Battlegrounds in the Morning

I ran a bunch of back-to-back random battlegrounds on Skulfrak this morning, and made enough honor to get a few new pieces of gear. He's starting to become hard to kill, and is doing pretty well. Here's a video I put together from some random sessions -

Skulfrak Goes to War - Convenient Video Format

I was testing out Fraps this morning, recording some clips of my warlock, Skulfrak, in action. Pretty ordinary stuff. This is mostly for my friends who wonder what it is I do in this game, here's a bit of a taste.

Skulfrak Goes to War - Old School Alterac Valley!

I ran a bunch of AVs on my warlock, Skulfrak, today, and the last one was truly epic. The alliance was waiting for us in Balinda's room, and that threw everything off.  The didn't get Galv down, and we failed on Bal, so it ended up turning into a giant battle of attrition, and we were losing by about 100 reinforcements. But, after wearing them down a bit, we finally took Balinda out, and that turned the tide. Suddenly, they were the ones down by 100, and we pushed them all the way back into their camp. They even brought out the Druids of the Fang! I was half expecting them to summon the Ice Lord.  It seemed like it took about an hour, but we finally counted them down, and it was like New Year's Eve.  So, we actually did some PvP in Alterac Valley, the way it was meant to be. Too bad they're not all that way! This is why it's my favorite battleground.

Skulfrak Goes to War - The Firelands!

After I did some crafting this morning, I finished off enough questswith my warlock Skulfrak in Hyjal to open up the Firelands. It turned out to be a lot tougher than I thought! I did a bunch of tasks in Hyjal for the druids, and the portal opened and I went through. I got in over my head once, and died, but I soon got the hang of it. Now, I'm collecting World Tree marks and I'll go back tomorrow.

Then I ran Alterac Valley a few times, and did some PvP, earning honor points.

It's an Alterac Valley Weekend!

Alterac Valley has always been my favorite battleground. Probably from my old-school roots when there used to be 4 hour queue times, and six hour running battles.  It's much quicker now, but I still love fighting back on forth on the road or the field of strife. I'm gearing Skulfrak up to get some better PvP gear, so I'll try and get some sessions in during the weekend.

Skulfrak Goes to War

Been thinking a lot about PvP lately, and did some on my warrior I've been occasionally leveling, but I just don't enjoy it was much as I do on my warlock.  I'm thinking it's time to knuckle down, get some gear, focus my spec, and send a few thousand alliance pinkies to the graveyard.

For all that's going on in my life, PvP better suits my play time.  I don't have a few hours to slog through heroics in a PuG and listen to all the whining, but 30 minutes here and there to knock out a battleground can be fine.  There's just something about facing off against other players as opposed to computer-controlled opponents that I find very satisfying. Real people can make dumb mistakes, hit the wrong keys, be in the wrong place at the wrong time, etc.  Anything can happen.

So, I'm lacing up my boots and heading into some battlegrounds and Told Barad on Skulfrak  I wouldn't mind some arena action too, but I need some better gear first.

I'll be tweaking my affliction spec, adjusting my glyphs and going after some resilience gear. Next report will be from the trenches!

Barchetta!

My new warrior I was leveling to tank for my friends was just going too slow. They've got linked accounts and are getting triple XP, and I have no heirlooms or guild bonus to work with.  So, I jumped ahead.

I rolled a new goblin death knight named Barchetta on Wildhammer-US and jumped right into tanking instances. He's kicking some serious butt!  It was a little shaky at first, but now that he has more aggro-generating abilities in place, he's a pretty solid tank.  The average queue time is about 4 seconds.  He's level 61 and climbing.

So, now I'm waiting for my buddies to catch me.  It shouldn't take them too long, and then we can start running together.  Coda might make a comeback later, but for now, I'll be on Barchetta.

I won a Tol'Barad!

Finally. after two months, the horde won a Tol'Barad victory this morning while I was in the group.  Quite a few of us were amazed, and someone even asked "What do we do now?"  There are six dailies in there for the controlling faction, which I never knew before!  Wow, all this time, the alliance on SWC has had a free run on these, as well as the raid instance in there.  The horde has been at a substantial disadvantage, but it seems the latest patch has made things more equitable.

Skul has been running dailies, and gathering up some honor and points.  I'm still not very clear on what Blizzard's idea for end-game content is right now.  I tend to get bored with dailies after about two weeks, and I'd rather be running dungeons.  With 45 minute queues, and runs that take more than an hour, it's not as accessible as it was during Wrath.  I know, people are tired of the whining and crying that dungeons are too hard, but I really enjoyed being able to hammer out 2 heroics during my lunch hour, or squeeze one in before work.  I miss some days now, and it's not as much fun.  When I do get one finished, it' just not as rewarding as I feel it should be.

