Mend Pet

You meet all kinds.

Since they released the Dungeon Finder tool, I’ve been taking advantage of it like a {insert off-colour reference}.  Most notably, with my Paladin.  No, not that one… my OTHER paladin.  She hit 20 and spec’d prot just in time for the Dungeon Finder, and has leveled almost exclusively using it.

It’s amazing the kind of people you run into in these old world, low level dungeon runs.  While I know it can’t be true, it feels like 90% of the people I group with have never played the game before.  Kaeira just hit level 30, and rather than expatiating upon each adventure in its own post, I’ve collected the tales of the last 10 levels and condensed them all here into one for your enjoyment.

These are mostly paraphrased as I rarely think to take screenshots of these things.  But you’ll get the general idea, minus most of the bad grammar.

Also, I would like to mention how sad I am that so many of these are Hunters.  :(

Deadmines:

My very first foray into my Dungeon Finder journey:

Hunter: “I’m new to this game.  How do I get on my mount?”
Me: “That’s not a mount.  That’s your pet.”
Hunter: “Ohhh.”

Shadowfang Keep:

You know that room with Commander Spingvale which can be dangerous for pulling the entire room?  Not to mention, many of those mobs like to silence.  While I’m carefully trying to pull groups of 1 or 2, the hunter gets too close, aggroes the entire room (including the boss) and causes a wipe.  She then says: ”I’m gonna be lazy.  Rez me when you get back lol.” and does just that – waits til we run back to res her.

In the same run, just before Fenrir (a bit more than halfway through the instance), the warlock says, “Gotta go to work guys, I’m going to put myself on follow for the rest of the dungeon.  Bye!”  I sure am thankful for the “Vote to Kick” feature.

Blackfathom Deeps:

I think a quick recount is all that’s really needed to tell you the story about this Hunter.

No wait, that’s not all that’s needed.  He also asked if we would wait so he could tame one of the demons.

During the same run, the prot paladin forgot to put Righteous Fury up after a wipe until reminded by someone at the next boss.  (oops, that was me…)

The really sad thing?  Remember the bad hunter?  He still came in second for DPS (just behind me, the tank).

Stormwind Stockades:

I actually got into an instance as DPS instead of tank!  While I was still spec’d prot, I managed to nonetheless beat out the rest of the dps… including a hunter two levels above me.

Gnomeragan:

I ran Gnomer about a dozen times.  The worst story is from the one time is from the only time I disliked someone enough to actually leave group myself.  I got brought in part way through the instance, as the first tank had left… and I soon found out why.  This rogue wanted to tank it – one of those “I know how to do this better than you” types.  After he continued to pull mobs while we still hadn’t killed the ones we were on, I finally told the group that if they didn’t need a tank, I’d leave and let the rogue do it.  When the rogue said he could handle it, I left.  I wonder if they ever made it the rest of the way!

My best story from Gnomer is when I’d finally run it enough times to actually know my way around.  I never ever wanted to know my way around that wretched place!  Anyway, why was it the best?  Because the Dungeon Finder set us up with this group, and it actually went very smoothly:

Talk about PallyPower!

If you hadn’t noticed by my lack of ‘This Week in Raiding’ posts lately, I haven’t been raiding much.  There are many reasons for it, school and work have been keeping my schedule unpredictable, and our guild has lost many key members, and we can’t pull together much on our own anymore.

Well, a friend of mine tired desperately to get me to faction & server transfer to raid with her…

AND I DID IT!

Just kidding.

There’s no way my Troll could ever be anything but a Troll!  It just isn’t right.  And I’m just too cheap.

So instead, I rerolled a new Dwarf (yes, a female!) Hunter on Skullcrusher to quickly level up to play with her.

Meet Ailsa, and her fuzzy bear friend Righneas (it means Tenacity in Gaelic or Scottish or something.  I’m that clever.)  And yes, she uses a bow. Remnants of my Trollish tendancies, maybe?

Observations

It’s been a long time since I leveled a hunter… nearly 4 years, actually.  And a lot of things have changed.  But it’s interesting to level a class you already know very well, and I’ve discovered a few things:

• With the removal of the dead zone, leveling 1-10 with no pet is so much easier.
• Kiting is your best strategy for 1-10, not melee.
• Make sure you keep those ammo stacks at 1000!
• Not having Feign Death, Intimidation or Misdirect makes me much squishier, and there’s a lot less room for aggro.
• OMG HOW DID WE EVER LEVEL TO 40 WITHOUT A MOUNT?!  MADNESS!
• Blizzard seriously needs to add Hunter loot to quest rewards, I’m sick of all this cloth and plate or spirit leather crap.
• Female dwarves have extremely bouncy boobs.  Every heard of a bra?  Seriously, ouch.

