Level 80! Ding!

8 Hours into 80 and I know that this expansion is different.

8 hours into level 70 what were you doing? Probably not much of anything, doing a few regular instances, maybe grind some bg's, or work on some bop crafted gear. Possibly working on getting your gear "raid ready" (read: HITCAP). You were not doing heroics. You were not raiding unless you had a hardcore guild outfitted in full t3. Revered was a bit of a grind even for the hardcore. Moving the rep requirement to honored made things a bit easier, but even honored was not automatic with all factions.

I am 8 hours into level 80 and I have a solid epic weapon: Titansteel Destoyer That was crafted BOE none the less. I was already hit capped for raiding when I hit 80 thanks to some decent blue drops. I have already cleared some heroics.(With probably the worst other 2 dps ever. 3 of 4 bosses ended with myself, the tank, and healer dropping the last 100k+ health) Cleared a 25 man raid boss. Speaking of that raid boss, Archevon is EASY, outfitted in my blues and new found titansteel destroyer I easily surpassed the 1600 personal dps needed to beat the enrage timer. My luck with rolls continues to be above average and I am now proud owner of Deadly Gladiator's Dreadplate Chestpiece. WARNING INCOMING VANILLA WOW ANECDOTE:

Getting that chest on my first run in a raid instance reminds of my first run of Scholomance at level 59. first time killing Ras Frostwhisper a super rare epic chest piece drops and I win the roll, saving me months of raiding or grinding mats for robe of the void.

There we have it, 8 hours into 80 and I already have 2 gear pieces that should last for months. My gear is ready to go for dpsing heroics or raids. That is pretty good compared to TBC.

My tank gear has not been going as well as my dps gear, I am still almost 50 defense below the uncritable mark so I have yet to tank a heroic. I am working on a few rep grinds to round out my tanking gear. The new + defense sigal, and rune forge enchant will go a long way into getting me into that tanking role.

I also plan on starting arena's this week with either the doctor or a resto druid that I used to arena with. So expect a Death Knight centered pvp article in the coming week(s)


In response to the Doctor's Random thoughts on everything 80...

I am feeling a bit of what the Doctor and Potts are. Overwhelmed may be the right word. So much to do once you hit 80. For the first half hour I kind of just wandered around aimlessly in the looking for group channel. Did I want to run heroics? Start the pvp grind? Quest for rep? Farm mats for crafted gear? I think for gearing up most efficiently you will want to do a bit of everything. I know that after seeing what a loot pinata the Wintergrasp boss is I will be doing that as often as I can. I would also love to get into a Naxx group or two. Even an extra 20 hours of playtime a week doesn't seem like it would be enough to do EVERYTHING in WotLK. I think one thing leading to this feeling is the fact that blizzard has opened up the game so much more for everyone. When I hit level 70, I knew immediately to start on the pvp grind. I did not play enough to see much more than Karhzan (and that was WAY after it became farm status) So wasting my play time trying to get my gear on par for raiding seemed like a waste. I wasn't going to spend hours grinding rep to make it into a heroic. The path I was going to take out was pretty much laid out for me before I even hit 70. With the way blizzard has made the game accessible to everyone it gives us way more options to choose from. No longer is there a huge starting barrier to 3/4's of the content at 80. As soon as you hit 80 you have a plethora of options and it can leave everyone feeling like they need more time to play.

Have a SAFE and happy new year!

The Year at Glance...in regrads to WoW that is...

Morning blog lovers


It is the last day of the year and time to say PEACEOUT to 2008. Time for reflection and resolutions.


I am going to keep this post short so you can take the next 2-3 minutes reflecting on the past year, instead to waste your time reading my boring ramblings and use your time more wisely lol.


A couple of topics to think about while reflecting on the pass year....

• Did I spend more time/effort playing WoW in 2008 then I should have or thought you would?


• Your favorite WoW moment or story...


• Goals. Did I set any that I have not yet completed yet? Remember that level 30 something toon you stopped leveling??? lol


• What is your best guess on how much gold you have made?


• What is your best guess on how much gold was completely wasted? (dumb things that you never used, power leveling a profession and then deleting it a couple days later for another one, ect)


• Overall feeling about your World....................of warcraft

A couple of topics to think about while thinking of things to come in '09

• How many level 80's will I have this time next year?


• Is this the year to break the addiction - Will I still be playing WoW by the end of '09??


• Should I reroll to a different server? Different faction?


• What are some of my current goals in my slice of the World........................of warcraft

I will share mine and I hope you do the same...

1. Did I spend more time/effort playing WoW in 2008 then I should have or thought you would? Yes, I always end up spending more time playing WoW that I would like to....Don't we all?
   


2. Your favorite WoW moment or story - So many good ones! One of them is when I was on my mage in AV. We won and I had 80 something killing blows and 1 death. I felt like a WoW GOD lol - its amazing what a pocket healer and an AoE class can do lol
   


3. Did I set any that I have not yet completed yet? Who hasn't? I have set plenty of goals that I have not accomplished, but I will say that I have completed the majority of them.
   


4. What is your best guess on how much gold you have made? O man, I have probably collectively earned over 20 thousand gold if I had to guess.
   


5. What is your best guess on how much gold was completely wasted? Ouch, probably close to 5-6 thousand. I am pretty bad at hording gold.
   


6. Overall feeling about your World.......of warcraft? Overall I feel great about WoW. I took about 4 months from the game this year, leveled numerous alts, its been really fun and entertaining for me I have to say.
   


7. How many level 80's will I have this time next year? More then likely, I will have atleast 4 80 characters. At the minimum I will have 3.
   


8. Is this the year to break the addiction - Will I still be playing WoW by the end of '09? Quite possibly, but I have been saying that for the pass 3 years. Who knows what the future holds for my in '09. I am in a transition period in my life and depending on which path I take will dictate if I still play WoW. Simple answer is if I am still having fun with the game, there will always be room for WoW.
   


9. Should I reroll to a different server? Different faction? That might be fun...highly highly doubtful. I am on a server with a bunch of real life friends so I don't see that happening.
   


10. What are some of my current goals in my slice of the World...of warcraft? I think my main goal has never changed, have fun. No matter if I am leveling fishing or raiding heroic Arthas, fun is the main key.
    

So there you have it! What are yours?

I hope everyone has a good and SAFE New Years and I will see you guys next year!

Random thoughts on everything 80....

• As a casual player, I am having alot of trouble finding enough time to get things accomplished in game.
  
  
• The past couple weeks I think I have crossed the threshold of causal player to semi-hardcore player. I haven't decided if this is a good or a bad thing, but I am leaning towards bad.
  


• Raiding in Wrath has been enjoyable for the most part. My favorite part about raiding is actually getting to see the content. Purples are always fun, but there is something about seeing and actually playing the content that makes raiding worth it to me.
  
  
• I need a new dps meter. I am not sure what mine is called but it has been getting some wild numbers lately. Any recommendations?
  
  
• As far as I know, there isn't any Tuesday maintenance on 12/30/08. This means that the upcoming patch, 3.0.8, will not be going live. I could be wrong, but they usually post it before I leave for work and I checked right before I left.
  
  
• Voidwalker boss in Violet Hold is hard to do on heroic when two of your dps are doing below 800 dps. After 4 wipes I left the group, I am too broke to be paying for repair bills. It was the second day in a row that I fail the heroic daily due to things out of my control.
  
  
• Wintergrasp is WILD. The only time I did it was with some of my guildies to open the 10 and 25 man instance and I must say...WTFlag. We had 6 FULL raid groups attacking this place through a single hole. I was amazed that we ended up taking it and overall I will give it a 8.5 out of 10.
  
