Killing birdmen...

I've been taking a few minutes each day to complete the dailies in Skettis. Stormspike has now just a few thousand rep to go for the epic netherray mount. The Skettis area can be a real warzone depending on the time you go there.

Morning - zone is generally only visited by people who wants to do their dailies with as little fuss as possible.

Lunch - during lunch the area is heavily populated. There are alot of PVP going on. I suspect that the area is visited by both PVPers and a few brave souls that try do complete their dailies.

Afternoon - early afternoon is safe but around 15-16 PM it starts to heat up again. I suspect the younger crowd are coming home from school and starts their dailies.

Evening - chaos. Anything goes. Some evenings the area is camped, others devoid and you'll never know if you're going to get ganked when doing the escort daily.

Night - empty and safe for dailies. 

I personally don't like PVP in an area like Skettis. The mobs are 70-71, hit quite hard and it is very easy to gain adds. On the other side it is a great place for ganking/griefing if thats your poison.

In around 20 minutes I'll get around 500-750 rep with the Skyguard, loads of netherweave and 40 gold. It is no more than what I need. I've heard about some people that keep a stack of 20 000 golds... I can't understand why they bother with keeping such a big stash. 

001 Painspike | The Backstabber

In order to mix up the battleground focused PVP of my dear hunter. I've started a new rogue. There are a few classes I return to again and again... rogues are one of those. I can't get enough of them. Insane DPS and lots of neat tricks that makes everyone else look bland. In addition the female Blood Elf stealth pose is amazingly cool...

I know that most players recommend rogues to go down the combat tree during leveling. I've done so myself in the past but with Painspike I am focusing on daggers. The results so far are awesome. I kill most mobs in few steps - it feels much faster compared to combat swords. However my rogue is just level 23 at the moment so it might change later on.

Mind you I have not twinked the character at all beyond the use of Heavy sharpening stones (+4 damage). Going combat would have allowed uninterrupted sinister strikes until death - very little finesse and very boring. Although combat comes with stronger defense if when things go wrong - especially with blade flurry and Adrenaline Rush.

Painspike is currently 23 and just finished with Ghostlands. Hillsbrad will be her new home - usually ample of opportunity to practice world PVP. Her current talent spec is 10/2/2 - I am currently filling up subtlety talents for increased burst damage. Painspike's armory profile is here.

PVE goes PVP

Great news for the people that rolled on a PVE server - they can now transfer their characters to a PVP realm. At level 70 I can't imagine that it will be that big of a difference except when farming motes and other stuff. The biggest difference between a PVE and PVP server is the leveling process. On a PVP server you'll have to cope with multiple ganks and griefing attempts by higher leveled characters. However the charm of playing on a PVP realm is added challenge of avoiding those situations...

Anyway I say it is about time they let the PVE players in on the fun... fresh meat =)

Upsetting the fragile truce between horde and alliance...

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Battlegrounds, PVP and the Gender discussion

I've finally returned to the land of the living or should I say digital life after a long and exotic vacation. I've experienced life with very little Internet - and it was good... but it was also good to return to the civilized world.

I've picked up Soul Calibur 4 - an awesome game if you are into fighting games. I've had a couple of really great online fights. The quality of many players out there is near godlike... or at least compared to myself. I do have to start focusing on a specific character if I am going to have any chance online at all. I've always been the type of player that can play all characters and still have a good chance of winning. This isn't really the case online... This playing style is evident in my WOW style as well. I have a hard time focusing on a specific character, instead I love to play different alts.

My hunter has gotten the most of my attention the last six months - and he still have it. I have now managed to secure a few more PVP gear pieces. Still on my honor-shopping list are the rings, neck, leggings, gloves and melee weapon. Oh and my latest purchase (shoulders & chest) did drain my bag of gold a wee bit. I bough those nice epic +10 agility gems... probably overpriced but hey its a game and I simply get what I want NOW. Problem is that I must return to grind a wee bit of dailies before getting more gems. I am not broke but down to a few hundred pieces of gold.

Gender talk

Oh and I've seen quite a few posts in the bloggosphere about gender... quite frankly I don't give a shit if you are female/male. If your blog is interesting to me I'll read it. Personally I think Green Hunter has the right attitude and quite a few other blogs simply rants about in order to stand out.

