Mend Pet

My apologies for being missing the last few days!  I completely didn’t bother with my posts for the weekend.  I’ve got a French exam this afternoon so I’ve been studying, and even though I didn’t leave my apartment all weekend, I’ve also managed to find myself ill once again.  Here’s hoping it’s just a cold!  Spent most of the afternoon sleeping yesterday, and I feel like quite the mess today.

But here’s what I’ve been up to:

Managed to squeeze in some play time this weekend, and got my paladin up to level 45.  I’m happily going along feeling extremely overpowered, just like a good ret paladin should!  Judgement of the Wise?  Awesome.  Exorcism on every mob?  Sweet.  I’m having way too much fun getting 700 white damage crits with my Darkmoon Executioner with Crusader.

Also worked on Alouette.  She’s up to halfway through 71 already!  I’ve taken way more screenshots when leveling her than when I leveled through Northrend the first time… of course, I didn’t have the capability to have my graphics set to maximum my first time through, so I’m noticing a lot more pretty things.  I’ve decided I want to get her to 80 before working on Ferguson, so I have a second 80 to play around with when I’m bored.  Because like I mentioned before, BGs at level 70 are not fun!

Finally mastered the Grand Melee daily quest for the tournament, and picked up Lance a Lot.  The amount of rep these quests are giving is amazing!  I’ll be exalted with the Darkspear Trolls in no time!  After I do my dailies today, I’ll be moving up to the rank of Champion and be able to start earning real rewards.

After two nights battling the Loading Screen boss, Unemployed finally managed to get into Ulduar-25 on Thursday night.  It was so much fun!  I got to both drive and ride in a Salvaged Demolisher, partnered up with a good friend in the guild.  We had a few false starts in there, I think some people were just too excited – we started the whole event early, and accidentally pulled the boss a couple of times – but no one really cared because it was just so much fun riding around doing something different for a change!

One thing I didn’t like was trying to shoot down the blue power boost thingies during the boss fight.  You can only target the little propeller – and by the time I could get one targeted it would always end up outside my shooting range.  I’ll probably get the hang of it though!

Once we got that guy down, we decided to try Razorscale.  We didn’t really have much of a plan, since that night was more of an exploration night than anything else, but we still had some pretty good attempts.  We tried to develop different strategies as far as the adds went, and I got to practice using Silencing Shot.  We never managed to get him to phase 2, but I think we’ll get it pretty quickly next time.

And the Unemployed Top Chef Cooking Contest has ended!  I haven’t really written about it yet.. but later this week I’m going to post the recipes and rules up for anyone who is intested in it.  I got second place!  Woohoo!

In the switch of accounts, I ended up having to delete all of my alts, since I wouldn’t be transferring them.  Not wanting to waste a copper, I made sure to empty out all their bags, sell everything sellable (even the bags themselves) and send everything of remote value to my communal bank alt.

I had a lot of alts at various stages of the game.  Ferguson still had his stockpile of Outlands herbs that I didn’t bother selling when they were hot on the market.  Some of my alts had gathered mats they’d saved up.

It all resulted in this:

Can you identify all the crap?

There’s at least 2 more mails of stuff in his mailbox as well.  I’ve realized I’m going to need to save up a lot of money for Ferguson – if I’ve done my math correctly, dual-specs and fully mountifying (without faction discounts) is gonna knock me back 8645 gold.  Holy crap.

So, I decided to drop everything I can possible sell on the auction house.

I put up 102 auctions on Tuesday night, and vendored a bunch of stuff I figured wouldn’t sell.

My vacuous bank.

Ahh, that’s much better!

At the same time, I’m also testing out my new snazzy Auction House mod, AuctionLite, which I discovered through Ithato on No Stock UI! (Check it out!)

So far the mod has proven useful.  I’ve used Auctioneer before, but there was a bunch I didn’t understand and didn’t use.  About halfway through posting my stuff, I got pretty lazy and just let AuctionLite do most of the pricing for me. And it seemed to work out okay.

As of this morning, I’ve made 942 gold from the stuff I put up, and there’s still 33 auctions left that expire tonight.  It’s certainly a start!

