a yellow socket in which I could place the [Sublime Mystic Dawnstone], which I can afford right now, or save up the honor for an [Inscribed Ornate Topaz].  I tend to PvP a lot, so this might be a benefit, but I really don’t know.  I’m also not sure how it would effect my PvE time either.  Overall, based on what Ratings Buster states, and my own thoughts, the pants I have now are better, but it should probably be subject to more scrutiny.

The server problem seems to be fixed, but I’m going to bed.

More news at 11!  Stay tuned!

Horde held their first war council last night, with the goal of establishing a chain of command for the coming attack(s) on Alliance leaders, and all I have to say is wow.  Just wow.  I’m not even sure if we accomplished that.  I expected some drama, because after all, this is an RP server, but the amount of petty squabbling going on was rather sad.  Our guild XO, Golavar, spearheaded the council as well as represented us, as our guild leader has been MIA for the past few days, and I think he managed to get at least something accomplished.  I just don’t know what.  A few good things came out of it though – afterwards, Athanaric, a warrior in our guild, and I hit Ashenvale, wiping out Silverwing Refuge, The Shrine of Aessina, Maestra’s Post, and started in on Astranaar before an Alliance hunter showed up and proceeded to wipe the floor with us.  Good fun though and apparently at the same time we were in Ashenvale, another guild levelled Honor Hold.  FOR THE HORDE!

And while we’re on the topic of bickering…  Got my first instance group in Outland today, for Mana Tombs.  Spent a few hectic minutes scrambling around to empty my pack, load up on arrows, pet food, heal pots, bandages, and a few other items to help us out, plus some flash powder for the rogue.  Here’s hoping I did BRK proud in that respect.

The group is composed of a Blood Elf rogue, priest, mage, an Orc warrior, and myself.  I get to the summoning stone and the mage pipes up, “Is it alright if I do the dishes first?”

…

So, fifteen minutes later we’re in the instance, and said mage gets froggy and pulls before we’re even ready…  But not the ones the warrior had marked.  It’s a mad house, trying to cc everything I can while keeping Vree alive and kill everything that’s not controlled.  Finally the dust settles, and Vree has been KIA. <shrug>  Could have been worse.  Mage asks if anyone is running a damage meter, and I answer an affirmative and forget about it, and we move on.

Things run smoothly after that – rogue saps blue, mage sheeps moon, burn down the skull….  That is, until we come across our first four-pack.  The fourth becomes star, and is mine.  I drop my trap a good 10 seconds before the fight.  Rogue saps, warrior pulls, mage sheeps, Vree gets sic’d on skull, and I pull my mob back with an arcane shot, right into my trap.  I have improved traps, which is long enough to take out at least 2 of the 4 before mine breaks free, so I take a step forward, and open up.  And then the mage frostnovas my trap and proceeds to dps my mob before skull is even down.  Madhouse, yet again, but we manage to pull it off.

Suffice it to say, almost every time after that, if I dropped a freezing trap and got something in it, it got frost novaed by the mage, a few times, in my opinion, resulting in a wipe that could have been avoided.  I respectfully ask for her to stop, the only real reply right near the end being a “Dude… chill.”  Right.

Finally we’re facing off against Shaffar, and no one knows what to do, so I alt tab and look it up.  DPS the beacons as they pop up, and beat on Shaffar at the same time.  Seems easy enough.  The fight starts, I manage to down one beacon, the other two turn in to Apprentices, and we wipe.  The priest and the mage log as soon as they get back in the instance, and it’s game over for the rest of us.

<sigh>

On a good note, I picked up an upgrade – [Boots of the Outlander] - and made 2 friends that will hopefully remember me when they want to run an instance again.  The upgrade was definitely needed though, as my DPS wasn’t quite where I had hoped it would be, running second to the mage the entire time.  Gear is an issue, and I’m still fleshing out the MM side of my spec, so hopefully it’ll pick up once I hit 68-69.

