The month that got away

It seems it was a long time my warrior hit the magic 80 level and to be honest my playtime has been declining ever since. Although so much more are currently happening in my life. I am in  the middle of a divorce, I've sold an apartment and bought a new one... there are tons of stuff to do and so little time to spend it on. One of the first things that is getting cut away is WOW time. Even though I've been playing WOW off and on from the very launch it is simply a time filler for other activities.

I do have a lot of things I need to do with my warrior... I've come to realize that I need to complete things to have fun. So while I've had few play sessions this month I have been able to take my character from honored to exalted with ... Argent Dawn. Guess I still like old content eh =)

Almost exalted with the Wyrmrest Accord as well.. and I guess Argent Crusade is next. However... dailies is the killer of joy. I log in and do the same stuff over and over again... bah. Need to breakout and do other stuff.

Finally 80 & Azjol-Nerub

Actually my warrior managed to reach 80 at least a week ago but I've been to busy with life to actually do something about it. With the Big Ding! I flew around Northrend to pick up a few pieces of reputation gear. Pants from Argent Crusade, breastplate and boots from Wyrmrest... in the end it actually seemed that Urthiel would be ready for his first heroic.

A guildie whispered and asked if I would like to tank the daily HC. With my defense stat a little over 540 I thought this would be a great experience. The instance of the day: Azjol-Nerub. It is at least in normal a rather quick affair but with interesting pulls that challenges the tank. Great fun.

At the time I did not have skype/vent installed on my computer so while the rest of the party would talk I had to rely on /party. The party by the way consisted of Protection Warrior, a resto druid, a retribution paladin and a dagger rogue. We started making our way into the instance... and there was lots of killing and after a while we ended up at the last boss. I did not think of it much at the time but rather now afterwords... we didn't CC anything, just hacked adn crushed our way through multiple-mob pulls. Great fun. Now that I've read up a bit on heroics it seems that at least a little CC is recommended. Oh well my guildies have pretty decent gear to carry up a fresh 80.

Oh, the end boss... well here we started to wipe.  It was a very hard fight with the dangerous POUND spell killing me once and our resto druid another time. The cheer amount of poison from the spider adds racked up two more wipes. A total of four wipes was necessary before we could down the might beetle. A plate belt dropped out for me... great success!

Urthiel of Ravencrest's Path of a Hero Journal

Urthiel of Ravencrest's Path of a Hero Journal

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Cheap Titansteel Shield Wall

My warrior is only halfway to 79 but I could not resist a quick glance at the AH  to scan for interesting gear upgrades. Once you hit 80 you are expected to start replacing those nice blues with fantastic purple epics.

I found that someone was selling the Titansteel Shield Wall for only 600 gold. I have no idea why the sudden drop in price as these usually sells for 1200-2000 gold on my server. There was no hesitation though - bought!

Urthiel the Explorer (my first title besides the old PVP titles) tanked Utgarde Pinacle yesterday. My first 80 instance... Had a lucky run and besides the nice quest rewards (Silver-Plated Battlechest & Faceguard of Punishment) the first boss (Svala Sorrowgrave) dropped Svala's Bloodied Shackles which was a nice upgrade.

I'll be trying to get another PUG to the Pinnacle in order to have go at  the nice tanking neck - Amulet of Deflected Blows - that is dropped by Skadi.

Urthiel is starting to look like a proper viking.. but you do know that fighting vikings did not have horned helmet, right?

Rotating classes - how to keep wow fresh

Every once in awhile I rotate my character main to a new one. Mostly it happens after reaching certain goals that has been hard to achieve. With my (3rd) rogue this happened shortly after dinging 70 halfway into the TBC cycle. I had played my rogue a lot and been forced to level fast to keep up with my guild. I realized that I burned through content too fast and also my appreciation of the rogue.

So since I took a few months away from WOW and then returned to a new character. After a few false starts I got really hooked on my hunter Stormspike. I had loads of fun, totally ignoring leveling pace or any other issues.  I dinged 70 and started doing dailies and shifting my focus onto PVP. Loads of fun.

When WotLK arrived it was time to change again. After the hunter changes I realized I wasn't interested in relearning the hunter. Instead I watched with joy at the latest changes to the protection warrior. Suddenly it was viable to not only level as protection but also PVP with it.

I rolled an undead warrior, (my 3rd highlevel warrior throughout my wow career) who now is quickly approaching 78... I don't care much for the endgame, it is the journey that I love so much with WOW.

Time-wise I suspect it is soon time for me  to rotate into a new character and I think that either a Paladin or a Death Knight would be the best move. Yet I am still having fun, and I haven't even gotten started on the PVP side of things. Yay!

Merry Christmas & Happy New Year

I've been super busy the last weeks and by the looks of it I won't be able to get some really free time before the end of this year. So kill a gnome and Happy New Year!

Elite servers vs casual servers

I've recently started a new character (death knight) on a PVE server where my younger relatives play. Playing on that realm is quite different from my home realm, EU-Ravencrest.

EU-Ravencrest is the home to several top-performing PVE guild, and according to www.wowprogress.com, EU-Ravencrest is ranked at first place. (On a side note. It is interesting that the top 22 servers in terms of PVE progress are PVP servers...)

Playing on EU-Ravencrest means that you are constantly surrounded by top-performing players. Raid and HC gear is standard and running around in blues is a laughing matter, even for alts.

PUGing instances on EU-Ravencrest is usually fast and mechanical. Everyone knows their class and the instances like the back of their hands. Of course there are exceptions, but if you stay away from people who use "lol" or "m8" in their sentences you're home free.

Now on EU-Hellfire (rank 125/232) there is a much bigger variety among the players. You'll find lots of guilds with younger players (11-15) and a lot of very casual gamers. You don't see tier gear as frequently as on Ravencrest, people actually /emote when they see legendary items...

For me it is actually a blast to play on this "casual" server - people still view WOW as a game and not as a clinical and mechanical as it is viewed upon on Ravencrest. However I do miss the PVP aspect, there is less excitement in the world. No risk of aggroing the opposing faction, getting corpse camped etc. Don't get me wrong - I don't like being grieved but there is a certain appeal to the danger that it might happen if I am not careful enough...

5 Great uses for Spell Reflection

One of my favorite skills on my warrior is Spell Reflection which you'll get at the venerable age of level 64. You need to have you shield equipped and 15 rage. It is not affected by global cooldown. It gets even better with talents - improved spell reflection allows you to reflect spells from party members as well. It makes it more "unpredictable" in PVP.

1. You can use it to reflect a Paladin's Hammer of Justice. They are usually very predictable and unless you happen to meet a skilled retadin odds are that he'll use it quickly to dish out some burst damage. GIB!
2. Use it in boss fights to avoid super damaging spells or stuns. Check out WowWiki for a few boss uses (TBC only)
3. Death Knights have several spells that can be reflected - they are far more than just melee combatants.
4. Charge close to a recently blinked mage, activate it and watch him frost nova himself. GIB!
5. If a warlock tries to cast Unstable Affliction at you, reflect it and watch with joy as his party members tries to dispel the curse without expecting the unstable debuff.