Ding! 90

Looks like I missed another Ding! somewhere. Maybe I'm only catching even numbered Dings now. (EDIT: Found the pic & posted it.)

So I sort of fell off the wagon again. Blizzard sent me another free seven day, won't you please come home, Bill Bailey emails, so I bit last week. I popped out in the wall tower with Shado-Master Chong, and he told me to go the the Townlong Steppes. I checked the map, noticed that the quickest way was to take a cat-fall down the wall, did that, mounted up, discovered the Upper Sumprushes, and...

Bam, I'm 90. That was exciting.

The worst part? There's not much else to do. Jal's 90, so the starting quest rewards from Warlords are probably going to be stronger than anything I'd quest my way to in Mists. So I guess Jal's done.

I'll post later about changes to the druid (I did play through a few more quests just to see what was up) and the game in general, but I was surprised how much stuff having an active "Mists"/warchest level account lets you do now in free-to-play. Two biggies:

1. You can play up to 20th level characters for free on any account now, so I could've been playing my low level alts on my main account all this time
2. You can play as a monk on free to play accounts

I think the only thing the free seven days really buys me is the ability to play as a death knight (or any other character over 20, obviously, but that's the only class that's blocked in free-to-play now). So, um, all right then.

And hello heroics

Though it's technically my second successful heroic, it's the first I've done after completing my mad max gear up and my first since March 17th(!). Had never run Shadowfang before. Was relatively enjoyable. We had one wipe before Lord Godfrey, and then had three. The fourth, we had two go down again, including the priest (who went down first maybe two or three of the four shots; still not sure how that happened), and I hit rebirth to bring her back.


Seconds pass, and no rez. Quick typing (the "@" symbol in my frantic "take the rez!@" is, of course, the Angband guy pleading too) and some mad off-healing later, she's taken my Rebirth and is back, I'm DPSing again, and we finally bring him down (though the priest dies again after we're done. I guess she kept catching the Cursed Bullets, but I wasn't calm enough to see.)

It was one of those exciting gaming moments when you breathe a literal sigh of relief. It's fun and, more importantly, memorable to scoot through by the seat of your pants. I was awfully lucky to have a group patient enough to sit through four wipes and a dungeon guide nice enough to give us the 411 on each boss. And I was even luckier to bag the Chaos Orb when it was done. Strangely, two in the party dropped as soon as Godfrey's loot popped up, not even interested in greeding a few more gold into their pockets.


Overall a good, fun run. I (barely) had burst DPS over 11k when things cut just right, and managed to keep it around 7.5-8.5k outside of trash (ie, bosses) when I wasn't off healing (strangely kept it around 6k+ even when I was). I'm not going to say all those hours of grinding gear paid off, as it's wasted time I could have been spending doing something productive (read: "paid"), but they have made the game more fun.

Wow, as an aside, I just Armoried (this is like Googling a date, isn't it?) the other folks. Gear scores:

Priest 345 (7 unenchanted items)
Shaman 342 (10 unenchanted, 9 empty sockets(!!), no belt buckle, unenchanted ring)
Tank/Prot Paladin 339 (5 unenchanted, 5 missing glyphs, no belt buckle)
DK (Frost) 352 (only thing missing is a Chimera's Eye)

And I thought I was behind. But I'm at 344 equipped and a perfect audit. Makes me wonder how much heroics have changed. The DK was the only guy doing serious damage consistently, but I guess I know why now.

Of course, as I've said before, off-healing is about as fun as it gets, as you really do feel you're the only thing between the group and failure. At least one boss required some off-heals and a tranq pop, and of course I had to heal our way through each of the wipes once the priest died (the first time, some DPS died first and I battle rezzed him, not knowing it was going to get lots worse, which kept me healing for a while). Honestly, that's a ton of fun.

I think the secret to good DPS really is mushroom use. I don't enjoy it, but it's growing on me, har har. I'm also using Pickled Guppy and Scrolls of Intellect, something I haven't done with regularity before.

Phew, I'm going to need to run a little archeology just to calm back down.

In other news, I got a free fishing pole with +25 fishing just for catching up with Nat, and even though some NPCs ignore Deathwing's fire, checking how badly the flames are killing your framerate is not A Good Idea.