  
• This Wintergrasp raid, The Vault, is very simple. Reminds me of Gruuls except much easier. Three trash pulls and bam, boss time. Tank and spank with a enrage time of 5 minutes. Its a dps race, so pew pew and burn him down. Collect your random piece of T7 and on your way.
  
  
• Even though we did it with no drakes, Obsidian Sanctum was alot of fun. Well tuned fight in my opinion, GGBlizzard
  
  


• Did Naxxramas for the very first time today. Did very well in the short time we had.
  
  
• Cleared the Spider and 2/3rds of the Plauge quater. Of course I didn't get any loot, I completely fail at getting drops, but it was really fun to see how everything looked and how the fights were.
  
  
• CoH priests do so much healing its REDONKEYOUS. Two restro shaman, similar skilled and geared, were getting DOUBLED by the CoH priest in regards to overall healing in Nax. DOUBLED! WTFspaghetti is up with that uh? I remember reading something that said they are going to get nerf because of this and I didn't understand until now...good lord.
  
  
• When the expansion first came out, I created and play a DK for the first two days. Since then I have not touched him and I am starting to get an itch to play him again. I dont know if I really want to with my pally and mage sitting in Northrend with full blue bars. I need to do some deep soul searching with this!
  
  

Quote of the Day
"If we couldn't laugh, we would all go insane"
- Jimmy Buffet

Song of the day
Shine
Cashmoney Millionaires
2001

Monday Morning Warcraft - Level 80 - Heroics?, Raids?, PvP?...What now?

Monday Morning Warcraft is a weekly post that illustrates random thoughts and events that occurred over the weekend in the life of a wowhead. Feel free to e-mail me with questions, suggestions, hate mail, ect... mlange0385 at yahoo dot com

Morning blog lovers!

Welcome to Monday, the crappiest day of the week in my opinion. It is especially wonderful when its the Monday after a long weekend, which is was of course. So make sure to take some Tylenol for those eggnog hangovers, some Pepto-Bismol from Aunt Kathy's special pie, and plenty of coffee so you can stay awake and pretend to read this post. =P

I hope everyone had a good holiday and was safe.

On that note, lets get this post going, WTFspaghetti style!

As you probably already know, thank you to everyone that commented, I hit 80 Friday with my restro shaman. First things first, I went to my trainer and spent about 450 gold on new ranks of my spells. I know Blizzard has made gold 300% more available, but 450 gold new ranks of spells! I mean come on! I have money to spend on gear, gyphs, professions, pots, ect. I really hated that I had to spend so much, but it had to be done.

Next thing I do is equip some of my level 80 blues and vendor'd the old ones. I went to the AH and cycled through my gear, checking for upgrades and gauging if it is worth spending the money on them.

I finally find a leatherworker that can make a starter pvp set, stormhide. Got a couple of pieces so at least I have some sort of resilience and won't completely be destroyed by a death knight.....

....Now sometimes I can last long enough to run away lol. That isn't here or there though, so back to the story...

Then I found myself sitting in Org thinking "What the hell do I do now?" I mean seriously lol, what do I do? Nothing came to mind. I spent so much energy into leveling that I had no plans on what I need to do when I have reached the max level, 80.

I have pretty solid gear to start healing some heroics, but I was a little intimidated. Nonetheless, I got in a group for heroic Gun'drak. I know healing this instance on regular was a cake walk and it is fairly quick, win win right?

So wrong...we tried 6 times and we couldn't take down the first boss. I was pretty upset and had some errands to run, so I logged. When I logged back on, I got in a group for heroic UK. I thought to myself, perfect. Heroic UK is pretty simple, atleast that is the word on the streets. Well the tank was taking a crazy amount of burst dmg and I was going through alot of mana each pull. To make a long story short, we didn't even make it to the second boss.

So now I am super down on myself. I ended up bidding way too much for my taste on Zom's Crackling Bulwark, 1500 gold. It was just my luck that I won that bid and after some thoughts and discussion from guildies, I equip it.

I was so confused on what I should do or what I am doing wrong, gear wise or skill wise. I sought out advice at the good old wow forums. I got about 10 or so replies back saying that I should be find healing most of the heroics and that I must have gotten a bad group or a tank that is critable.

So I was once again motivated to try out healing a heroic. The daily was Halls of Stone and I am proud to say it went MUCH better. We had a few issues but...






Yay for me right? My confidence is restored /dance

Going back to my question, what to do now? I plan on doing a little bit of everything, arenas, heroics, raiding, but I must say I am a little sad that the leveling process is over. Being max level and doing "big boy" stuff is great fun. However, leveling in Wrath has been a blast and there are plenty of zones that I skipped to save for leveling my alts. I don't know how much time I will really spend on my level 80 toon, only time will tell.

~Monday Morning Madness~

1. I need cash money people, I have been spending entirely too much money lately. Just on my shaman, not counting repairs, or trainable spells, I have probably spent 8000 gold! That is redonkeyous for my casual playing self.
   
   
2. What is going on with the lack of high level leatherworkers? Has anybody else notice this? There are definitely fun goodies that will make you a pretty penny selling on the Auction House. Good example would be the Stomhide pvp set and Revenant Chest and boots. That's just shamans! You still have druids, rogues, and hunters gear you can make and sell for a nice profit. Not to mention some pretty neat armor enchants.
   
   
3. After reading the above number 2, I have decided to make my Death Knight a leatherworker / skinner lol.
   
   
4. I was talking with a friend that plays Moonkin (aka Doomkin) earlier today. He says he pulls 4k dps in most encounters including Malygos. Now, I do think he was talking out his a%# a little bit...but I believe he is pulling very close to 4k dps. As someone that plays a mage, I am a little erk'd that a druid can almost DOUBLE my dps output at 80. Now, of course I am only going off other mages comments on what their dps output is at end game because my mage is only 75. It is still rather disturbing...Blizzard needs to L2balance a little better.
   
   
5. Paladins are great raid healers. In our last 10 man raid, our paladin was atop of our healing charts (I know you can't go by them, but still something to be said and noted).
   
   
6. Paladins are not made for 5 man group healing. Wrath has made it alot easier for Paladins to deal with aoe dmg (every heroic) but they are still lacking greatly compared to every other healing class.
   
   
7. Did Heroic Halls of Lighting today and made it to the last boss, Loken, without any wipes. We then died 4 times before the group disbanded due to the fact that his aoe hits everyone for 14-15k hit points and noone grasped the concept to run away. Either way, I never going back in there on heroic mode. I rather do something else, like eat some vegetables or clean the house.
   
   
8. Hit revered today with Wyrmrest for the head enchant. Due to all of the money I have been spending, I wouldn't bring myself to buy it just yet. Going to start working on The Knights of the Ebon Blade faction. They have a pretty solid healing cloak and I definitely need one. It is the only piece of 70 gear I have not upgraded yet in Wrath.
   
   
9. "Gnome Warrior is an Oxymoron" gets the WTFspaghetti shout out of the week! That is right, I just created it and G.W.I.A.O is definitely deserving. Go check out his site, he has alot of good reads.
   
   
10. On a totally unrelated note, UFC's Supercard this past Saturday was freaking amazing. Sugar Evans is a certified bad dude. Also, the NFL playoffs have been decided. I can't believe that Atlanta and Miami are in the playoffs and my beloved Rams didn't even win 3 games. /sadpanda
    

So on that note, I will end this post. Thanks for reading, I am WTFout!

Ding! 80

Now for the real game.....stay tuned =D

Christmas Update

This is dedication folks. Taking time out from opening gifts and chugging eggnog to reach out and wish my fellow blog lovers a Merry Christmas.

