Mend Pet

It was a holiday yesterday up here in the North, and I decided to take the day and see how far I could get my beloved Paladin.  He was all set with his Charger at level 61, ready to head to Northrend to slay demons and red Orcs.

After about 10 hours of playing yesterday, I managed to go from 61 to 64.  That’s practically halfway done Outlands!  In a day!  Hah!

I even picked up dual specs, he’s my very first character to specialize.  I made up a prot spec for his secondary talents and tried to learn what it’s like to tank as a paladin.  I haven’t had a chance to try yet, but I’m looking forward to it.

I did want to try some instancing though.  So I jumped into LFG while questing, and hoped for the best.  I get a few “u healz?” whispers, which I promptly answered no to.  Then I got an invite.

Ramps PUG attempt #1: 2 Death Knights, a Rogue, a 64 feral Druid, and me (62 Ret/Prot).

Group Leader DK asks me if I’m a healer.  I say no, I’m ret/prot.  Druid pipes up and says she can heal, she is our most viable option for healing and doesn’t mind doing it even though it’s not her main spec.  Sounds good to me!  “Who’s tanking?”  I ask.  “I’m not, DUH, I’m BLOOD I don’t tank” says Group Leader DK (this is the same guy who insists on a ret paladin healing).  I volunteer, since it’s my second spec.  “Ghugh you are HEALING.” he says.  /facepalm.  The druid and I both say that she’s volunteered and is a better option to heal.

We run to the instance.  We zone in, I Bless everyone.  “OK so Ghugh you are healing let’s go” says Group Leader DK.  I say, “Uhh… why me?”

You have been removed from the group.

…

OKAY!  Well, it probably wouldn’t have gone well anyway. A little while later, I get another group invite

Ramps PUG Attempt #2: 3 Death Knights, a DPS Warrior and me.

“We need a healer” says DPS warrior.  I tell them it’s not my spec, but I put my healing gear on and seem to heal effectively enough for a Ramps run, and the tank is 64 so that should help.  We start running off towards Ramps.  A couple of us fail to make a jump and end up splattered on the ground underneath Ramps.  We all have a good laugh, blame Crusader Aura and start the run back to our bodies.

DK #1 has left the group.

DPS Warrior has left the group.

…

OKAY!  Looks like we’re done here.  Back to questing.  I get a whisper from a healer.  He invites me to a ramps group as DPS, says he has a tank already.  That’s a good sign!  We pull a group together quickly.

Ramps PUG Attempt #3: 1 Death Knight, 1 Feral Druid, 1 Holy Priest, 1 Elemental Shaman and me.

We made it into the instance.  This is a good sign.  We pull the first group – this is the furthest any of my PUGs have gotten.  Good sign!

We make it through the run with no Deaths.  Huzzah!  Success!  I can’t say it was a perfect run, but it was something.  We all agree to go again.  This is where the problems started.  I believe the healer and tank began to get a bit cocky.  “Just chain pull” says the level 59 healer.  “Just pull the entire room” hears the 61 DK tank.

I started noticing a strange behavior.  The DK was just… standing there.  Tanking.  He used some abilities, but he was NOT auto-attacking.  I target his target – it seems he’s always got whatever mob is BEHIND him targeted.  Man, DKs must be so easy to play if you can tank without even facing your target!  Things got worse and worse – after a wipe, he pulls before the healer is even into the zone.  He pulls when no one has mana.   He facepulls and lets the ele shaman and I try to pull the adds off of the healer.

We get to Nazan… make it through the Rider’s phase pretty smoothly, but then everyone forgets the “don’t stand in the flames” rule.  Priest gos down, Shaman goes down, Druid goes down.  It’s just me, the DK and the Dragon now.  My eyes look towards the very close instance exit and I contemplate making a run for it.  But no – I’m at nearly full health and mana, I can do this!  Holy Light!  Judgement of Wisdom!  Holy Light!  Judgement of Wisdom!  Luckily I’m regenning enough mana with my Judgements to afford my big heals.  It’s a long fight, but we take him down.  Just the two of us.