I've got some friends looking at Rift, but I can't afford to buy into another game right now that seems to be on the same path as Warhammer or Age of Conan.  And do we need another sword & sorcery game that does the same things?  I'd love to do something different, but I have a hard time believing a game fresh out of the gate can be as fun as WoW can be.  Wow has some issues right now, but I'm not ready to jump ship unless I see some solid evidence of a large player base and frequent updates.

Skulfrak is Back!

Patch day was yesterday, and things look to be better for some of the end-game content, so I set aside my worgen project to dust off my main warlock, Skulfrak, to try things out.

The horde actually had Tol Borad on Steamwheedle Cartel, which I never saw before.  It's been a month since I played Skul, so I'm not sure what the recent trends are, but I'll be watching closely to see what the TB trends are, as that was one of my issues with the current state of the game.

I sold a bunch of old archeology grays I had in my bank, and was happy with the new vendor prices.

I was able to make it through a heroic dungeon, and died during the last boss fight, but the group stayed together and finished it, and I won a new blue staff, so Skul's gear got a little better and he earned some valor points.

I did a random battleground this morning, and the horde just didn't have it together.  They've combined a bunch of battlegroups, and our new stock is really lacking.  I had the flag in Warsong Gultch, and my teammates ran right past me to fight in the middle, rather than escorting and covering me, and I was hunted down by two allies in our own base and killed, giving the other side a score.  They weren't even paying attention to the fact that there are flags in there, and winning the match gives bonus honor.

/sigh

Cygnet - level 54

Cygnet, my new worgen warlock on Whisperwind, is now level 54. She's done all the classic dungeons except LBRS, which should come up in the next few days, and she'll get the Classic Dungeonmaster achievement.  She's also run some battlegrounds and done quite well.  When she hits 60, she'll have enough honor to buy a few epic goodies that will carry her for a few levels.

Outland dungeons and flying are on the horizon!

Back to Kaboodle

I'm taking a break from the level 85 content right now.  I'm not happy with the difficulty of heroics vs. the gains I'm making - both in drops and valor points.  Tol Barad on my server is hopelessly broken right now, and I've not seen the Horde owning the keep at all.  Archeology is maxed out, and the Tol'vir digistes are way too few and far between, and I'm not using +100 gold tablets as buffs in heroics.  My wife is taking a break for a bit, and Skulfrak kind of goes with her toon, so he's going on the shelf for a bit as well.

This brought me to question which alt I wanted to play.  I have quite a few toons at 80 that I could finish off, but I'm not ready to play something other than a warlock right now, as I'm having a blast figuring out my rotation and playstyle.  I ended up going back to my goblin, Kaboodle, and am having way more fun than I've had on my 85 toon.  Kaboodle has gone from level 18 to 30 in 2 days so far, mostly in dungeons.  The revamped old world stuff is faster and more streamlined than ever before, with all the quests inside the instances.  The bottom line, is I'm having way more fun leveling than I was at the top.  The new Cataclysm zones are amazing, but I think they've got the end game pretty far out of whack right now.  I'm a casual player, and the 30 minute runs in Wrath were nice.  I'll admit, they were too easy, but for PUGs, it's just not fun anymore, and I'm not getting anything out of it.  The end bosses don't even drop epics - just blues, which is about the same quality you can get from quests in Twilight Highlands.

PvP has been fun in the battlegrounds.  This weekend is Warsong Gultch, so I'm going to be trying to grab some extra experience and honor there.

Back to it!

We'll almost assuredly meet Queen Azshara this expansion. Maybe I can give her gown back to her.


I went back to Skul last night and this morning, as there's still so much to do with him in professions and achievements, and I don't feel like treading over the same ground again right now with an alt.  I made the priest and druid set, so now I have bag space taken up with rare items that can make colored light, wind chimes, and a ghostly image of me that stands there.

I'm currently working on Queen Azshara's Dressing Gown, which is an heirloom for level 60 right now, but in the next patch, that and the Headdress of the First Shaman are being lowered to require only level 51, so they'll be useable for longer on alts.