Actually, what happened was the good Doctor locked me in his elf-run sweatshop on Christmas Eve. He promised me I would get to see my family; as long as the blog was updated and gets at least 2 comments. So I need your help people!

I hope your holidays are going well. My girlfriend and I bought a 37 inch LCD HDTV for each other as our main gift. It is a ridiculous upgrade. Our old TV was between 19 and 21 inches. That's greens to purples folks!

Unfortunately I am still level 79. At this point I have pretty much stopped quest grinding and started to run instances for the last half a level of experience. I figure I want to be at or very near the Defense Cap at 80 so I can start tanking heroics ASAP.The only thing holding me back is the holiday rep grind with the in-law faction!

My gear has steadily improved and I now have an almost full tank set, only 3 items do not have defense on them. The new tanking rune should go a long way into making me uncritable. 25 defense is worth roughly 130 defense rating, not to mention the 2% Stam bonus.

I am really looking forward to gearing up and becoming an unkillable wall of death and metal.

That's it for today folks, Merry Christmas and Happy New Year

Merrymaker Christmas!

Ho Ho Ho blog lovers!

Just wanted to wish a merry holidays and to be safe!

Oh and this





BAM!!

Do you remember CC?

As another group barreled its way through a WotLK dungeon like a bull in a china shop, a fond remembrance of days past crept into my head.

LFM DPS/CC would ring through the worldwide looking for group channel.

Disodium (my retired warlock) earned his place on runs by being the CC master. Sure a Mage was a bit more reliable with his sheep, However could a Mage keep 3 things cc'd at once? Maybe even more than that for a limited time. Seduce one, fear one, howl of terror one. Juggle more than one mob with fear and curse of exhaustion. The ability to flawlessly CC made my warlock more desirable than a less skilled lock on an instance run.

The toughness of individual pulls was measured by how many mobs you had to pull. A CC class was mandatory. Now and days it is pretty much assumed you are just going to waltz through the instance burning down however many mobs you can pull at once, If the tank dies its the healers fault or the tank is under-geared.

Now I am not 80 yet, but I think its safe to assume we will not be doing these mass pulls in heroics or raids. Are the regular instances teaching us all to play like noobs? When is the last time you saw a Hunter Ice Trap? That to me was always the measure of a skilled hunter, how well they could cc via traps. Now it is hard to get a quick read on the skill of your group, because it doesn't take much skill to spam blizzard or volly.

I enjoy the casual approach and it is quick and easy to just roflstomp groups of mobs at a time, but it might take away some of the fun. I know it's not as fun to spam seed of corruption as it was to micro-manage my various CC abilities. Maybe this is why we don't see as many warlocks as we used to.

What do you think? Any of you Mages miss your sheep spell?

T.M.B - Achievements galore, Sholazar Basin rep, and the home stretch...

Morning blog lovers,

I am sad to say but it has been confirmed. On 12/23/09, servers will be down for weekly maintenance. I was surprised...I was hopeful that the servers would be up in the morning. However, Blizzard posted it around 10:30pm CST last night and I must say, it was a let down. Now I have to do actual adult things instead of being lazy and playing wow. You know....myspace, watching tv, those kinda things.

So lets get down to business - WTFspaghetti style!

First off, I would like to point out some changes that I did to the site.

I added our resident death knight, "P", to the armory links. Last I check he was 79 and will probably beat me to 80. That is unless I turn ninja and play 10 hours straight. Good thing him beating me to 80 isn't a big deal to me. If it was though, I would have a pretty pissed off lady friend...that much is certain =P

I am not a big achievement nut, but this past weekend I got a crazy amount of achievements. Most of it was due to the Winter Veil event, but even if you take that away. I still had a pretty outrageous number of achievements completed.

Here is a quick sampling of them

You might be wondering why there is only 2 leaders of the Alliance instead of 4. That is because our raid was pretty sad and immature. What can you except from a 40 man pug on a Saturday evening right lol?

It was pretty fun, brought back some good memories of 40 man raids. This one had a new feeling to me due to the fact that I have never healed in a 40 man raid. I have only been the tank back in the day of vanilla wow. Chain heal + 40 man raid = top of the healing charts by 10%

If you raided in vanilla wow or consider yourself a wow veteran, check out this post from myself a few months back. You will probably enjoy it, atleast I hope =D

Sholazar Basin Rep

Sholazar Basin has two factions that you can choose, The Oracles and the Frenzyheart. After looking at what both factions offer us from their quatermaster, I was not impressed at all. Do not get me wrong, both sides have some pretty nice gear, but that is the problem. The gear is only decent and can easily be upgraded from blue crafted and 5 man dungeon gear.

Both sides have a different Jewcrafting design for all you JCer's out there, but that is really it in regards to character enhancements. Now, you might be saying to yourself..

"Why in the world would I want rep there, there is no point!"

...Let me explain. First, there are dailies to be unlocked. Dailies are easy and they provide good gold, so that is one positive for choosing a side.

The really cool thing about both of these factions is that you will receive a special item. Once you hit revered with The Oracles, you can buy one of their "Eggs". This "egg" will hatch in 7 days and has the chance to turn into a MOUNT!

Woah right? pretty neat in my opinion. Check out this page for more details on them.

The Frenzyheart Tribe doesn't have a cool egg like the Oracles, but they do have a faction reward called "Disgusting Jar". This allows you to turn yourself into a Wolvar and look just like all of your other Frenzyheart Tribe members. The item doesn't have any charges, so you can use it however many times you want. The illusion lasts for 5 minutes and has a cool down of 30 minutes. Check out their page for more details

Personally, I am a mount freak. I enjoy collecting them so my choice was obvious, the murloc wannabe's are my new ally.

The home stretch...

I am about 2 bars away from 79 and it is really time for me to buckle down and hit 80. My gear for my shaman is excellent. After I get some enchants and a pair of boots crafted, I should be good to go for Naxxramas. My guild is planning their first run sometime next week and I for one can not wait to see the new content.

The loot is always good, but really I enjoy seeing new content and the raiding atmosphere. Nothing like the first time you attempt a boss, pretty exciting stuff if you ask me.

Until then, let your loot be fat and your repair bills cheap. I'm WTFout

Monday Morning Warcraft - 3.08 Death Knight Tanking, Winter Veil, and other random junk...

Monday Morning Warcraft is a weekly post that illustrates random thoughts and events that occurred over the weekend in the life of a wowhead. Feel free to e-mail me with questions, suggestions, hate mail, ect... mlange0385 at yahoo dot com

Morning blog lovers!

Nothing like a weekend filled with over crowed stores, redonkious check out lines, -10 degree weather, and my drink of choice - Crown w/coke. Even after all of that I still have a couple things still on my list to get. Thinking about the actual event of going shopping makes my mind hurt. I much rather sit at home, in the warmth, relax, and play my favorite addiction...World of Warcraft.

So lets get into it shall we? WTFspaghetti style!

Last week I took a break from the level grind to 80 and decided to complete the holiday event, Winter's Veil. I am happy to announce that I am completely done with all of the achievements that are currently unlocked. However, this was by far the most time consuming event that I have done.

You see, 90% of the event was very simple. Really not time consuming, but did required some running around and doing some errands. No biggie in my opinion. However, there are two achievements that required some major time invested for the average wow player, Fa-la-la-la-Ogri'la and Winter Veil Gourmet.

Fa-la-la-la-Ogri'la requires you to complete a simple daily - Bomb them again! in Ogri'la. No big deal right? In order to do this quest you must complete a chain of 10 quests. The kicker is that 5 of the quests require you to kill a 72 elite and one out of those five requires 5 people in a group. You need the 5 people to summon one of the elites.