Ok, so the timestamps don’t reflect quite right…  Things have been a bit odd lately, as I’m trying to re-adjust to my normal late night schedule, which will only last for another 2 days or so until I go on some much needed leave.  In any case, here we go…

I recently picked up Call of Duty 4: Modern Combat after trying the demo and getting blown away by it.  The graphics are amazing, and the single-player story was very well written in my opinion.  Multiplayer, however, I have mixed feelings over.  I like the play style better than Quake Wars, and I like what they’ve done with the unlock system, gaining different equipment and “perks” as you rank up.  The downside to the ranking system is that it is often easier for some skilless noob to just spray and pray, then actually take time and aim at your targets.  No co-op play is a downside, but I can deal with that, but a huge gripe I have is that I can’t patch the game.  This is because I have a digitally purchased/downloaded copy, and as such, the retailer (EBgames/Gamestop) has to supply a modified patch.  There isn’t one.  Soooo, I am relegated to playing on non-Punkbuster servers, which until earlier today, wasn’t too bad.  Then 2 players using an aimbot hack joined the server I was playing on, and things went downhill from there.  Must be compensating for something….

Next topic is “Welfare Epics”, since that seems to be the thing lately I’ll throw my .02 in, for what it’s worth and be done with it.  Blessing of Kings went through six blog posts, which is quite a bit to read, after/during which it was picked up by Shifftusk, Renoobed, and Out of Mana, and probably others that I haven’t gotten around to catching up with yet.  Keeping all those posts, and most of the comments (I didn’t read the ones from BoK), I’d have to say that many of the points that were brought up, I agree with.  Before I go into that though, here’s my inital take.

I consider myself a casual gamer.  This is probably out of date, considering my Xfire profile stating that I play up to and over 40 hours a week, but when it comes to WoW, I tend to be pretty casual about it.  I’ve been playing since release, with a few breaks here and there, but there are many places that I have yet to see, and will never see.  I have never completed going through BRD, and have never even seen the inside of UBRS/LBRS or anything beyond with the exception of a lone Stratholme run that I did a long time ago.  That’s a lot of content I’ve missed, and since the loot goes hand in hand with content, I’ve never had T1-T3 gear on any of the characters I’ve ever leveled.  I have significant blocks against raiding guilds and DKP systems, and dealing with human beings as a whole (see the CoD4 section for a small glimpse into why).  I haven’t even touched any of the Outland dungeons because of the human factor.  I feel, however, that I am confident enough in my skills as a hunter that if I applied to a raiding guild, I would be able to hold my own.  Not everyone is physically /mentally /emotionally /timewise /etc. able to participate in that kind of activity.  For me, at the moment, PvP is the only way I will ever see raid-equivelent gear.

That being said, yes, the current Arena gear system is rather skewed, and can be/has been played.  It kind of leads back to that whole “spray and pray” routine that I commented on earlier.  Elephante is a prime example of this.  I think that adjusting costs to require X before obtaining Y is a good idea, especially since this would level out the playing field a lot quicker once the ratings are reset, as you could probably set it so that people just getting into the arena scene don’t face off against those that have been around a while and are now in S3+ gear.  Granted, it might be possible for a very skilled S1 team to beat a poorly skilled S3 team, but the run wouldn’t last.  The S1 team would have to work their way up – probably quickly, of course – through S1 and S2 to get to S3.

There’s only one area that I see this as having problems though – Battlegrounds.  Gear matching works for BG’s like WSG and AB.  I’m not so sure about EotS, but AV seems to throw it all out the window.  I’m not sure how that could be resolved, and unfortunately, I’m out of time.

Finally hit 64 today, after bouncing around Zangarmarsh for what seemed to be forever.  Aspect of the Viper is a nice boost to leveling, and things seem to be moving a bit faster now that I’m in Terrokar.

I discovered [Thick Bronze Darts] today, after looking for something like this for I don’t know how long.  Now if only they’d make an auto throw ability like autoshot, a troll spear hunter would be viable just like the NPCs do it.

My wife is an inspiration for things to post about…  Unfortunately, thanks to this shift change, I don’t really have the time to research and post about it right now.  Perhaps tomorrow, maybe even a 2 part post…  Hmmm….

On a closing note:  The Golden Compass.  Save yourself the money and watch it when it comes out on DVD, or better yet, be the book and be happy you didn’t watch the travesty that the movie was made into.  It well and truly sucked.