Thursday, June 29, 2006

Global LFG channel = bad

Well I guess I am not the only one that finds the new updated Looking for Group channel is really crappy. At first it seemed ok.. a way to find instance groups without having to loiter around in IF... but in a couple of days the LFG channel degraded into what best can be described as the Barrens' general chat. /leave

I guess the way to use it is to join the channel only when you are actively looking for an instance group. So the whole global idea kinda fails...

I hope the wait for 1.12 is a short one.. the 1.11 probably took longer than usual since it added the whole Nax instance. I wouldn't be surprised if 1.12 is almost complete by now.

Tuesday, June 27, 2006

Quick visit to Molten Core

Yesterday I had a chance to raid with the guild and we went down into the Molten Core. Since I don't raid much I was amazed to see how professional the guild has been in clearing trashmobs and the bosses. It was one of the first times that Pinioned went into MC as guild-only.

We effortlessly cleared our way to the first boss Lucifron. A freak pet pull had us wiped the firt try. Actually I wouldn't even call it a try =) A few minutes later Luci droped Cenarion Belt and the Gauntlets of Might.

Magmadar was next up... of all my MC runs (and I have about 10 under my belt) this was by far the most painless. From his bloody corpse our dear Krinssan looted the Aged Core Leather Gloves. Most of the rogues were uninterested and the gloves went for a lousy 50 dkp. While those gloves aren't the best, they are pretty good raiding gloves for a dagger rogue.

The raid continued to Ghennas. Unfortunately I had to leave right before the boss figh... I heard that Ghennas was killed at firt try and the Nightslayer Gloves droped. Oh well.. there is always another raid.

Tuesday, June 20, 2006

Patch 1.11 tomorrow!

Patch 1.11 is due on the EU servers tomorrow according to Blizzard posts. Very exciting and it brings us one step closer to our beloved 1.12 rogue patch =)

A few friends are sending out warnings to mail all their pots to their mains since they've seen screenshots of pots being bind on pickup. Personally I don't believe it for a second as it would make the alchemy profession seriously gimped. Something is bound to happen though as Argent Dawn will trade major health/mana pots for special crystals that will drop from the undead.

If worst comes to worst my alchemist will be stuck with a large supply of useless firepots. Bring it on Blizzard =)

Saturday, June 17, 2006

Warsong wants you!

This weekend is WSG weekend.. so its an obvious hang out place for me who needs lots of honor at short time. Games are fast and at my server there are about 50/50 wins. It is also kinda nice to take a break from AB... I do have approximately 20k rep to grind and in my pace that will take about 10 weeks... =/

I ventured into Alterac Valley today. Just sniffing around checking the rep income to see how long it would take me to get the lobotimizer. Too long. However the game was won by the alliance! It is my first won AV - ever! I used to play alot of AV with my hunter (almost exhalted) so I've seen plenty of AV action. To my great disappointment the reward for winning AV is amazing for new hunters and warriors but totally sucky for rogues. I got the crossbow...

My computer is restored now.. for some reason I cant get the wirless network to work =/ Luckily I had a cable to plug it directly.

Thursday, June 15, 2006

HD incoming

Just a little update on the HD situation.. Grimbold (co-worker) managed to restore all of the data on the HD so life is good! A new HD has been ordered and should arrive tomorrow... Felt a wee bit odd to raid at work the other day =)

Tuesday, June 13, 2006

Hakkar defeated

Last night I raided with my guild and it was loads of fun. We went directly for Hakkar (as they had cleared the five channeler bosses the day before). After a few wipes we downed Hakkar in a glorious battle. We had a pretty strange lineup for the raid with only 1 druid, 2 priests, 3 rogues, 2 paladins, 3 hunters, 3 mages, 1 warlock and 5 warriors. It is the third time Hakkar is downed by Pinioned so they're getting the hang of it. So loot... I've hard that Hakkar drops rogue loot galoré - not so this time. Heart of Hakkar, Cloak of Consumption and the Soul Corruptor's Necklace plopped out of his messy corpse.

After Hakkar we proceeded to take out the fishboss, Ghaz'ranka. And from his body we pilfered Nat Pagle's Fish Terminator. After a few crazed attempts by our seemingly drunk priest to bid on the staff a warrior finally won it. Except for the name, the Fish terminator is actually a really good 2H warrior weapon with more than +40 strength.

Now I have to find more time to do some guild raiding... I might get away with a raid once every other week =/

Analyzing the HD...