Fun stuff right?

Choir?

WTFspaghetti Choir - DAAMMN__RIIIGGHHTTT!

Love those guys, good people. As I was saying...

Winter Veil Gourmet has you use your culinary skills to create some holiday goodies. Gingerbeard cookies, egg Nnog, and hot apple cider. To make gingerbeard cookies and egg nog, you need to level cooking to skill level 35. (Takes about 15 minutes) Here is the kicker, you need a skill level of 325 in order to make the hot apple cider!

Don't be like me and think that its a good idea to level fishing with cooking because "you might as well". No, no, no....fishing takes more time then you realize and is very, very, slow to skill up. I stopped leveling fishing at 250. I continued on with the cooking and made the 325 very quickly.

To my surprise, I am actually a little sad that it is all over and I have to start the grind to 80 again. I had alot of fun running around the old zones that I used to frequently roam. Killing lowbies allies, soloing Dire Maul East for a stupid cooking recipe that I didn't even need, (read outdated cooking leveling guide) and just laughing at myself for leveling fishing and cooking when I am not even 80.

It was fun, what can I say? In other news....

I am rather intrigued with WTFspaghetti's own P's post about Death Knight tanking. As a healer, I have had all three specs as my tanks in groups I have been on. If I had to rate them in order from easiest to hardest to heal it would be...

Frost, Unholy, Blood

...However, after reading P's post and looking at the elitist jerks forum. I am beginning to think that blood is the best tree to go down for tanking. I am still not convinced, but I am sure that P will do some testing of his own and report back to us.

~Monday Morning Madness~

• Ran Halls of Stone and Halls of Lighting over the weekend. I must say that they were both very fun and very eye catching. Halls of Stone really got my attention with its cool looking environment exciting story line. What can I say, I am a noob like that =P
  
  
• Halls of Lighting was very challenging for a 77-78 healer. Don't get me wrong, I was able to complete every run I did this weekend. However, it got pretty stressful during the last two bosses.
  
  
• Speaking of the bosses in Halls of Lighting, Lokan is a tricky, fight. I am glad that I have an AoE healing spell because the only way we took him down was to stack up on the tank. I just binded every key to chain heal and rolled my face on the keyboard repeated for 3 minutes and BAM - phat loot =P
  
  
• I got promoted to an Officer in my guild on Sunday. Not sure how to take it because we are such a layed back, casual guild. We did raid before the xpan and currently have plans to raid, but I don't know. I feel to be successful some changes have to occur. If they made me an officer, they should assume that I am going to push for some change and make my voice heard, hopefully they will take it well.
  
  
• I have a four day weekend coming up and I am super stoked about it. The goal is to be 80 by Saturday, 12/27. I will keep you informed of course!
  
  
• Crafted gear is your friend. For every class there are 2 to 3 items that can be crafted that are a great baseline for raiding in Nax. If you want to be proactive, go to wowhead and take a look at some of the new craftable gear that would suite you best. I know for myself I am going to have my chest and feet crafted for around 400-500 gold. Not bad at all considering dailies and various other ways to make that CASHMONEY.
  
  

So there you have it. If you have read this far down the post I would like to thank you for reading. If you feel like you can add something to the blog, spice things up a bit, I am always up for ideas. I would love to hear from somebody that would like to make a weekly post about a certain class or topic. So let your thoughts be heard! Get in contact with me, in game or e-mail.

Blood Tanking

This question was posed to me in the comments section of my last article:
"What other neat/essential tanking talents are you giving up in order to but at least 36 talent points into blood?"

The short answer; Almost nothing.

The truth of the matter is that every essential tanking talent, aside from your cooldowns, come in the first tier of every tree. With just 5 points invested into each tree you come away with 10% to parry while your blood runes are on cooldown, 15% more armor from items, and 5% to dodge. After those first 15 points each tree has its own 1 minute cooldown tanking ability. Blood has Vampiric Blood (which I discussed in my last article). Frost has Unbreakable Armor, Unholy has Bone Shield. As of right now, Unbreakable armor gives you 25% more armor, 10% more strength, and 5% more parry all for 20 seconds of every minute. Bone Shield gives you 5 (when glyiphed) bones that swirl around you offering 40% damage reduction as long as a bone is still active, and each hit makes you lose a bone. Bonesheild lasts a minimum of 12 seconds and can last a pretty good chunk of time depending on how many attacks you can dodge and parry. All of these seem pretty equal right now, maybe even vamp blood is on the low end of usefulness.

That should all change with 3.0.8.


I also have some nice links for all you aspiring Death Knights.

Elitist Jerks Forums - Death Knights class mechanics forum. Home of great theorycrafters and math geeks that do the dirty work to tell us what works best.

Over at Lichborne (wow insiders DK blog) they have a great article about the different reputations of WotLK and what you will want to grind to gear up your Death Knight. As well as another supremly helpful guide for basic defense gearing of your DK.

For you PvP Death Knights (and any pvp nut in general) we have Arena Junkies. As with all arena junkies forums the DK forum has a lot of crap to wade through, but you can really find some gems of great pvpers sounding off on their thoughts about DK pvp.

I think it would be negligent of me to post links without including the only other wow blog aside from WTFspaghetti that I read daily. World of Ming is what you would get if you took the wow general forums and combined them with TMZ and the Jerry Springer show. Non-stop E-drama concerning "wow arena celebritys" mixed with QQ and even some occasional quality insight into wow pvp. Best (or maybe just most) trolls on the web. Even if the article sucks the sideshow that is the comments section is always worth a chuckle. All run by the "Rogue Hero" Ming. With a lisp, heavy asian accent, and an imaginary wife the comedy practily writes itself.

Thats it for now, I am level 78 pushing to 80. Gotta get started on the gear grind...

My love for support classes...

Morning blog lovers,

Let me first start by giving some background on myself. Short simple, I tanked in Vanilla WoW and dps'd/healed in The Burning Crusade. However, for the last 8-9 months, I have been addicted to healing. Now, I also love tanking but sadly, my tank is on a different server and a different faction (Ally). Which boils down to him being retired.../sadpanda

After a Drak'Tharon Keep run today, I realized why I love support classes (Tanks and Healers) so much. I also realized why my dps class (mage) has lost my interest lately. It is because it is just too much power! As a tank or a healer, you hold the power of your group. You control the pace, the efficiency(in most cases), and the overall result. Now, I have not tanked a 5 man in quite sometime, but I remember that it is the same feeling. Let me give you a perfect example....

Accepted an invitation to a Drak'Tharon Keep run today. 74 Arms warrior (tank) 77 DK, 75 warlock, 74 mage, and of course me, 77 restro shaman. The warrior had almost 0 defense gear and was spec'd arms. Our dps was lacking, averaging 600 at best. The Warlock was only pulling about 450 dps and I thought that our group was NOT going to make it through this instance.

So after couple minutes and only a few pulls the 77 DK disconnects. So now I have it in my head that this run is DEFINITELY going to fail. However, the first boss drops some very nice shaman healing pants. So I decide to see how it goes...its just tank and spank. We end up killing the boss, my loot of course didn't drop. So we continue on until the next boss, Novos the Summoner. Now noone besides me has done this instance out of the group. I tell everyone about the fight but I also said that we should probably just call it.

However, I did say that we can try....

Long story short, we cleared the whole instance. It was amazing to me how much fun I had healing this place with such lackluster dps and a tank that had no business actually tanking. It filled me with such a feeling of power, of CONTROL!!! IT WAS AMAZ...

hhrmm...cough....sorry about that. Got a little emotional. Back to the point....

