Seems that a’v been called up early - brought in tae Northrend tae gie a wee hand wi’ settin’ up things for the rest who’re comin’. Sure there’s a few problems the noo but I’m sure we’ll get things sorted…

I just had to…. Oh come on, he needs a hug! I managed to snag myself a beta key so I’m having a sneak peek around the new stuff.  I’ve created and am playing around wih my Death Knight - it’s interesting and different and I love the starter quests - very cool.  I’ve been a bit ill the past few days so I don’t have much coherent to say yet - I’ll maybe work up something more interesting for later.

Oh and I have to admit a little bit of squeeing when I submitted my very first bug ticket.  I’m making a difference! *ahem*

I hope Indi doesn’t mind me stealing her char to draw - I  wanted to do her a little doodle. I know my rendition of t2 is pitiful but it’s been a while since I did anything arts wise so I’m a bit rusty.

I’ll hopefully have another one up in the next week or so as I have a few people I want to draw for - since it’s about the only thing I feel I can ‘give’ to those I care for.  /cheesy grin

For those who don’t know:  Indi is my guild lead, she’s a superb administrator and really fun person to be around - especially when she starts telling us stories of ‘ye old days’.   Her current main is a resto shammy but I know she still loves her pew-pew mage. *grin*

She admitted to reading my blog so /wave ^^

Haha! That wee druid really has a thick hide - she decided tae go show them uppity inmates fae the Stockades o’ Stormwind what for! It wis a sight tae be beheld, ah’m tellin’ ye.

I wanted some wool cloth and a quick google told me the Stockades was my best bet for grinding some.  I have totally missed this sort of thing - barelling through an instance, pulling as much as I could and swipe, swipe, swipe.  Unfortunately Stockades has the problem that many of the mobs ‘backhand’ which stuns you no matter what your level so my health dipped a few times when I did some or the larger pulls.

Three runs and about 11 stacks of wool later and I was grinning from ear to ear.  I really missed having a tank char!  It’s so much more fun than killing things one at a time.

A little spin on one of the current shared topics from Blog Azeroth.  Now, I’m sure I’ve covered what concerns I have with other players and their thoughts on rogues as well as mentioning some things that rogues can do which others don’t realise so I’m going to rant on another little bugbear of mine - misconceptions about dwarves!

First, though…

• We are not all holy-loving, shiny or knee-cap melting priests.
• Neither are we all bloody hunters!
• Nor are we all Paladins.
• In case you didn’t get the theme here, we’re definately not all warriors, either.

So, before you ask for a blessing, particular aspect, tankage or haelz… please check your dwarf is not, in fact, a rogue! *Ahem*

I’ve had all of the above happen to me a few times - people don’t seem to realise dwarves come in rogue-flavour.  That aside, though, there are some other common misconceptions about dwarves in general which people should remember not to insinuate when grouped with a dwarf.

• We do not smell badly.
• Our women do not have beards.  Well, except one.
• We are not short, everyone else is disproportinately tall (except gnomes, who’re too short).
• You may not punt us, we are not gnomes.
• We are not fat, we are big-boned.  No, really.
• We’re not all drunkards.  We just like a wee drink (or five) now and then.

I love being a dwarf, I enjoy being part of what is becoming an increasingly small community.  Although we may not have the same sort of thing going as some class-communies (I’m looking at the druids, here!) I’ve always found dwarves have more of a kin-ship than any other race I’ve played.  Dwarves playing with each other will often greet one another enthusiastically, we will dance and drink together and female dwarves are coveted rarities.  I think this comes from the fact there are so few of us in comparison to most other races - especially now that all priests can have fear-ward.

If I’ve missed mentioning any other dwarven bloggers here give me a poke for linkage! Dwarves must stick together in the face of what is becoming an overwhelmingly racist attitude against our kind!

For Khaz Modan!! /charge.

Ah hear tell o’ trouble on the horizon, somethin’ big brewin’ in the frozen lands.  Ah can feel it in my bones, my heart.  Darkness is spreadin’ again and I have a feelin’ it’s gonnae get  a lot worse afore it gets better.

Pookies inspired post inc, get those hots rolling, this may be a bumpy ride!

So, my latest alt has hit 70, I’m plowing through quests for gold and pondering what to do when the expansion comes.  A fever has overtaken my brain since the first ’serious’ beta notes began to come out.  I’m having a hard time being enthusiastic about any one of my current 70 characters - knowing they’ll very soon be undergeared and underlevelled again.

I’m dreaming of Death Knights.  This annoys me as it’s so horribly ‘common’ and I hate being so utterly intrigued by the Mary Sue of all classes but, goddamnit - those videos, the class abilites, the niche and, of course, the BIG SWORDS are making me drool.

One of the biggest turn-offs for rogues in the expansion for me is that they are pushing daggers and dagger spec/abilities heavily and I just don’t like daggers! Odd, for a rogue, I know, but I picked the class based on ’stabby stab’ and then realised I liked my stabby-stab to be from a rather large sword.  I know many might see this as a silly thing but as a mechanic and how I see my character the new stuff just doesn’t work for me.  There’s a few nice things they’re adding for rogues but nothing that totally grips me. I am not blaming Blizzard or whining at them -  I know things may change, yet, but unless they change substantially then I will change how I play.

I’ve even ‘created’ my Death Knight already, reserved a name and decided on professions tentatively - not worthless as I will have one as an alt if I don’t have it as a main.

I’m a little torn as I want to level a Death Knight when the expansion comes out but this will mean I lag a few weeks behind the other fast levellers in my guild - I’m also not even guaranteed to like playing one! (Hoping for an open beta in the last few weeks).