I also finished my first Tol'vir object and got the achievement.  I started another common.  :(  I really wish the Cata zones would give better drops, as Uldum is the only one that has something unique.  It seems stupid to go to Hyjal to only dig up Night Elf fragments, which I can get anywhere else for a lot less work.  I also go no addition keystones this morning.  They're way too rare and sell for too much on the auction house.  I'm enjoying Archelology, but there are a few things that could be better.  I don't like the dungeon quest items that require a massively expensive keystone to complete.  How about letting me use one of these crappy common items that I've assembled instead?  I also don't know what that last icon is in my archeology book - the little symbol with the hat.

I've done Tol'Barad a few times, and I don't like it nearly as much as Wintergrasp.  Every time I've been in it, we lost, and it's confusing with no clear objectives unless you go research it somewhere.  So far, that looks like a dud in the Cataclysm expansion.

I managed to finish a heroic last night, but the group was edgy and insulted each other constantly.  The fights were pretty good, but very stressful as opposed to the Wrath runs.

First Heroic = Fail

Well, that was bad. I managed to cobble together enough gear to get Skulfrak into his first heroic dungeon, and the first part of it went fine. Pulls were careful, DPS was good, a few bosses died.  But on the Neptulon encounter, I had never done it before, and apparently I was DPSing the wrong adds and got scolded as we wiped.  The healer quit, followed by another DPS and the tank, so I still have not completed a heroic yet. :(

This morning, I popped over to my goblin warlock, Julep, on Bleeding Hollow, and started some of the Hyjal quests.  Right away, a dreanei death knight tried to gank me, but he failed and I put him in the dirt. He was unprepared for fear.  I would have done more, but I'm having connection issues and the lag made it impossible to continue.

I Stood in the Fire

This weekend, I've playing a lower level warlock alt, Oakley, on Icecrown, getting some dungeon and battleground experience.  While running through Winterspring to get the flightpath this morning, I came across an area that had a much different atmosphere than I had remembered.  Then I noticed the sky was dark, which I read was one of the tell-tale signs that Deathwing is nearby.  And sure enough, there he was.  I figured this was my perfect chance to get the achievement, so I ran right toward him and was promptly toasted to death.

After I respawned, I queued up for Warsong Gultch and ran through it.  Afterward, I'm back on the road in Winterspring, still flagged for PvP.  I stopped to mine a node I saw and a passing alliance mage took a few shots at me.  I dotted her up, but she took me down.  The graveyard was right there, so I re-spawned and finished her off.  I rode down the road a bit and stopped to re-cast my pet and heal up, and she took another shot, but I killed her again.

Much fun in the 50s bracket today!

Weekend Review

I played on Skul a bit more this weekend.  No big raids, just some PvP and badge runs.

I did very well in Alterac Valley.  As an Affliction spec, I kept my distance, and applied as many DoTs as I could.  I dropped my circle as often as I could, and several times it saved my bacon.  Once, I dropped it on the bridge that leads into the Alliance base, and a shaman used a knockback spell to blow me over the side.  Instead of falling to my death, I hit my teleport and popped back into my circle on the bridge, dotted him up, and took him down.  A lot of fun.  I even got the Damage Control achievement, for doing over 300k damage in a single battleground.

I was hoping to get an ICC-10 in, but no such luck.  I'm 5 frost badges away from getting my tier 10 shoulders.

Coming up, we have the brewfest boss and the headless horseman boss, so that probably means 2 easy bonus frost badges every day.  Very nice!

Step into the Arena

My wife and I made a 2v2 arena team yesterday, and tried our hands at some fast and furious PvP.  We called our team Skulls and Rockets ('cause we each have rocket mounts).

We did pretty bad.  A shadow priest and a warlock for their first time in a bunch of the maps.  We were able to squeeze out a win against one of the teams, though, so we're figuring they must have been *really* bad.  We got more than our required 10 matches for the week, so we'll have some kind of rating come Tuesday morning, and find out if it's worth investing some time in.  We both got the Step into the Arena achievement.

Kind of cool to see yet another new corner of the game for us.  There's still a few surprises out there!  I think we can do a little better with some practice and a bit more PvP gear.

Face Down in Icecrown Citadel

I've been doing quite a bit on my main toon, Skulfrak, recently.

Last night, I took him to ICC-25, and while my DPS numbers were great, I did horribly at dodging aggro, and ended up face down on the floor more times than I care to recall.  My repair bill totaled at the end almost 80 gold, and I didn't win any drops.  I did manage to get the "Storming the Citadel" achievement for clearing the first four bosses, and the much-needed frost badges, so I still came out ahead.  I just wasn't firing on all cylinders yesterday, and not pleased with my overall performance.  It was a PuG group, and we wiped a few times on Festergut before calling it.