So apparently I’m acquiring a backlog of memes, thanks to my dear Fausley at Master’s Call!

Better get them over with and pass them along.

What’s in a Name?

I believe the plan here is to explain the origin and meaning behind my characters names.  I kind of covered this in the previous post (7 Questions) as well as in my Cheesecake post… but there’s always more detail I can cover… repetition FTW!  I’ll go through all four of my currently active characters, from both an in-character and out-of-character perspective if applicable.  Heck, I’ll even provide a pronunciation guide!

Brajana [Brah-jah-nuh] (the j is like Rajah not Jalepeno or Adjacent)

(IC) This name was handed down from Brajana’s grandmother on her father’s side, as is tradition with the Darkspear Trolls.  It means ‘woman of the rain’, which is fitting for her striking blue hair and skin.

(OOC) Honestly, I don’t remember.  It was like… 3 years ago!  I believe it was some combination of messing with the random name generator and making something that sounded nice.  I also wanted to make sure people could shorten it without much trouble (Braj).

Ferguson [Fer-guh-sun]

(IC) Named for his father, who was lost in the war.

(OOC) I wanted a human-ish name that could be used as both a first and last name.  I had one picked out, and it was pretty perfect too… but it was taken and it’s since been expelled from my memory.  I got the name by looking over the last names of authors on my bookshelf – Ian & Ferguson were the exact source.

Alouette [Aloo-et]

(IC) Named so for her playful and trickster-like nature.  Even from a young age, it was clear that this would be a strong part of her personality.

(OOC) Her name was originally Pixxel, which was Pixel from the RNG with an extra x since the other was taken. Then her name was Brajana, for a few short levels when I transferred to Dark Iron.  Then I felt I needed her to develop her own personality, and so I started trying to think of a name.  One day I had the Canadian folk song “Alouette” in my head and I decided to just go with that, hoping it’d get it out of my head.  Of course it did the opposite, and now everytime I log into my Mage I get it once again stuck in my head!

“Alouette” means skylark in French.  skylark is named so for it’s tricksy, playful, frolicky nature.  I think it’s quite appropriate!

Ghugh [Guhh]

(IC/OOC)  Yeah, no.  Don’t ask.  I don’t know where it comes from, it just sounded good at the time for a paladin I never planned on playing past level 12.  But it’s grown on me!

Yes, it’s just pronounced like it looks.  Yes, I put 2 h’s in the pronunciation key, because just 1 didn’t do it justice.

Someone asked me the language of origin once, I said English.  They asked me if I could use it in a sentence.

“Ghugh!  I was just killed by that ret pally again!”

So, who to tag? Tagging is such a froward task for me… I have a nasty habit of tagging those who have already been tagged or already done the meme… so if you have an I somehow missed it… sorry!

Well, I’m gonna tag my GM Pilsner at From Cow to Chicken, just because I kind of already know where her name came from.   Also Cait from One Among Many… I’m sure she’s got some interesting stories for all those characters.  And also Neg/Neggles/Negathle at The Angry Butterfly!

I have a habit of tagging people who have already been tagged or done the meme… so if you have and I somehow missed it, sorry!

Instead of talking about the upcoming patch 3.1, I have decided to outline the weekend I had because I know that you all care much more about my alts than some silly patch!

I was hoping to level my priest a bit, but when I logged in and jumped in the LFG for The Nexus and Utgarde Keep, I was just flooded with “LF DPS for Nexus!” and “Need tank for UK then GTG!”

…

No one ever needs healers when I’m around!

So Ghugh finally made the jump to Dark Iron (PvP) this weekend!  But only after I had Gadgets help me transfer all the Alliance-only recipes I could get my little Dwarven hands on over to Brajana.  I stocked him up with some goodies and sent him on his marry way to join the rest of my Alliance crew.

He also has reached the respectable level of 32!  Which means… [Giddy Up!] and [Summon Warhorse]! I am still tempted to spend the extra gold and get him a Ram instead… man, I love those Rams!