In-game its just the same. Age and gender doesn't interest me - maturity and language does. WOW is just a game to me - I have most of my social contacts outside the game. I get into WOW to stomp a few gnomes in the battlegrounds. Leveling up, grouping and instancing is just a side-effect of me getting a char into the correct BG bracket. Don't get me wrong - I can be social in-game and I do from time to time but its when I do find like minded people. Needless to say I don't hang around raiders too much. We have very different views on the game.

The Beta

I got into the LK Beta... I've had very little time to play it so far. There are a lot of crazy stuff going on with talents at the moment. I am sure that it'll be balanced properly before launch - remember that Blizzard introduced the new talents before the launch of BC to get it balanced. I am sure it will happen again. I will try to get a Death Knight leveled during the beta - so I can focus on getting my Hunter to 80 as soon as possible.

The Alt

I am getting another paladin leveled - my little Blood Elf is at 45. My goal is to get her to 60 and then stay in Alterac Valley 'till the launch of LK and then enjoy a faster leveling between 60-70...

Oh... Darth Vader in Soul Calibur 4 rocks... that is how a death knight should be....

Invited to the beta...

I just got invited to participate in the Wrath of the Lich King Beta... downloading the client now. I have very little play time during the summer but I am sure to at least try the death knight and experiment a wee bit with the hunter's new talents.

No Wrath here - move along

There is no end to the blogs publishing stuff about WotLK. Talent calculators, engineering thingys and what not. I am not writing anything about it, nor while I until it hits retail. I am one of those who actually love discovering something new and fresh when it is finished and not in beta state.

My fellow guildies keep yapping about "Have you seen the talent X for hunters".. or "How are you going to spec".. give it a rest. Lets enjoy it when it arrives. I will.

No more WotLK... actually I am going to play Diablo 2 tonight just to skip WOW. Maby just a quick AB or even a WSG but nothing more.

Finally a weapon upgrade!

I went with the Merciless Gladiator's Crossbow of the Phoenix... now I am back to almost zero honor and looking for a new goal. I am most likely going for the Merciless Gladiator's Decapitator.

Find a marksman hunter and go melee on him... he won't like it one bit. I got 3 hunters today in melee. I am no huntard... just denying the other hunters to go ranged on me. I still prefer ranged for all other targets. Oh but I do think it is stylish to finish of a warrior in melee. Very embarassing if killed though =)

What is next in the PVP gear department?

I've almost collected another 28000 honor... My fingers are burning to spend it. Albeit I cannot decide what will give me the most benefit. Resilience or DPS? Check out my hunter Stormspike at the armory and help me decide...

I am leaning toward getting the Gladiator's Crossbow and get a small DPS boost instead of the bigger resilience boost I can get for the same amount of honor. One more thing... I don't do Arenas - yet. I'll wait till I have a full set before venturing into that slaughterhouse.

Hunter's got back

I tried, oh I tried.

I really tried to save up the honor to get the PVP crossbow. As soon as I crossed 10k honor I somehow ended up in the Hall of Champions ogling at the various gear I could buy. I've been checking out the Sergeant's Heavy Cloak for a long time and BAM! Without knowing it I had bought it. Back to zero honor and square one when it comes to weapons... 28'000 honor required.

The cloak is nice though... and with it I am almost at the magical 200 resilience rating. The magic? It is minimum resilience rating that most premade AV teams requires.

Oh my little mage sits untouched at 19... and if I am not completely mistaken as a ghost after numerous attempts to kill the silver rare bio-mage in one of the ziggurats. Damn weaklings ^^

My little mage

So I cracked... and created a new alt. I think it was all the AV grinding during AV weekend that broke me.

Anyway... playing a mage is great fun, although I do miss my hunter so I don't expect this to be a long-term relation.

Things I've noticed in the early levels of a mage:

• Their DPS over short time is insane.
• They need to drink and eat - a lot.
• Their insane DPS is clearly balanced with their sitting down time.
• At the end of the day I feel as a hunter kills faster since I never had to sit down for water.
• Mages are extremely fragile. A bad pull is harder to fix compared to a hunter or rogue. A hunter can manage a 3 mob bad pull, while things get hairy with just one extra mob as a mage.
• Mages are extremely cooldown reliant. Mob add and Frost Nova on cooldown - big trouble. I find myself working around the CD of Frost Nova and Fire Blast.
• They have a much tougher time compared to rogues / hunters to down elites.
• Bloodthistle withdrawal is cool
• Did I mention they drink alot of water?
• The Elemental Aquanton is frost resistant - use fire spells or you'll die over and over again.