I know that I could not get that feeling from a dps class and that is the reason why I love playing a support class.

Dont get me wrong now, when I say this, I am in no way saying that I don't enjoy my dps class. I highly enjoy my frost mage. I think I just prefer playing a support class.

What about you guys? Feel the same? Feel different? Pleas share, I would love to hear...

Let your loot be phat and your repair bill cheap, I am WTFout!

Is Vampric Blood the best tanking cooldown?

With the upcoming nerfs to bonesheild and to a lesser extent ice bound fortitude AND the buff to Vampiric blood (last stand effect added as well as 10 second increased duration via glyph) I think that VB is now the strongest tanking cooldown.

VB has higher up-time than boneshield on all but the most geared avoidance tanks. I'm not sure how the math works out but +50% to incoming heals for 30 seconds of every minute seems like it would be compare favorably to 20% damage reduction for a minimum of 15 seconds ( more if you have good avoidance)

This is also not taking into account the + 20% max health during those 30 seconds which of course gives your healers a buffer for overheal as well as a health buffer to prevent gibs.

The 20% max health synergies well with a talented and glyphed rune tap for some massive OH S*** buttons. I have read some anecdotal evidence that is showing rune tap hitting for almost 9k fully talented and glyphed on a geared MT with Vampiric Blood going.

What do you guys think?

Winter Veil Helpful Tips and Random Thoughts...

Morning blog lovers,

So I have decided to take time out from leveling and complete the World Event, Winter Veil. It is actually a very nice break from questing and instance runs. I did some AV as a gnome, which surprisingly was very fun. I got my 50 honorable kills in one run. I guess when you are a gnome, you are much harder target. Worked out great for me!

I farmed some small eggs in Mulgore, saved a reindeer, started leveling cooking and fishing (fun stuff there I tell ya...), and I now have the power to turn into a snowman! I know I mention this before but /hug has an excellent guide on everything you would need to complete the event and receive your title.

Lets go over some valuable things that I have learned over the past day

• Once you complete the main quest line for the Winter Event, you will receive a couple packages from Great Father in the mail.
  
  
• It is very important that you save the packages you receive in the mail if you want to complete the achievement. So remember that! Don't just open the package and throw away or vendor the food. You will need it for the achievement.
  
  
• The second package he sends you via mail is actually an item that lets you transform into a Snowman! Don't forget that you can /dance while you are in this state. Another cool thing about the snowman item (get it? another cool thing? har har har) is that it does NOT have a duration. Which means you can use it 4 months from now. Pretty cool if you ask me.
  
  
• If you are like me and want to get all of the world event achievements, then you are going to be forced to do some uncool things...such as level cooking to 325 and doing the bombing quests(requires a rep grind that includes group bosses as a prerequisite).
  
  
• Unfortunately, you are going to be force to fight for a boss drop - Red Winter Hat or Green Winter hat. Personally, I found that the mage boss in Nexus is the easiest one to farm. Took about 10-15 minutes per run, I got mine on the third.
  
  
• Don't worry about spending the outrageous prices for the Winter boots or the Green / Red Winter clothes on the auction house, they are not bop. Once you equip them, simply do the achievement and then put them back on the AH. That is what I did and I actually made 2g =P.
  
  
• Three or four of the achievements for the event are currently locked. The will be unlocked on the 25th of December. It is from my understanding that you DO NOT have to log in on the 25th, that is just when they will be unlocked.
  
  
• Winter Veil ends on January 2nd.

Let your loot be phat and your repair bill cheap, I am WTFout!

Blogger Achievement - Listed at Twisted Nether Wiki

**sound effect**

SWOOSHHHH!

**sound effect**

Pretty exciting news here at WTFspaghetti. Always nice to get listed, especially at such a well known site for wowblogs.

Hopefully we can keep on growing so we can get a few more blogger achievements, woot!

Tuesday Maintenance Boredom - Joy of discovering a new zone...

Morning blog lovers,

One of my favorite aspects about WoW is the environment artwork. I am not the kind of gamer that just logs in to do x, y, and z. I like to sit back and take a look at my surroundings, get a feel for the lore a little bit.

I remember a looong time ago when I first started playing this game. I was a level 15 dwarf hunter entering Loch Modan for the very first time. There was a quest that had me fly to Ironforge for some reason. This would be my first time flying in WoW and I must say....I was hooked from that point. I thought, how cool is this...I am Dwarf with a battle axe, flying on a freaking eagle. I know I am a nerd, but come on! That is good stuff.

In my case, once you spend time in a zone, it tends to lose it "cool and interesting" factor. Perfect example is when The Burning Crusade came out. Everyone (including myself) loved how new and cool everything looked. After leveling, rep grinds, and farming, it lost its flavor. Its the main reason why I didn't level my Death Knight past 61. I just couldn't stand to deal with the Outland environment when I had a whole new world of adventures awaiting me in Northrend.

Speaking of, I have really enjoyed the new zones in Northrend. I will hand it to Blizzard, their research and development team did a great job of conveying what customer's like to their art staff. As a player, we don't like plain, wide open spaces such as the Barrens or Mulgore. We enjoy huge skeletons of GIGANTIC frost wyrms on snow covered boulders as ride by on giant sea turtles. We like getting introduced to a zone by getting shot down by those bastards at the Venture Company. Then being forced to eject and parachute down into a unknown jungle! We get more joy out of questing when our environment is interesting and interactive. Every new zone I come across in Northrend has been completely different then anything I have seen in the previous installments of WoW, Vanilla and TBC.

Take the epic quest line in Dragonblight, The Wrathgate. All of a sudden you are in the middle of a cinematic cut scene and end up fighting along side of your factions city bosses (Thrall, Bronzebeard ect). Is this a playstation game? Was that actually a cut scene in WoW? Very cool stuff there, a must do in my opinion.

10 things that probably only interest me

1. It is nice to take a little break from leveling to do the new world event - Winter Veil
2. It is the opposite of nice knowing I am going to have to level cooking to 325 inorder to get event completed
3. I have some ideas for some guides I want to make, hopefully they will bring more traffic
4. Christmas is 9 days away and I need to get shopping...this is crazy
5. I have 3 meetings today at work that I am not prepared for, I think I can wing two of them but I might have to do some research on the third.
6. I am 77 on my shaman and I have yet to buy Cold Weather Training. Reson being that I can not stand the fact that I do not have my epic flyer on him yet. Regular flying mount makes me want to injury myself.
7. I have a roughly 11k gold saved up between my toons. I really dont know if I should spend the 6k gold it would take.....so much gold...../cry
8. I know the epic flyer is worth it and its just gold, but it took me so long to collect that amount. Any suggestions?
9. I can not believe that out of the 4 years that I have been playing this game, I never thought of creating multiple bank toons for certain items....ie one for cloth, or for ore, one for enchanting stuff ect
10. I am tired...only a little over 4 hours left until I am off work

Enjoy your day and feel free to look around the blog. I have collected some pretty neat stuff in my 2 months of blogging - I am out of here

Monday Morning Warcraft - Patch 3.0.8, The Good, The Bad, and The Ugly...

Monday Morning Warcraft is a weekly post that illustrates random thoughts and events that occurred over the weekend in the life of a wowhead. Feel free to e-mail me with questions, suggestions, hate mail, ect... mlange0385@yahoo.com

Morning blog lovers,

How was everyones' weekend? Full of "fun" holiday shopping? Maybe you are one of the many places this weekend that got hit super hard by mother natures wrath, ie Northeast US. In either event, I hope everything is going well.