The end of a grind in achievements

It's finally over. I have the Stump of Time, and now have a gear score of 344. I'm not sure there's much higher level that's useful for a Balance druid that I can get on my own pre-Heroic runs, and nothing I think I can get efficiently. I've regemmed, reenchanted, but not quite yet reforged.

I was going to make a huge retrospective post with tons of pictures, but there were too many, so for now I'm just going to slap in a few of the achievements I got while grinding. And, admittedly, much of this -- particularly Archeology -- was done when I was bored out of my freaking mind during the grinding.

There's at least one more. I received an achievement somewhere about getting 50 Chef's Awards, though I was holding 70 and had spent several before I got it. Seems like lots of the counters for achievements didn't start at Day 0 but at some random implementation point in the future.

Also note the "Next Battle" time for the Baradin's Wardens achievement. Cutting it pretty close. ;^)

I'll try to get up the gumption to write a step-by-step, PvE, casual gamer Balance Gear Guide in the coming days. I ended up buying three pieces, and most of my gear from Normals dropped more than once, iirc, so I think I can give a pretty good, specific list for those leveling alts who want a paint by numbers guide, which I haven't found yet -- which zones to run, which rep to grab in what order, what to buy, etc. Not pick from three items, but get this item, you know? It might not be absolutely "right", but when you're researching this crap, being able to offload all this researching would be nice.

Without further ado...

Rep Ding! Exalted Therazane

What's new with Jal? Not much. I've been running daily normals for Justice Points, and wearing my Therazane tabard for rep. The daily rep quests were boring enough that I've been traveling up in Winterspring grinding Wintersaber Trainer rep instead as I wait for LFG, in part because I saw that, come 4.1, Wintersaber Trainer rep is getting nerfed, and when I say nerfed, I mean homogenized. I should also admit that I spent hours and hours in vanilla farming rugged and other leather from the frostsabers under the rock without ever knowing the trainer was up there, scowling at me killing the wild cats. It was a great place to farm. Rarely anyone there, and nobody really taking down the sabers, who would respawn very quickly. If I'd only known. I did wonder what my mount, a frostsaber, thought about it...

Even so, it didn't take long to get exalted with Therazane. After a few runs, I was just a few hundred points of rep away, and I went back for a final quest. That apparently makes for five exalted reps. Funny, I'm not sure what they are offhand. Therazane (shoulder enchants), Wildhammer (great rep gear for Cat), Sons of Hodir (LK shoulders)... um... (runs to Armory) Apparently the Alliance Vanguard and Stormwind. Who knew?



That said, who really cares? What a payoff!



Wow. Now you know why swag motivates workers, I guess. I remember when I worked at a shop that gave out bonuses for each additional billable hour you clocked, but if you did the math, the percentage of each hour you were bagging dropped after a certain point. If your own company doesn't value each extra hour of your time more, why should you want to give them? Well, that never stopped the company hawks. Anyhow... Looks like I'm susceptible after all.

And for those reading hoping this'll serve as a sort of guide, next is Tol Barad commendations for the Stump of Time, though I'll probably get the frostsaber mount first.

During my daily runs, I'm gradually performing better. The below Recount for Halls of Origination (I came in part-way) is pretty good, and I was off-healing much of the time for our ungeared Shammy.



Shammy follows:



It's not a big deal, and I don't mind our three wipes (!), but I was surprised to feel my own reaction when I saw the lack of enchants and gemming.



Though I didn't have a violent reaction and am actually happy to pull along newbies, I see now why people get so irate when undergeared folk try running heroics. And it's much easier to carry undergeared dps (not that I've been yelled at, as I've only run one heroic) than healz. She just couldn't keep up. So I went elven for a while and threw around some resto-ige (still spec'd balance) and had fun. I also have to take some grief for not knowing that Void Seekers heal themselves if you left two stay close to each other. Whoops.



In other news, Spinks has stopped playing. No big deal. I think it's funny to hear someone trying to figure out the distinction between quitting and quitting for a while. Goodness knows, if you've read this blog at all, you know I take breaks for months at a time. Blizzard expects you to at this point, I believe. Doesn't want you to, but expects it.