And I’ve started following Jame’s Leveling Guide for the first time.  I’ve never used a guide before, and it’s been hard for me quash the urge to grab every single quest in a new zone… but I can not deny the effectiveness of the guide!

Ghugh even managed to get [An Honorable Kill]!  I was innocently killing turtles in Shimmering Flats when a sneaky undead rogue tried to stab me in the back.  But I showed him!  Okay, I did have to use Lay On Hands… and that’s kinda like cheating but… Meh!   I was still proud.

And even though Sunday is not one of our usual “alt nights”, Tegrin (Gadgets) and Alouette finally hit the big SEVEN-OH!  It was a painful last 15% experience… trying to do the stupid Tuber quest… but it was very exciting to finally get there.  And Alouette promptly spent all her gold on a [Snowy Gryphon].  The Alliance flying mounts are so pretty, especially compared to the Horde ones, it was difficult to choose.

I started a new alt this weekend, but I do not want to talk about her.  She’s a secret.

I also vacuumed my apartment.

It was a highly productive weekend.

It has always been my philosophy that you should spend talent points the way you’d like.  Don’t just use some cookie-cutter spec – and if you do, make sure you understand every point and why it’s most valuable there.

Well, I’ve decided to play around with my talents on my mage.  It’ll be her very first respec – at level 69.

While I’ve tried (with little effort or result) to look for some good posts on which talents are most valuable to for a mage who’s leveling, I’ve decided to just go with my gut and what works best for my play style.

What is my play style? Well, Alouette doesn’t really do instances, and she has a permanent leveling partner.  A protection warrior.  Leveling a mage on her own and leveling with your own personal tanking pet (tee hee, don’t tell Tegrin I called him that!) it’s quite a different ball game.

Currently, Alouette’s spec is like this:  0/60/0 (FIRE!). When I made my mage, all I knew was this:  I wanna set stuff on fire.  So what did I do for her first 69 levels?  dump my points in every talent I saw that said anything along the lines of “Increases damage” or “Increases crit”.

It’s hard not to build my mage that way… and it’s hard to see any reason on putting my talents in either of the other trees.  After all, the abilities buffed by the first tier of talents in Arcane and Frost are abilities I don’t even keep on my main bar.

But now I’ve got through the talents and changed them around to accommodate for my new leveling companion.  And this is what I’ve decided to go with: 10/50/0.

Let me explain the changes I’ve made.

Arcane Stability 5/5 (added): I want some stuff from the 2nd and 3rd tier, and need to put these points somewhere.  This made sense because it might come in handy in PvP (Dark Iron is a PvP server).

Arcane Concentration 5/5 (added): Free spells is quite nice to have.  Sure, I can drink my conjured water and use my evocation between fights, but the less downtime I have while working my way up, the better.

Flamethrowing (removed): When I’ve got a meat shield with me, it’s not really necessary for me to be miles from the mob.  I can shoot them just fine from right behind the big Night Elf.

Impact (removed): I loved this one when I was leveling solo, but it seems unnecessary when I have someone taking the hits anyway, and he’s got his own, talentless stuns.

Burning Soul (removed): I’m not taking hits much, so pushback resistance isn’t that useful.  The 10% threat decrease is nice, but I’ve already got Vigilence on me constantly and as long as I don’t open with a pyro, I generally don’t pull aggro.

Molten Fury (removed): With 2 people hitting them, mobs die pretty quickly once they are down to 35%, an extra 12% is just overkill!

Living Bomb (removed): I’m still debating this one.  I never use it… like, never.  Because rarely do mobs live 12 whole seconds, and we tend to take them on 1 at a time.  Sure there’s the DoT, but I can do the total DoT damage with one Fireball.  I will probably pick this one up as I get a little further into the 70s.

So, that’s the extent of my changes.  What’s next for Alouette?  Where will the rest of her points go?

Well, I’m looking at Spell Impact in the Arcane tree for my next 3 points.  Living Bomb after that.  And then, I might delve a bit deeper into the Arcane tree to pick up Arcane Meditation.

I know this spec I’ve designed is pretty specific to my personal situation, but that’s what specializations are about.

If anyone’s got any little mage advice they’d like to share… now would be the time!