If you are addicted to WoW like I am, its a pretty exciting time right now. The new patch is coming out very shortly, 3.0.8. As our friends over at Noobding stated, the Blizzard monster ate 3.0.4 - 3.0.7. So if you were wondering where they went, now you know. Just when you think that you are getting the hang on how things work in the xpan, Blizzard comes through and decides that they are going to change ALOT. So grab your coffee and sit back and get comfortable. I am going to throw alot of information out there....or at least my sad attempt to anyway.

I am going to list general things that are new to me as well as link articles from other blogs around the web that intrigue me. Also talk about the changes to the 3 classes I play: Shaman, Mages, and Paladins.

Of course, all of that information will be brought to you WTFspaghetti style!

Lets roll

Where to begin? Lets start off by saying its beginning to look alot like Christmas. That's right! Starting at 6am on December 15th, Greatfather Winter will be gracing us with his presence. So get ready for a bunch of new gadgets and fun stuff to be out. Not just the snowballs, the reindeer mounts, and the eggnog anymore. No, no, no....I expect new and fun presents from GF Winter this year. I haven't been too naughty...well....lets not get into that discussion right now ok? Check out /hug's post about it for more details

Anywho...

If you are 80 and are looking for some dailys to do. Remember that you must complete a certain amount of quests in the zone before the dailys become available to you. (ex: Storms Peak) I am not sure on how this is calculated, so I guess I am not too much help on this subject. Just have it in your mind and be aware of it. Also, I noticed a good amount of people asking in general chat over the weekend, "Do I have to be level 80 in order to get the daily dungeon quest? Even the regular?" Yes, you have to be 80 in order to get those quests, even the regular dungeon.

Ever see a male tauren riding on a undead horse? What about a NE riding a mechanostrider? Now you will, all races are now eligible to ride any mount in the game. So go ahead and feel free to look as awkward as you want to. Its good to live in a world without racism don't you think?

I have some mixed emotion about this little piece from the patch notes

• 60 new graveyards added to Azeroth and death speed increased substantially

Does this mean that they plan on me dying more often? Is Blizzard trying to make life a little less harder? I am confused about it, but I do know this...I like it. I don't die too often, but when I do I hate running back to my body. This is a welcomed change in my opinion and now when I am in a 5 man group and we wipe. You better believe I will make everyone run back /threat

Class specific changes - The ones I find interesting

Paladin
Forbearance removed from Avenging Wrath - Pretty big buff in my opinion. No forbearance penalty for this spell is going to help out all specs of this hybrid class, pve and pvp. I know Ret paladins are smiling everywhere with ideas /evil laugh

New spell - Hand of Reckoning - Trainable spell - 30 yard ranged taunt that does holy damage. I am glad to see that Blizzard is making protection paladins more versatile as a tank. With changes like this, protection paladins are moving further away from tanking trash mobs in raids and closer to main tanking raid bosses.

Sacred Duty - Interaction with our bubbles are removed, but the stamina bonus is increased. You lose some you gain some. I almost didn't mention this one but after thinking more and more about it, the more I decide to include it. Stamina is always a plus, so it could be worse

Judgement of Wisdom - Instead of mana returns based on max mana, it is now based off your base mana. I have to do some testing on this one to see how big of a difference it makes. What do you think?

Shaman
Healing wave - Now only one application is required to reach the full benefit of the talent. No longer stacks. Very interesting change, it seems like the Blizzard gods found out that we no longer use this spell. This change is a step to changing that, atleast for me. More to come on this subject at a later date.

Improved Water Shield - Reduced the chance to trigger this talent. Not that big of a deal because alot of Restro Shaman were not taking this talent or not maxing it out. I absolutely love it and I am very interested to see this so called "reduced chance"

Tremor Totem - Duration up from 2 minutes to 5 minutes. Its not game changing but its good enough to mention.

Elemental Revamp - Alot of talent chances, including a new talent that I find intriguing. I recommend reading them all here.

Mage
Arcane Revamp - Arcane mages, your day has come. Blizzard has reworked the talent tree and arcane spells that brings you up to par with the other trees, fire and frost. If you are an Arcane mage, I suggest you /dance. Then grab something to drink and read the full notes of changes.

Slow Fall anyone? - This is going to be fun, slow fall is now a castable buff. That is right, you can now give others the joy of this spell. Should have some fun times with this, especially in AB. Another note is that any class that has a spell like this has also changed, ie Priest. Remember to use responsible.

Evocation - Cooldown reduced from 5 minutes to 4 minutes.


Overall I after reading through the patch notes I have come to this conclusion:

The Good

• Mages, they got a well deserved adjustment

The Bad

• Death Knights. No, they didn't get nerf'd, they actually got some buffs. This bothers me and scares me at the same time. From my own experiences and various articles, they seem slightly OP. We shall see

The Ugly

• Just like the great illumination nerf in 2007 for Paladins, Hunters got it this year. After looking at their changes, I can safely say that I know how they're felling. Takes me back to the good ol'days, oh ya....good times. I wouldn't be surprised if a new wave of Death Knights came through from hunter rerolls.

~Monday Morning Madness~

1. Alchemists cheer - you no longer need a Alchemy Lab to make flasks - hooo ray

2. Zul'Drak is a very unique place with an environment that I absolutely love. I am not too big on trolls, but I must say, having a full zone of this temple / ruins atmosphere is pretty cool. More to come on this tomorrow.

3. Drak'Tharon Keep is a fun instance. Bosses are designed well and it isn't a cakewalk like previous instances, ie Azjol Nerub, Violet Hold. A challenge is a good thing, plus it builds your skills. Nice healing pants drop in there for a shaman....very sexy

4. It is now possible to create a DK on ANY server now as long as you a toon over 55 somewhere. Pretty neat if you have friends on a different server and don't feel like starting from scratch.

5. On a completely unrelated subject, my fantasy football playoffs were this week. I made the playoffs in all 4 of my leagues. I know for a fact that I lost in three of them and it is pretty likely that I will lose the other. Very sad day after such a great season...../sigh

That is it for now bloggers - Until next time, let your loot be phat and your repair bills be cheap. Im out

Auction House upgrades, Jerks, and other ramblings...

Hola mi amigos

The weekend is almost upon us, time for relaxing, holiday shopping, and WoW. I actually have a three day weekend to look forward too...so I am pretty excited. I am going to make a HUGE push for 77 on my shaman. I don't think its possible, but I have to set the bar somewhere right? Might as well set it high!

Can I get a Hallelujah!?!

wtfspaghetti choir: "HAAAALLLELUJAH!"

Damn right

So now lets get rolling - wtfspaghetti style

If you are like me, you have been checking the AH for gear upgrades. Most of the upgrades that are of blue quality are level 75-80, but the really good ones are usually 78-80. Now I have been purchasing some of these items assuming that they will be an upgrade for me when I reach that level.

Question is....will they be?

Who really knows what quest / rep rewards, or dungeon drops that we will come across in our journey to 80. Should we wait until we are closer to the item level before we purchase it? Should we buy them and never equip it for several months so we can resell them at a higher price? Or is it just a crap shoot and once you reach the item level you should decide if you should equip it or not.

Between my three toons, I have to say that I have a good amount of level 77-80 blues that I bought from the AH. I think I am going to put most of them away in storage for awhile until the majority of people are 80. Hopefully then I can flip the item and make a nice profit. What about you? What do you think about it?

The weekly poll has been a pretty big hit this week. Here at wtfspaghetti, we get an average of 25 to 30 hits a day...pretty low.....but I love it!

Anyway, the polls we have last for 6 days. So after some quick math....