After 10 hours /played my mage sits at level 17 in the Ghostlands. I've gone completely frost at this point. So far it has only netted me faster frost bolts and additional crit damage - nothing spectacular or snazzy.

Hunter Battleground build 0.1

I've leveled my hunter almost completely in the cookie-cutter Beast Master build 41/20/0. I've had great success with it but it was time to try something different. With my focus on PVP I wanted to give another more survival oriented build a spin. The result:

21/0/40

The goal of the build is to make it easier to survive battlegrounds and hence be more effective. It is NOT an arena build. It is not a raid build and probably not a farming build. When I enter battlegrounds - warriors & rogues are my biggest nemesis - or at least I get most hammered by them. A BM build is probably much stronger against casters (BW ftw)

So a few highlights from the "Battlegound Build" are:

Savage Strikes - Gives your raptor strike additional 20% to crit. When you get a rogue/hunter in melee it is going to hurt them.

Improved Wing Clip - 20% of imobilizing them. This is almost instant win when applied to an enemy melee. At least in theory ^^

Deterrence - Increases dodge AND parry with 25% for 10 seconds. It will allow you to charge into a warrior and avoid that hamstring and instead clip him... or survive that rogue's barrage of attacks.

Wyvern Sting - put an opponent to sleep for 12 sec... CC or why not just as a cast interrupt.

Intimidation - your trusty pet stun. I would rather have Scatter shot for this build but I've chosen the Pet route.

Improved Aspect of the Monkey - again 6% dodge against melee can be the deciding factor when trying to avoid their stuns/hamstrings.

I've just begun learning the build and it feels very different from a beast master. First you don't have to be afraid in melee - actually it is a good thing to go seeking melee at certain times with other hunters and even rogues (at least non-gladiator geared). I still need to change/add a few macros for all the new talents to make the build work correctly.

I took my pet to Skettis to try out its PVE use. While I could handle all encounters (thinking of the escort quests) I had less mana after a fight than I would as a beast master. BUT damn! It was much easier to handle multiple mobs. Wyvern sting and Entrapment are good PVE talents in the survival tree.

The play schedule of a casual WOW addict.

So what does a casual wow addict's play schedule look like? Let me show you:

Monday
Morning - 1hr - Skettis dailies, Nagrand dailies & some AH/mail
Lunch - 45 min - Battleground (approx. 1000 honor)
Evening - NIL

Tuesday
Morning - 1hr - Skettis dailies, Nagrand dailies & some AH/mail
Lunch - 45 min - Battleground or Blade's Edge quests
Evening - 3hrs - Battleground (approx 3K honor) or the odd instance

Wednesday
Morning - NIL
Lunch - NIL
Evening - 1 hr - Skettis dailies, Nagrand dailies & AH/mail

Thursday
Morning - 1hr - Skettis dailies, Nagrand dailies & questing
Lunch - 45 min - Battleground (approx 1000 honor)
Evening - 1 hr - Battleground (approx 1000 honor)

Friday
Morning - 1hr - Skettis dailies, Nagrand dailies & AH/mail
Lunch - NIL
Evening - NIL

Saturday
Morning - NIL
Lunch - 2 hrs - Battleground (approx 2000 honor)
Evening - NIL

Sunday
Morning - NIL
Lunch - 2 hrs - Battleground (approx 2000 honor)
Evening - 1 hr - Dailies & Battleground (approx 500 honor)

If you add it up its about 16 hours / week. 11 hours of those are in BG's and remaining 5 hours are spent on dailies and in front of the AH.

In a week I'll net about 11'000 honor and 300 gold (more depending on Ore & loot sales. This week however I missed my Tuesday evening play session in favor of a social happening... WOW always get shafted .. it is lowest on the priority scale.