Ah yes, I also dodged the temptation to buy a MSI R6850 Cyclone PE/OC Radeon HD 6850 with a gig of VRAM for what's now under $170 with rebate. I decided this was what I wanted when I put together my new rig, but I've been sliding by with what's almost a four year-old card. I mean, look at the roller coaster heatsink! Still, $170 is just $70 shy of what I paid for a quad-core AMD Athlon II at 3 GHz, a new mobo, and four gigs of RAM. Crazy.



The only other thing I've got is that the Frostesaber Stalkers really have it in for the bunnies. I mean, wow. They'll leap four times their body length, it seems, to take one down, and then they don't even bother eating it. See the pic of three going after one at once. INSANE. ;^)



That last one looks stepped on.

Collage brought to you by the fine folk at Microsoft Paint.

Heroic -- It's a different world

Well, the good news is that I've gone through Grim Batol, my first heroic. I lost the Chaos Orb roll, which stinks, but do have a heroic Corrupted Egg Shell, which is at least a good mana replenisher.

Note to self: Use this macro
#showtooltip Corrupted Egg Shell
/cast [@player] Corrupted Egg Shell

The real take-home though is that the Heroic dungeon is a completely different animal socially. It's every bit as bad as you've read. Here's the sum of today's fun, just in case you haven't experienced it firsthand.

I came in part-way through the dungeon with the pre-Umbriss trash already down. Guess that's a bad sign. We have our tank drop soon after, pretty much embarrassed out by the rest of the party (minus me, who stayed silent) for not keeping aggro, which was a legit complaint. "They're casters! They'll attack anybody!" was his response, I believe. Gone. New tank rocks. Knows the instance. Keeps aggro. Tells everyone what to do. Good communicator. I have to race to Finkle's Skinner to beat another skinner to the corpse. Woohoo. One Savage Leather.

(What is the decorum on skinning? I tried to leave about half for him/her, but will admit I raced to skin Umbriss, if only to get some use out of Finkle's Skinner.)

Then, a while later, I have a guy say our dps is low. He's including himself, but mine is awful. At the same time, our healer is over-freakin whelmed with Shadowburner. I'm off-healing like maaaaad, popping tranq, lifeblooming & potting myself, and Healing Touch-ing the tank. We wipe twice. We eventually have to skip Shadowburner. I whisper this to the "low dps" commenter to help him understand why my numbers aren't where they should be, who, it turns out, just turned 85 himself and, though he wouldn't tell me his after asking about mine, has an iLevel of 334 (mine was 340). He defends healz, says that she (?) heals their guild in raids all the time. I say I'll trust him. I could certainly be taking too much damage from not knowing what's up in Heroic as well as I do reg. Seems about as far as I can go towards being nice, right?

We wipe one more time with trash. I'm not healing at all now. /sigh

We get to Erudax. Wipe at least twice. The new tank leaves. I ask if we're calling it. No.

New tank pops in. It's another good tank. I miss the Gale circle somehow, though I would have sworn I was in it, and was stacked right nearly on everyone else. Still, obviously my mistake. I party tell, "the hell? I thought I was in the circle." There's a wipe not 30 sec after (seriously? There are fewer people to heal now, and she can't keep up. Look, I don't expect them to win, but I expect her to keep the tank up long enough for a full party to do so. And no, Erudax wasn't nearly down). By the time I get the tell out, healz has already gone crazy in party chat about Gales being in reg too, referring back to my "Fair Warning Admission (c) 2011" that this is my first heroic run. I whisper, "dude, I've run reg 7 times and read the guides on this. I know the gale."

"^&*! you" is her reply.
"?" is mine, and it comes a millisecond after she's dropped. So does our mage, whose iLevel is apparently 330. Wow, that's low. I'm our best geared dps, and it's my first heroic. Healz' guildie doesn't drop.

Wow, healz even has an iLevel of 350 and has completed Baradin Hold. I don't get it. Resto Shaman, but couldn't keep up with a good tank... with two good tanks... on a sub-boss -- even with trash. I'll take some of the blame, certainly, but I don't think I get it all. Low dps commenter admits later that his weapon broke during the second Erudax wipe and that he, a rogue, was using his hands. "my weapons broke." Seriously? I've got two backup weapon sets, my best one-handed/off-hand combo and a DPS staff, just for fun in my bag, as that's something you can switch during a fight. Explains the horrible dps a bit, though.