30(6*42)+26(65%)8 /endmadeupequation

....I have come to the conclusion that if the majority of people that visit the site actually takes part of the poll, there should be around 30-40 votes a week. Well, before this poll the highest total was 4 LOL. I guess that is a clue for me to start asking better questions right?

So far I am pretty surprised that Warlocks and Druids are tied for the favorite class. I have never played a druid past level 10 but they intrigue me. The thing I like about Druids is their healing ability (HoTs) and their feral spec.

How cool is it that their main dps spec is their tanking spec! I know when I played my warrior that would have been amazing if my tanking spec was my main dps spec..../jealous

In other news....

Last night I healed three separate runs of Violet Hold. They went from great, to normal, to horrible....and in that order. First run I had a 76 pally tank, and a 76 DK that was doing a crazy amount of dmg. The pally tank was amazing and during the whole run I never went below 85% mana.

Second time around I had a 75 warrior and all clothies that were 74. This run was alot more interactive for me but still a very easy run. This run we had to deal with the void walker boss too, still downed with no issues

Ever hear the expression "Third times a charm?" Well that didn't describe this run AT ALL. 78 DK tank with almost 0 def gear, two 73 warlocks, and a 76 rogue. You would think that if you have 2 warlocks that one of them would use an imp. Especially since they would lifetap every chance they get. I asked twice to get an imp with no reply. Third time I ask I get a reply of

"HEY HEALER, BE QUITE AND L2HEAL KKTHXBAI"

The 78 dk and the other lock start laughing. I then notice that they are all in the same guild, "PewPewPwned"

So not only is this lock lifetapping himself to death and refusing to drink during downtime. He refuses to use his imp so he can use felhunter. Then to top it off he disrespects the healer?

So I am laughing trying to think on how or what I should do to this fool and then a boss portal happens. O noes, its the Void Walker boss. I would also like to bring up that during this run no one was over the 500 dps mark besides the 76 rogue. So I throw the lovely lock a couple of heals and then decide to cut him off and let him die. Due to the fact that our dps was horrible before I let the lock die, there is no way this boss is going to die. I keep everyone up for about 4-5 minutes and we end up wiping with the boss at 3%.

So we all run back...except the lock! So I went right up to him and started /hug and /mourn. He replys

"just rez me, I'm eating. Dude, its your fault we wiped. You are a horrible healer"

I laughed at him and dropped the group. The guy got to me a little though...freaking jerk. So I logged off and watch the newest episode of Dexter and went to bed.

Hopefully today will I will have a better experience in the world

...

of warcraft

No Tuesday Maintenance = Figures...

Hola blog lovers

So this week I have to go through training at my job. Since they don't do training between the hours of midnight and 8am, I am forced to work the first shift....the dreaded 9-5

Blah....just saying 9-5 makes me sick to my stomach...I never saw myself as one of those corporate employees that work 9 to 5, drink Starbucks coffee, and wear white shirts with black ties. Well....at least I don't drink coffee....I guess I can be excited of the fact that I have a job during these times.

Anywho, that being said it figures that for the first time in the past 2 months, Blizzard isn't going to have its weekly maintenance. Keep in mind that my main playing time is in the morning....

Im not a "hater" and I don't want to seem like I'm "hating" all on my other fellow morning players....just figures. GRRRR!

In other news...

I was so determined to keep pace with my other friends DK, that I forgot to learn my new skills and spells! So when I dinged 74 on my shaman yesterday and got the quest to go to Dalaran, I was in utter shock that I haven't learned any new spells since 71!

So now that I have my new chain heal and lesser healing wave spells, I am really kicking ass and taking names! I plan to get into a Violet Hold group tonight. Maybe I'll get lucky and get a somewhat decently geared tank

We shall see - until then let your loot be fat and your repair bills cheap - I'M OUT

Monday Morning Warcraft - Upgraded PC, 920,000 xp a hour, and overpowered Restro Shaman 1337ness!

Monday Morning Warcraft is a weekly post that illustrates random thoughts and events that occurred over the weekend in the life of a wowhead. Feel free to e-mail me with questions, suggestions, hate mail, ect... mlange0385@yahoo.com

Morning blog lovers!

Long time since an update and I apologize for that. I recently decided to upgrade my PC since I was only getting about 5-6 fps in Northrend. I know, I know.....5-6 fps?

WTF is wrong with you Dr. Wang!?! Have you no shame!?!

Funny thing is that I have always played with that low of frame rate...just something I got used to I guess....anyway...back to the story...

I ordered the majority of the parts from newegg. This includes the video card, hard drive, memory, dvd/cd rom, and the power supply. I ordered the motherboard and processor from pricewatch, which I highly recommend. All and all I spent about 450 bucks.....not bad for a whole new PC besides the keyboard, mouse, and monitor.

After a dead on arrival power supply, 3 hours of assembly, a day spent trying to figure out why in the hell my video card isn't working, and my cats discovering the joy of bubble wrap. We are finally up and working.

Here is the best part...the results. I am now running WoW on high settings and getting about 35-40 fps. If I use the same settings that I was using before (low to medium) I am getting about 60 fps. Its a whole new game....in the four years of playing WoW I must say that EVERYTHING looks different. The first half hour I was on I just sat around and look at the environment. I was super impressed and very happy with the product. Thinking about upgrading your PC? Leave a comment or e-mail me if you want more details on what I purchased

Onward with the WoW talk - wtfspaghetti style

If you are playing a class that can aoe grind and you like 920,000 xp a hour. Look no further then the Scarlet camps in Dragonblight. Now, when I say 920,000 xp a hour, that is taking into affect that you are 74-75 and have rested / blue bar. You can pull about 15-16 mobs at once and here is the most amazing thing about this area...you can pull those groups CONSTANTLY. There are about 5 camps and by the time you get done with all of the camps the first camp has respawned....its F'N AMAZING. I wish I was the genious that figured it out or stumbled on to it, but I went searching for it because it was mentioned in this guide by our friends at Frost is the New Black. Here is a random screenshot of the chaos during the aoe'ing

DJ Paul, our resident Death Knight, is leveling quite quickly. He is already level 74 and it would be silly for me not to level my restro shaman up with him.

Healer + Tank = ezmode finding a group. It is also good because we know that the tank and the healers aren't going to be some random noob that doesn't know how to play or is D/Cing every other pull.

So I really didn't play my mage too much because I was too busy trying to keep pace with Paul's DK. Sometimes I find myself annoyed / bored questing and leveling restro but I will say this....Its amazing to know that you aren't going to die from a mob. You have so many tools at your exposure that it makes it very difficult to die....ie Bloodlust / Heroism, Fire and Earth Elemental, heals...ect

A perfect example of this is the quest in the Tundra labeled "Breaking Through" You have to kill three elites in Nax and some classes can solo this quest, but alot of them can't either. This is due to the fact that the last elite hits very hard and has alot of HP. Right before I was about to attempt to kill this guy this elemental shaman, same faction, pulls him. No big deal I just need to get in his group right?

He declines my invite three times! So I sat that and watched him fail while his Bloodlust and Fire elemental were wasted and he died. The best part is that he asks for a rez from me LOL...anyway...

I pull the boss and after about 5 minutes he is dead. I collected my loot, /golfclap the dead elemental shaman, (still waiting for me to rez) and continued to turn in my quest. Fun times

Also, very important to note that I have finally replaced my shield that every restro shaman has had at one point or the other. That is right...I replaced my Crystal Pulse Shield. After countless Kara Chess matches, numerous Mag runs, and thousands of pvp honor points spent...I never got a replacement for it. That is until now! Very exciting not having to look at that stupid yellow triangle on my back anymore. Check out the new one on my armory page if you like.