So there you have it. Actually it is way more than I thought I played. I would also estimate that I spend at least 30-60 minutes / day browsing WOW related web pages. Pumping those 16 hours up to at least 20 hours / week. Comparing this with the rest of my life:

Sleep - 56 hrs / week (32 %)

Work - 41 hrs/ week (23 %)
Family - 36 hrs / week (21%)
WOW - 20 hrs / week (11 %)
Other - 22 hrs / week (13%)

I need to cut down on sleep...

What does your schedule look like when you really add it up?

New hunter gear

Yesterday was a great day in the battlegrounds. My fear of Eye of The Storm has finally dwindled away. I've collected the 40 badges I needed to purchase the Vindicator's Chain Sabbatons. I shy away from the Guardian version because my hunter does not carry an arena rating. Somehow I cannot bare myself to beg for a partner for throw-away games. Once I have assembled a full PVP gear from the BGs I'll go into arenas but not before.

I am also considering to enchant my fugly Crystalforged War Axe with Savagery. To be honest - it will take me quite some time before I replace it with the PVP axe. 27.000 honor can be spent on much more resilience in form of armor... and then I probably should get the Crossbow before the axe anyway...

I gather about 1k honor each day from a few BGs. Certain days I'll get more (~5k) others nothing at all. That said, getting the Axe requires almost a months of BGs...

So far I've collected:

Guardian's Chain Girdle, the Vindicator's Chain Sabbatons and the Medallion of the Horde.

Right now I am saving up for the Vindicator's Chain Bracers and I am 1500 of 9800 honor there. After the bracers I'll probably look for the Sergeant's Heavy Cloak or even the Merciless Gladiator's Chain Armor...

Choices choices...

oh and my hunter broke 5000 hks yesterday... yay! It is nothing compared to the fighters you fight with in the BGs. Most of  them with any gear to speak of have at least 34k....

Epic mount

I have finally saved enough gold to shell out the 5200 gold required for the epic flying mount. I did test fly it this morning and it feels truly epic. Doing the bombing quest in Skettis was so much more painless not to mention just flying about gathering minerals.

With the gold farming complete I've not only gotten myself an epic mount but I have also completed the farming myself. I've had a few "rich" friend offer me the gold but I've learned that if you get it yourself - it is so much sweeter. Having goals in WOW is the only thing that keeps me playing the same character. Being an altoholic I only need a few days of boredom before starting up a new char. I've decided to try to stick with my hunter for as long as possible. Also levelling up new pets is * almost * the same as levelling a character =)

My trusty black wolf is now level 67 and received his name today - Bloodmaul. I figured it would go nicely since he is a Bloodmaul Wolf from the Bladespire Mountains.

With the mount done I am going to save up some gold for my next project - enchanting and gemming my PVP gear. Next on my shopping list is Swift Windfire Diamond for my head and the enchant Surefooted on my boots.

Gold paradise - Fire Festival Revisited

I think I was too harsh on the Fire Festival earlier. It is actually a great event - for getting gold. Three hours of fire festival celebration netted me little over 400 gold. I didn't have ultra fun (as in running around in WSG/AB) but it was ok. And my hunter is desperately needing gold for the epic flyer.

So how does this get rich scheme work with the Fire Festival?

Easy.

Outside most settlements in Outlands and Azeroth are the crazy fire worshippers and their bonfire. With the faction of your choice (I play horde so that will be "my faction") you'll get a quest to worship the fire. Get the quest and voila - 5 gold (if you are level 70) for every horde fire. Now go to the pesky alliance settlements and "use" their bonfire (actually the bonfire has a quest marker) and you'll get 11 gold and some change.

Easiest way to do this is to start in Outlands - Netherstorm and then make your way to shadowmoon valley. Once there, back to Shattrah and take a portal to Silvermoon and work your way through Eastern Kingdom. Once you reach Booty-Bay hop on the boat to Kalimdor and from Ratchet take the flight to Cenarion Hold in Silithius. Now work your way all the way to Draenei starting areas...

Personally I skipped the Night Elf starting area - Dolanaar. To complicated for my "Get rich quick scheme".

In the enemy capitals (Exodar, IF, Stormwind & Darnassus) are special festival fires for you to desecrate. My impression is that they yield slightly more gold but that you will have to fight your way to get there. If you stick to regular settlements you can do this solo without breaking a sweat. Well maby a few drops if you play on a PVP server.