The HD is now under the microscope.. our sys admin is having a look at it. *holding thumbs*

On another note... tonight my wife is going on a small barbecue with her colleagues and taking Nemo with her. She is after all his personal food machine. So tonight is raid night for me. Was a month or two since last time but Zul'Gurub 'ere I come!

Monday, June 12, 2006

Harddrive crash

So my harddrive crashed this weekend. After a couple of hours with DELL tech support and running a few diagnostics we zeroed in on HD failure. It is not completely busted so even though DELL can't do anything I might be able to persuade our company tech support to help me extract important files from the HD. My biggest gripe is that I have about 5 years of digital photos stored on that drive and no DVD backup. yes stupid I know... but how often does a HD crash anyway? First time for me... So I'll probably play little to no WOW in the coming week =/ Guess that will ruin any chances for me to hang on to rank 8.

Friday, June 09, 2006

Amazing session

Last night after reconfiguring my equipment and reaching a whopping 600 AP together with 3.9K health I broke a few new records in AB. Mages, Shamans, warlocks and priests quickly fell to my amazement after receiving a 1.8K ambush and a backstab over 1000.

I guess for most end-game rogues this is pretty lame but for me it was a world of difference. I can now see the light at the end of the tunnel.

I really really need to replace my old Heartseeker with something more powerful. The Thunderwood Poker is just around the corner for me but I do need day to raid AQ20. Time my friends is not something I have a lot of these days.

oh.. and I got the Nightslayer Bracelets today... yummy.

Thursday, June 08, 2006

Pinioned winclipped...

One of the guild's founding members (raidleader, main puller and guild bank) decided to move on to greener pastures this week. She left for one of the most prominent PVE guilds on Ravencrest - The Inquisitors. I fully understand her choice as she had most of the gear from MC already from various "open MC raids". She also plays in a whole other league than most of our members when it comes to time and dedication.

She will be missed.

However during times like this other members step up and get a chance to be main puller and even raid leaders. I think in the long run we'll grow stronger even though we'll have a setback in the comming week(s).

It does not really affect me since I have very little time to do any raiding at all. I need to start doing a few ZG runs though to get the primal hakkari's needed for the Madcap outfit. Especially now since there are rumors of the set being boosted from superior to epic quality...

I've been buying bijou's of AH for money grinded in various low-level instances so I should be able to pump up my rep to revered pretty easily. Just need those drops!

Finally a little humor - guess most of you have already seen it. But 'tis is good stuff =)

Wednesday, June 07, 2006

Knight-Captain Hexapuma

So I made rank 8 this week. Sweet. I've finally been able to toss away that old green of the monkey shirt and replace it with the rank 8 chest.

I still can't believe that my old devilsaur still is far better than the pvp set. With 1.11 the new pvp armors will be better though. So even though I had planned to relax the honor race a little it seems I will have to prevail until 1.11 patch is published.

I had a big laugh in AB this weekend as in one game two people were trying to direct the zerg to various locations. "Everybody - GO MINE NOW!!!" and five seconds later the other one would shout "DEFEND FARM FARM"... it was a fun game. At one point one of the "commanders" was angry yelling for people to stop attacking so many different places. Normally I would agree - but this time the zerg actually attacked what the two commanders asked for.

A tip for budding AB commanders. If you want to direct people to do things. Use more descriptions than "Attack Farm now".. people don't know how to choose between defending and attacking and odds are that no one will stay on defence.

Sunday, June 04, 2006

Mind-numbing discoveries

I've had to scale down a little bit on my PVP this week. I hope it won't hit my rank too much. Worst case would be to have to grind AB one more week. I really want to get back into a little guild raiding once or twice a week but with a 6 week old baby in the house its hard to get those raiding hours together.

I've been a somewhat typical rogue and stalked around AB with dual crippling poison applied. I've started to experiment with other poisons as well and now I usually go with the crippling and mind-numbing combo. I do feel that it really improves my chanses against casters ... what a surprise =)

Worst thing to encounter at a flag is actually another rogue with cripling and deadly poison. Seems like they only exist to counter other ninja rogues. Wham-bam and your have crippling, deadly poison and a 5-pt rupture. Thats when a rogue is a true sitting duck... I'll be doing a little experiments with that myself next week.

Oh.. gotta run to IKEA now for a little furniture boost at home. Need another shelf to put our CD/DVD.