A few days earlier, I joined a PuG and attempted Sunwell Plateau 25-man.  We did pretty good until we got to Felmyst, and we lacked the strategy to beat her, despite having about 15 level 80s in the group.  Some of the older content is still not something you can muscle your way through if you don't know the fights.  Still, it was another place I had not seen before, so I had some fun.

I've also worked on my off-spec for the past few days.  It's been a while since I used affliction on my warlock, but I have several pieces of a PvP set I'm working on, and have gotten my resilience to over 700, so this is now Skul's PvP mode.  He did pretty good in battlegrounds and Wintergrasp, and I'd love to try him in the arena when he's gotten a few more pieces together.  It's great to able to play the same character in two completely different ways.  Having dual-spec and the equipment manager makes all the difference in the world.

I also did the re-taking of Echo Isles with him, which was fun and made some easy gold.  I still need to do that on all my alts!

And, I finally finished the Tauren quests for the Argent Tournamnet, making me a champion for all 5 races.  Just some rep grinding to go, and Skul can be called Crusader.

The Gearing Up

Yesterday, my tauren warrior I rolled in March, Squood of Steamwheedle Cartel US, dinged 80 in Icecrown.  He was at the top of the PvP and non-heroic dungeon finder brackets, and suddenly he's at the absolute bottom of the level 80 crowd.  He got wtfpwned in Wintergrasp and battlegrounds, and ended up face down on the dungeon floor in a few instances, running as fury spec.  Humbling after playing my well-geared warlock in ICC25.

He did get a few nice upgrades and made some progress, but the gap between him and toons who have been 80 for a long time is huge, and gear makes all the difference in the world.  It's going to take a whole lot of patience being at the bottom of the damage meters and getting called out for it for a few weeks to get him to a respectable level.  I'm not even going to try and tank in heroics for a while.

Luckily, the horde owns Wintergrasp much of the time on SWC, so I've already got 18 WG marks toward a nice pair of shoulders.  All those gems and enchants are expensive, though, and he doesn't even have epic flying yet.  He's also lacking any professions, having leveled almost entirely through the dungeon finder and battlegrounds.

I'm not entirely susre what I'll do with him for the moment.  The guild my other toons was in imploded and disappeared overnight, so they're all out in the breeze at the moment.  I just haven't been able to find a good, stable community guild in a long time.


As much fun as leveling the warrior has been, and getting instant queues, I've been feeling the itch to get back on my warlock again.  It's still the coolest class in the game by far to me.

Two more to go!

My tauren warrior Squood, on Steamwheedle Cartel US, dinged 78 this morning.  That means it's time to start collecting some Wintergrasp tokens!

On this realm, the horde is pretty overwhelming.  It usually controls Lake Wintergrasp for most of the day, with the alliance slipping a win or two in the very early morning.  Most of the battles I've done end up with the alliance standing in their graveyard, being shot up by the horde like ducks in a barrel.  I've played both sides for a long time, and it's not a lot of fun doing world PvP on the alliance end.

I got a few new two-handed weapons, so I'm making sure my skill is up this time for the Isle of Conquest Call to Arms, which starts tomorrow.  That should easily put me at 80, and give me enough honor for a few more pieces of PvP gear to get me started in heroics.  I'll probably start off as crappy DPS in fury spec, because there's no way I can hold aggro against some of the 6000 gearscore equipped damage monkeys as a fresh 80.

Next up, I want to go back and finish off the handful of dungeons I missed while leveling, so I can get the dungeon-master achievements for each of the brackets.

Squood nears the finish line

My tauren warrior, Squood, on Steamwheedle Cartel US, dinged level 76 from mostly running Strand of the Ancients this weekend.  He made good use of his alternate Fury spec, and is finally starting to perform respectably in there.  Just a few more levels, and he'll ding 80 and join my other toons in the gear chase.

To avoid becoming honor-capped, be's already bought the i-264 PvP cloak for when he tops out.  Wintergrasp is also just around the corner, and on SWC, he should do quite well tagging along in there.

The weekend was about half & half, pretty evenly split between alliance and horde.  Winning on the Call to Arms weekend gives you a pretty hefty chunk of honor and experience.  He should have quite a few gladiator pieces when he dings 80 to get him ready for heroics.

Pretty soon, I'll move back to my new human pally, Vez, but the upcoming weekend is Isle of Conquest, so I'll probably do some more for Squood to get him over the finish line.

To finish the weekend, I tanked Violet Hold and Drek'Theron Keep, and got him a few new blues, bringing his armor level up quite a bit.