Anyhow, we get new dps and healz, a real priest this time. I'm biased. I love priests. We wipe. Np. We wipe again. Np. We finally get dps lined up on the adds in a way that works, and we're golden. Freakin' golden. Erudax drops, I lose out on the Chaos Orb, I win the Egg Shell, all is good, except Mr. "She's Great, Don't Heal" gets the Chaos Orb. ;^)

Wow. Drama. Gear to 21% durability. Hours of life lost. Chaos Orb missed. The drops I want don't happen. We skip Shadowburner. But, ultimately, I've got to admit, a pretty good time.

Another positive (in addition to enjoying the final battle) is that I ended with 2nd in dps on Erudax, even though I was taking time out to drop shrooms to slow the adds. This guy kicked my arse in dps, but looking on the Armory, I guess that makes sense (though why nobody has the Ebonsteel Belt Buckle, I don't know).


Anyhow, you've been warned.

Grim Batol: 5th run and Heroic Prep

Finally Cataclysmically Epic. Broke down and grabbed a Tattooed Eyeball for just under 1300g. That means I spent 1300+750 (bracers)+2700 (Blazewing) = 3750g for my gear. A little lazy, but I'm done.

I'm also getting lots of achievements in a row like this -- I got credit for Epic Waist at the same time I got Cataclysmically Epic Waist, for instance, and I made my own Lava Belt years ago, right after BC's release. It's surprising how much Blizzard apparently didn't track in vanilla and later.

I've now run Grim Batol (normal) five times. I guess it's got the best loot, because it seems to be the most popular PUG/random LFG instance by a long shot. My last run saw two folks drop, one after each of the two sub-bosses when I suppose they got or didn't get the items they wanted. Folks didn't seem to be real familiar with the instance. I ended up dropping into healz for the last two bosses once our Shammy dropped and a gnome priest filled in; we wiped during trash when someone sheeped someone in the next group, and I had to run Tranquility maybe three times total. Nobody even knew to kite Shadowburner's adds, nor did they have much interest after I spend a few seconds dropping into chat to tell them what's up. /sigh

(As an aside, I've been thinking about dedicating a button on the mouse to the WoW in-game voice chat for times like this. I've yet to hear someone on voicechat in a PUG, which seems strange, since even our guild uses Skype when we make guild runs.)

Anyhow, I've done GB enough now to try out heroic. I'm carrying around two pieces of GB (normal) loot already: the Staff of Siphoned Essences and Azureborne Cloak. It'd be nice to get upgrades -- and start collecting some Chaos Orbs.

This looks like an interesting Grim Batol Heroic guide. It feels a little, um, unedited, but has most of the info I've Googled up elsewhere with maps for each boss. I'm a little embarrassed I didn't realize I needed to get behind the Forgemaster when he went with shield, for instance. Shifting Perspective's guide is here, and lets you supplement with a little balance-specific info.

My last experience with GB also has me nearly ready to break down and just slog through heroics I don't know too, admittedly. We'll see if I force myself onto unsuspecting PUGgers. Poor saps. Hopefully I'll stay strong.

Ah, yes, one final point. My trash DPS picked up like mad. I wasn't going around Moonfire and Insect Swarming everyone first. Now I typically rush in with Typhoon, if nobody is CCing, then MF and IS everyone before either tossing off a Starsurge (if its instant-cast procs) to lead into Hurricaning (if the trash is mostly still up) or running to the normal Eclipse rotation. Much better. I'm still not grabbing the top spot on bosses, but I do think I'm trying to do too much, especially this run (lots of needed off-healing).

Jal the Pilgrim

Well, for you clones, Now I'm done.

The best pilgrim's bounty guide I found was
The OverAchiever's at WoW Insider. Here's the bit for finding Horde tables for the Pilgrim's Peril achievement.

Orgrimmar
Southeast of the main gates (just south of the path to the Undercity/Grom'Gol zeppelin tower). Alliance players will not flagged here on PvE servers.

Undercity
In the Ruins of Lordaeron courtyard immediately inside the main entrance to the city. Despite not being located far into the complex, this is the nastiest area for Alliance to reach, as there's steady Horde traffic from both the zeppelins and Silvermoon teleport, and the entrance to the Ruins is an unfortunate choke point. Don't go at server high time.