As of writing this, I’ve just hit level 36.  That’s 36 levels in only a week and a half! Not too bad for me.  Now just another 44 levels to go!  *sigh*

This is my druid, Ayrshire.  Like so many druid alts out there, I’m raising her as my  “Brajana-can’t-afford-to-buy-flasks” herbalist/alchemist!  I also rolled her because I wanted a Tauren, and Twitter voted Druid over Shaman when I polled.  The highest I’ve gotten a druid is mid-20s, but hopefully this one will make it all the way, like my paladin before her!

Walk with the Earthmother!

Notice her attractive shoulders and chest piece? Yep, they’re heirlooms.  I ran some heroics over the weekend and realized I had exactly 200 Stonekeepers Shards, and over 80 Conquest/Valor/Heroism badges.  So I rolled out the Wintergrasp to grab her Exceptional Stormshroud Shoulders, and plopped down 40 Heroism tokens for her Stained Shadowcraft Tunic.  I originally thought the chest would only be available through the Argent Tournament, but I was pleasantly surprised to learn otherwise!

I’m really happy with the heirloom system.  I think it’s a great compromise between the extremists who say “All characters should start at level 55!” and the others who say “Leveling too fast is CHEATING!”

Where do I stand?  Well, I like leveling.  But sometimes it is just too time consuming.  I don’t feel like it’s a waste of time… and while you don’t exactly learn how to play your character as you would in a level 80 raid setting, you learn invaluable lessons and know the mechanics of your abilities front-to-back, so that when you do begin to change to the raid playstyle, it’s just the way you use the abilities that you have to learn, not what each ability is for.

A 20% increase to my experience gain does give me a noticeable boost, but it’s not as extreme as just jumping straight to 80 – I still have to learn to play.

Or, What To Do When The Xbox Breaks Down.

Over the weekend, Gadgets and I were spending our time working our way through the seasons of IT Crowd.  Unfortunately, the Xbox controller decided to stop functioning (yes, I tried changing the batteries!) leaving us stuck with nothing to do.

We tried hooking up his new 24″ monitor and watching on the computer, but with a broken soundcard… it just wasn’t going to happen.  Since we didn’t have 2 computers to play alts together, we decided to play AN alt together.

We turned WoW into a 2-player cooperative game… and it was awesome.

Here’s what we did:

Grabbed a set of dice.

Rolled a d10 to pick our race.  4… Gnome it is!

Rolled a d6 to pick our class… MAGE!

While I know there is a function built in to randomize appearance, we decided to randomize manually through each feature, because it was more fun to do it one at a time.

Then we took the first randomized name that wasn’t already taken.

Meet Carapinka.

But how do you play one character with 2 people?

Easy!  Gadgets took hold of the mouse, and he was responsible for targetting and turning.

I was in command of the keyboard, responsible for casting spells and moving forward and backward.

It took a bit to get the hang of it, especially since I’m a mouse-turner and he’s a keyboard-turner… but we worked quite well together.

Once we hit level 5, it was time to choose our professions.  Get out the dice!  To avoid some horrible combination like Jewelcrafting/Blacksmithing, we decided to roll for a gathering and a crafting profession.

We pondered over the worst possible combinations… Skinning/Jewelcrafting, maybe?

While we didn’t get the best combination (probably Herbalism/Tailoring for this guy), we didn’t get the worst either… Skinning/Enchanting.

At least he’ll be able to make his own wands.

And while we haven’t reached this point yet, we do plan on randomizing our talent points… to some extent, at least.

We’re also planning to join the first guild we see recruiting players of all levels.

It was really fun, and if you’ve got someone who you normally play with, I recommend giving this a shot!   It takes a lot of teamwork, but it’s like a whole new game!

Well, I’m almost recovered from my wisdom tooth extraction!  It’s been five days, but I learned this morning that it’s still not safe to eat mini-wheats.  So I continue on my pudding and mashed potatoes diet until further notice!

I spent the last 4 days at home sitting around… playing my paladin.  Almost exclusively.  Boy oh boy, do I love playing retribution! <3

Ghugh got to run half a dozen or so Heroics, and even managed to get in on a PUG OS10 run.  He started off Thursday morning with mostly quest blues and greens, and now he’s only 1 item away from his [Superior] achievement – his Libram, which probably won’t be replaced til Naxx.

"So... what're you in for?"

I’ve also decided to spoil this kid rotten with BoE epics when I get the chance.  He’s already sporting [Spiked Titansteel Helm], [Ice Striker's Cloak], [Titansteel Destroyer] and I even spent a solid 1.5k gold on [Wristbands of the Sentinel Huntress].

Between PUGs, he’s been finishing up some questing… and I have learned how much I hate Icecrown quests.  HATE.  Some of them sound neat in concept, but they fail to mention if you don’t do it just right, YOU’RE GONNA DIE! Grrr.  And all those group quests?  Yeah, screw that.

I must admit I haven’t even logged onto Hydraxis since Tuesday’s raid… it’s been a nice break.  It’s also been interesting to see the differences in each class.  It’s great to be able to heal myself, and I feel more valuable to be able to cure diseases or whatever (you know, click the little decursive buttons when it yells at me!)  But I have yet to master the art of GTFO of Whirlwind.  Sigh.