Ramps PUG Attempt #3: SUCCESS!

Today’s lesson: 

There is an inverse correlation between the number of Death Knights in a PUG and the success of the PUG.

Ghugh finally pushed through the last 15% and hit level 60 last night!  I’m so proud of him… *tear*!

I am determined to do the epic mount quest.  Why?  Because it’s EPIC!  Yes, I know I can just buy the darn thing at 61.  But I had most of the mats I needed to get for the quest on me already from mining, and the boyfriend needs to run the instances on his 80 anyway, so it’s really no big deal.  The only big deal is trying to find time to run them

Ghugh has developed a nemesis though – a creature known as the Nerubian Overseer.  Nasty little bug, he is!  I was determined to kill this rare and take his pretty loots… but he does this horrible web that prevents you from attacking, moving or casting spells for 8 seconds, and he casts it over and over again.  He killed me no less than 3 times while I was on my way to work on my Paladin quest.  What a jerk.

Once I finish up my mount quest, it’s off to Outlands!  I was going to head out right when I hit 58, but I figured, I need some Argent rep for my paladin quest anyway, and I was moving along very quickly with the quests I had, so I just hung around in Winterspring and Western Plaguelands.

I’m thinking of buying dual specs for Ghugh.  I want to try my hand at tanking.  As you can see from the screenshot… my Mining/Skinning combo and my not having to pay a lot for mounts has put me in quite the advantageous position, as far as gold goes… so I can certainly afford it. But I really don’t know anything about tanking!  HALP!

I decided to hang out with Ghugh most of the weekend.  I’m finding that the more I play him, the more I love him!  Ret Paladins are so OP.

Got him from 46 to 51 this weekend, as well as a boatload of achievements.

With the help of Bellbell of 4Haelz, I was able to take a stroll through one of my favourite dungeons (we even had a picnic!)

The strangest part of my weekend though was getting the [I Found One!] achievement on Ghugh.  I didn’t bother with any of the Noblegarden stuff (already did it on Brajana and 2 other alts).  But as I was questing through Un’goro, I stumbled upon an egg.  Why would someone put an egg here? And why wouldn’t they open it up?  Who knows!  But it was about as free as an achievement can get.

I also spent some time in Alterac Valley at 51.  Determined to get my [Ice Barbed Spear], I suffered through a 50 minute Alterac Valley war of attrition.  It was painful, as the battleground was full of level 60 Death Knights decked out with 10k HP, when little me had barely 3.5k.  But I got a boatload of achievements as well as picking up the spear, so I certainly can’t complain!

Hope your weekend was as much fun as mine!

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!

Click to see the full screenshot!

My dear little Dwarf Paladin hit level 40 last night!  This makes him my 3rd character ever to make it to this point.  While it’s not quite what it used to be, now that we get mounts at 30… I still get some new shinies!

I managed to buy 4 pieces of level 40 plate gear for only 18 gold on the AH… pretty sweet deal.

I like to keep Ghugh happy with a shiny new weapon every 10 or so levels, so I replaced his Viscous Hammer with a pretty nice little gem… Darkmoon Executioner!  It comes from the Demons deck, which I picked up for just 20 gold.  I splurged when Gadgets offered to enchant it with Crusader if I only provided the Righteous Orbs… so for another 40 gold (for 2 Orbs) I’ve now got a pretty darn awesome level 40 weapon.

Plus, I think it looks really cool.  It certainly has an appropriate name!

I also replaced my… Soldier’s Wristguards of the Bear.  That’s right, I was still wearing a level 10 BoE +1 stam, +1 str.  Why?  Apparently there is a serious lack of Mail wrist armour for paladins in the quests I did.

One thing that’s nice about Ghugh not having been transferred to the new account yet… If I’m feeling particularly ludic, I can continue playing him while I am getting ready for the raid on Brajana.  Dualboxing FTW!