Monday Morning Random Thoughts

1. Say goodbye to the enchant spammers - If you are an enchanter, do not forget that you can sell your enchants on the AH now. You just need 400 skill points. So go to your local trainer and stop wasting your mats with no profit.

2. Blacksmiths' REJOICE! - BS now has items that you can sell for a nice profit. They also have a sweet ability to make any glove or bracer have an extra socket. That is only for blacksmiths' with 400 skill or more. Nice little niche for keeping your BS

3. RAM = ALL - No, I am not talking about the awesome St. Louis Rams, (Who likes them anyway uh?) I am talking about Computer RAM. I went from 2 gigs of RAM to 4 gigs of RAM and I must say....wow...huge difference.

4. Wintergrasp pve? - That is right, if you don't know already Wintergrasp is the new pvp zone in Northrend. If your faction has control of wintergrasp, there is a 10 and 25 man raid pve boss. Epic drops and apparently pretty easy. Wintergrasp is also the place where you turn in your Stone Keeper Shards for fun items. Are you intrigued?

5. Holiday shopping time - F'n sucks but o well. Get in the giving mood and enjoy time with your family. Do you have your holiday shopping done yet? I know I don't /sadpanda

Tuesday Maintenance Boredom - Evil tricks that make me chuckle..../evil laugh

Tuesday Maintenance sucks for people in my situation. I work from Midnight til 8am, so my main playing time during the week is from 9am - noonish.

So on Tuesdays I usually do adult stuff like clean the house, go to the bank, check myspace, watch TV...you know...grown up things....but today I decided to write a post in the blog.

So lets get this going - wtfspaghetti style!

Today when I was reading through the various blogs that I like, I noticed a post from our friends at Noobding. The post was about a evil / funny trick he did to an Ally that was annoying him. I suggest you go read it - I chuckled

It got me thinking of all of the neat / evil tricks that are in the game that make others mad and make you laugh. I have decided to compile a list. The ones that are marked with an * are the ones that I have done in my years playing wow.

I know I wont be able think of all of them, feel free to add.

1. Fishing - Works best with hunters, but warlocks and DKs can do this as well. You go to a low level area, particularly one that does not automatically flag lowbies for pvp...IE Goldshire, Tristal Glades, Barrens, ect. You put your pet on defense mode in a high traffic area and hide. The lowbie will come up and be confused. Ever hear of the expression, curiosity killed the cat? You got it...he attacks your pet and he gets marked for pvp. Now you camp him and /golfclap.
   
   
2. *Portal Fun - Open the wrong portal or 2 portals on top of each other. Best way to trick people is to say at the end of the run..."Hey guys, you want a port to Shat/Dalaran?". Then you wait a second so they will get ansisy....finally you open a portal to TB or Silvermoon City and they get teleported to a far away land. My new favorite is Stonard. Most of the time this works on atleast one of the group members lol. You can also play a game with people...open a portal to Dalaran and then a portal to Stonard right on top of each other. They have about a 50% chance of going to Dalaran...pretty funny stuff IMO.
   
   
3. Mind Control - Pretty straight forward. Mind control people off of high places. I know priests did this alot back in the day of Blackrock Mountain. You can also duel someone on a boat or blimp. When they accept it, you mind control them off. If you time it right you can have them miss the trip. Unfortunetly, I learned this one the hard way >.<
   
   
4. *Water Walking Chaos - In Northrend, there are two instances that have a very high fall into a body of water, UK and Azjol Nerub. Cast the Walking Walking spell on them right when they jump off and then act like you dont know what happen when they die. DKs and Shaman can do this evil trick lol
   
   
5. Divine Intervention - Pick out a lowbie or someone that you think is new to the game. The best way to find is in the capital city. Cast DI on them and watch the confusion..../evil laugh

All of these tricks are pretty a-hole moves and I am not saying that you should go be a dick. I am simply stating them in a neutral format. I have to admit, it is always fun to mess with people. Especially if you know them in real life lol

Song of the day
Superman
Goldfinger
Punk Rock

Quote of the day
I can remember when the air was clean and sex was dirty
- George Burns (1896-1996)

Monday Morning Warcraft - Daily Dungeon Quests, Level 80, and Murloc Underwear...

Monday Morning Warcraft is a weekly post that illistrates random thoughts and events that occurred over the weekend in the life of a wowhead. Feel free to e-mail me with questions, suggestions, hate mail, ect... mlange0385@yahoo.com

Morning blog lovers!

I have to say, after a long 4 day weekend filled with turkey, football, and WoW...I am pretty sad that it is Monday morning already. I hope everyone had a good mini holiday and for my non-Americans readers, hope your weekend was eventful. That is unless you enjoy uneventful weekends, which are always a good chance of pace.

So anyway...this is a wow blog right? Lets get to talking about it wtfspaghetti style!

Seems like DJ Paul's post about Death Knights was a hit. Got a huge amount of hits compared to other posts. So keep them coming! In other news....it is no longer crazy for people to be 80. I think a good portion of wow players are now turning...or have already turned 80. Especially after the 4 day mini vacation here in the states. I got my mage to 74.5 and my Restro Shammy to 72...pretty exciting for me.

However...I did have the chance to group with a level 80 druid.

For some reason he wanted to /flex his e-peen and tank Nexus. Sounds fine by me, I needed to finish one last quest in there and I was still getting 2k+ exp a kill. Go ahead and take a look at this guy. He has 34k hp UNBUFFED, 37k hp with Kings. He pulled 7 mobs and mage boss at the same time. Obviously we died within 15 secs....but he didn't. He killed all the trash mobs, healed himself to full, and battle rezzed the healer. He then continued to kill the boss...

Now, this took awhile...but not as long as one would expect. It was at this point where I realized that I have no idea whats going on in this game lol. Its a weird feeling, I haven't been a noob since 2004. However, I must say its true...I have no idea about level 80s. At the same time, its a pretty exciting knowing that I am going to be exposed to alot of new things. You just got to get it in your head that everything you thought you know about wow is now out the window really...

..I think that is a famous movie quote isn't?

Anyway...I got to heal the Old Kingdom over the break and I must say that was fun. The tank I had was level 76 and I was 71. The dps was pretty good, but could have been alot better. In either event we got it done no problem. The last boss is very humorous, I am not going to ruin it for you. You should just start it and see what happens lol. I will give you this tip....by the time you get to the last boss you should have a pretty good idea who the badass dps'er is....Stay the hell away from him /evil laugh LOL

In other news...I am sure everyone has done the quest in the Tundra were you get to wear a Murloc costume. It was a pretty funny quest and one thing that you might not have noticed is his underwear lol.

I know, I know...wtf Dr. Wang...why in the hell are you checking out the Murloc's ass? Well...I have no good excuse for it... it just sort of happened...weird camera angles and what not...lol

Here is a screenshot ~ I thought it was rather humorous the amount of detail put into it lol


~Monday Morning Randomness~

1. God I hate Mondays...I am glad mine is almost over after a long, busy day at work.

2. AH prices are coming down ALOT. This is not a good thing. With everything high, it is pretty easy to make a lot of money to use on things like epic mounts and what not. With the economy slumping, it makes all of the herbs and ore that I collected seem not as exciting.

3. Aoe'ing with my frost mage is crazy fun. It is also that main reason why he is ahead of my other toons by 2-3 levels.

4. If you don't already know, Daily dungeon quests are giving out in Violet Hold.

5. White Castles cheeseburgers + my stomach = Sad Panda

Have any suggestions? Think you could add your own flavor to the blog? Email me and we can talk