Thunder Bluff
Directly below the western elevators [note that that isn't the western mesa, but the elevator on the western side of the city -- Jal]. Despite appearing to be outside of the city, the feast area is still within it and will get Alliance players flagged.

Silvermoon
City South of the city's main gates. Alliance players will not get flagged here on PvE servers.

Silvermoon was easy to aggro if you came in the back to the table and not from the path. Stay on the path.

Remember that you only have to sit down at the tables for Pilgrim's peril!! I ate five of each item in Orgrimmar and Thunder Bluff. Luckily the only curious Horde in Thunder Bluff, where you do, sure enough, get flagged for PvP when you approach the table, were all well below 70. Kinda wanted the three obviously watching to give me their best shot, but no luck.

For Turkey Lurkey, I got everyone but the Dwarf, Orc, and Troll rogue turke-i-fied without trouble, but had to get the dwarf from a level one near the flight master in IF and the orc from someone who was politely dancing outside of Stormwind. Several people are putting n00b rolled PCs for easy featherings within shot of the Alliance city tables.

For the troll, I finally gave up waiting for a hand-out and went to the troll starting area, remembering Malone's advice about not going to the barrel (though I did waste some time hovering over Dalaran) and heading to the tree. Remember that the troll rogue starting area isn't on the mainland but on the small island to the east. Picture of me feathering a n00b troll rogue in the starting area below (check minimap).



And then, to find Talon King Ikiss. Reports seem to suggest you can gank him whenever you want, not just during the Pilgrim's Bounty event (which ends tomorrow), so I saved this until last.

Might be useful to recall that you can port to the Outlands now: How to get to the Outlands portal from any Major city in World of Warcraft | eHow.com

1. In Stormwind coming from main gates turn left out of trade district cross bridge go through tunnel to mage corner. Climb the ramp going into the mage tower and its right inside the door.
2. Darnassus go to the middle bridge and straight ahead in the Temple of the Moon
3. Iron Forge[sic] from the front gate turn left its in the Mystic ward in the hall of mysteries
4. Exodar the center of the city take the middle ramp it is in the Vault of Lights

Then you'll want the Sethekk Halls Map from WoWpedia. And don't forget to put on your pilgrim gear (hat and outfit) before waxing Ilkiss. Yes, I forgot too the first time. If you do forget, exit (a tedious process) and right-click your portrait to reset all instances. That'll bring him back to life. I was able to stealth in without incident and all but walk on top of the patrolling mobs. I did accidentally aggro once, and lots of Avian Rippers had heck to pay.



For Turkey Lurky, I had some trouble getting 40 turkeys 30 seconds apart until I went to Tirisfal Glades. And note that the Turkey Caller does not give a legit wild turkey. The turkey it summons is, however, killable (and lootable) for other quests.

And man, does travel form made hunting turkeys a heck of a lot easier. Run, smack once, loot, run some more.



Worth it? I don't know. Probably not. The pet is cute. I didn't have any title to date, so I figured I'd go for this one. It was fun-ish, and without any clear direction for WotLK until Cata really busts out, it was something to help get me used to playing again.

And here's some requisite video of the pet reward getting a little too close to the cooking fire. Start about 30 seconds in.

Pilgrim's Peril: Getting to Thunder Bluff

I'm giving the Pilgrim title a run this year, and Pilgrim's Peril is a bit of a pain. Getting to Orgrimmar was straightforward, but I was scared that Nijel's Point might not get me to Thunder Bluff directly; too many mountains and I couldn't remember if there was a good pass through them.

This page at World of Warcraft Pro has maps for getting to Thunder Bluff. It's explaining how to get to Thrall (isn't he in Nagrand now?), but the map would likely work for us too.

Getting to Him: Have your raid assemble in Astrannar, Ashenvale and then ride the road east and then south into the Barrens. From there ride east along the northern Barrens until you reach Orgrimmar's side entrance. The goal is to take the significantly less guarded side entrance that leads directly to Thrall's room.

There seem to be many more flight points closer to The Gate now, like Fort Triumph, below, but I guess I'll hoof it from Theramore, since I don't have any of those flight points active/discovered.


This will be much easier in a week, when we can get to level 85, throw gold down a gold sink, and fly around the Old World.