Each continent yields about 200 gold... and in order to make this really easy for you I've spotted another blog with a list of all settlements:

Grumble N Autumn: 2008 Midsummer Fires

 

Great guide to the locations. It actually inspired me to visit all the places. Oh it took me about 3 hours to complete the entire run. Happy riding... you'll miss your flying mount in the old world.

I know only need 600 gold to buy my hunter an epic flyer... almost there!

Workcraft

Just got this dumped in my lap... it hillarious!

WeGame.com - WoW Videos

Where is the Fun in the Fire festival?

Who likes Fire festival? After looking around a little bit on the blogger scene, I've deduced that most of us doesn't really care for the firef festival events. Personally I think the added city art is nice and the midsummer pole and the dancing is a nice touch in the cities. The questlines and the fire rewards are however totally uninspiring. The people I've talked to force themselves through the torch tossing/catching just to get themselves the rewards. All while they moan and bitch about how hard/boring it is. It's a game. Do stick to things that you enjoy.

I tried the torch tossing, easy. I tried the torch catching. Bleh. Running around to various ally cities to dose their flame could be fun in the right group. On a PVP server it guarantees lots of interesting moments - or ganking.

My wife took one look at the new city art and then demanded to get to play... she loves the events, and that my friends is all it takes for me to think Fire festival (however boring it is) is a good thing. I am off to ignore the festival some more. Need a wee bit more honor before the new seasonal PVP gear is introduced on Wednesday.

Hunter engineering goggles

Last night I crafted Surestrike Goggles v2.0 for my hunter. With primal nether being available from the AH it was easy to gather the rest of the materials. All my collected ore has gone into this though... I am not sure what the cost would add up to. The materials I bought from the AH - Primal Nether (40g), Nightseye x2 (60g) and finally Heavy knothide leather x6 (15g). Approximately 120g and then the time to get all the ore... about 20 hours of playtime? It sure sounds expensive. I hope it is worth it in the end.

I am slowly putting together a PVE set to go with my PVP set. With the engineering goggles equipped I finally broke 1000 RAP. I now have to take additional measures to avoid drawing aggro from my pet. Something I've never had to do before. It is not unusual to manage a string of crits and then have the mob switch targets. I am thinking of starting to use a Misdirection macro in regular pullls... but it seems highly mana draining. Mana is what I have very little of... I rely on Aspect of the Viper more than Mp5 and Int. Maby time to put together a farming set too...

I am saving up for an epic flyer... but at the same time I want to gem and enchant my gear. I keep telling myself that after I've gotten the epic flyer getting gold will be much faster and smoother.

Reputation update:

Exalted with Mag'har! I now ride a Cobalt War Talbuk.

I need a new goal. Perhaps the consortium since I do enjoy killing the poor Ogres in Nagrand. 200 warbeads will take me to honored... I probably should do the Netherstorm quests before.

The Scryers - Revered - 800 sunfury signets required for Exalted.

Thing is... I am not overly interested in any of those factions. Then perhaps Sha'tari Skyguard could be something? Those Skettis quests are really a pain in the ass though.

Medallion of the Horde

My first purchase to improve my PVP gear was the Medallion of the Horde, effectively giving me 20 more resilience and cutting down the cooldown from 5 to 2 minutes. The resilience is nice but the new CD makes it extremely useful. I would say almost making it usable once in every BG encounter. On the other hand... almost everyone have this trinket which means that you should never expect your Freezing trap to actually CC anyone... However it will give you an early warning of an incoming rogue or druid.

I am holding off any other purchases until 27th of June...

Last night I passed 4000 lifetime kills. My previous character record is held by my old alliance hunter Ninaeve at 7673 kills. Sadly she only got to set her foot in Outlands once before being laid to rest.

In total my characters have raked up 21345 kills. Interestingly enough my rogue Hexapuma has the ranking of Knight-Captain with only 3581 kills. I miss the PVP titles... Hmm looking at my rogue that hasn't been active since October last year I see he logged out the last time with resurrection sickness. Poor thing.

 

Reputation update:

I am currently working on Mag'har rep. 16264/21000 meaning I only need 100 more warbeads or 474 ogre kills to Exalted.