Also, there are going to be three billion Death Knights out there.  This particular fact bothers me less than it once did as I reckon the majority will lose interest very quickly (much like all of those abandoned belfadins and squid shammys).  I want a more complex class to play in a raid setting and one which has more raid utility so even if I don’t go for a Death Knight I’d want to switch to one of my other alts.

Just some ponderings.

The Burning Crusade Goes On!

On the other side of things, though, as the great BBB has said it’s at least a few months away and I’m certainly not going to totally lose interest in what I’m doing - hell I want to down Archi and work on getting further into BT - I know we may not see Illidan but I’m on the path and I ain’t stepping off it until the Lich King drags me by the beard (or ponytails…)!

Like Leafy I probably won’t be spending much time pondering over Wrath stuff on my blog until Wrath actually hits us.  I also like to be surprised by new zones and the general feel of a place so although I’ve had a peek at screenies and some professions / class info I am dragging myself away from Siha of Banana Shoulders’ video posts - have a look if you’re ravenous for every Northrend fix y’can get.

Perhaps not a complete anti-wrath blanket like he’s done but generally I concentrate on the here and now posts anyways.  The only change in this will be if my beloved world events get a mention from the beta.  I loves my world events…

Seems tae me there’s somethin’ goin’ on around here. Somethin’ tae dae wi’ them druidic types. Well, ah told Jhai she’s tae spend a bit less time oan makin’ furballs an’ maybe spend some time lookin’ tae find oot what others o’ her type are up tae.  Seems they’re up to plenty, too.

Looks like there’s been a big ruckus involving Mr Kitty and his feathered, furred and barked(?) friends adversaries! Now, me, I loves my druids and I love the druid community - it’s one of the best class communities in wow, in my opinion, so I am furthering the cause with a little shoutout from my own two druids!

I’ll let Mr BBB explain.

Well, see, there’s this guy and he has some issues and he wants ye tae fix ‘em fer him.  Well, ah’m a believer o’ fixin’ things fer yerself - especially when the asker looks so shifty - so ah  wisn’t havin’ anything to do wi him but thon shaman is a bit o’ a soft touch and said he’s go do his dirty work. *grumble*  Anyways, he comes back tae me a wee while later wi’ the biggest most ridiculous hat ah’v ever seen… all proud of himself.  Well, it was all ah could do tae no laugh…

Since the patch I’ve been wanting to get my grubby mitts on [Don Carlos' Famous Hat].  I mean, come one, what could be more awesome than a full size ghost wolf pet?  Especially alongside a shaman in ghost wolf form!  After a bit of fun with Archi I grabbed a few guildies and we set off to procure our hats.

It took a little while to find him first time (he patrols the long, straight road) but when we did we unleashed all sorts of doomkin on him!  Softi tanked him whilst our enhance shammy, Az, took out his pet.  The mage (Grav) pewpew’d and I did the healzor beams thing I do.

As you can see, this pic was taken after Grav and I already grabbed our hats.  The encounter, despite being in heroic, is so easy we didn’t need our real ones.  Although killing him saves you to the instance you can zone out, set the instance to normal then heroic again, zone back in and he will have respawned.  This may be fixed in future patches so I reccomend you scoot along now to do it!  You don’t even need the quest to do this, though it will get you a basic version of the same hat (same model, no on-click wolfie).

Showing off our lineup of three gazillion wolves.  Ok, so maybe a small exaggeration but still…. can you figure out which are the shamans!? (the floaty water globes are just a small hint ;P)

Dancing with this hat cannot be beaten.  /dance

In the middle o’ a battle ye don’t usually hae time tae look around yae and appreciate the beauty of the landscape - if ye dae yer likely tae leave wi’ no heid!  However, thon young druid told me she’d found a nice spot and so ah took a picture tae keep her quiet once the heat of the battle had progressed further down the Valley.  Turns out she’s not got a bad eye, eh?

I spied the tree branch and just had to stand on it whilst healing - no idea why - and then noticed the really nice scenery behind me.  Odd to see such peaceful scenery in the middle of a battleground…

Ishnu-alah, stranger…

It’s been a long and circuitous route but my baby druid finally hit 70 three days ago. She’s also almost met my old druid’s stats 10 minutes after hitting 70 simply due to the [Strength of the Clefthoof] set, a couple of pieces of Merciless Gladiator gear and knowing which quests to target for tanking gear - such as that which gives [Umberhowl's Collar].

I got the mats together for a [Belt of Natural Power] and [Shadowprowler's Chestguard]and am working on my leatherworking level so I can craft [Boots of Natural Grace].  Oh and maybe I can buy a [Cloak of the Craft] and some [Swiftstrike Shoulders] if I suddenly find a gold tree.  The wonder of having a ’suger daddy’ main, eh?  And all of this whilst grinding my way into some nice SSO rep and golds for my epic flying form.

0 - Kara in 2 Days

So, I’ve gotten myself some decent gear together with minimal instancing.  The only gear I’ve gotten which was not crafted, quested or … honored? is my [Burnoose of Shifting Ages] (yes I know it’s a warrior cloak but it had more armor and defense than my current one) and [Dragonhide Gloves] (which require a couple of Durn/BM runs).  I’m not a huge fan of running with pugs and not a lot of people in the guild are running normal instances these days so I didn’t want to spend a lot of time looking for gear in them.  The only one I will be doing until I’m sick of it is Steamvaults for my [Earthwarden].

If you have enough gold / resources and a will to pvp whilst levelling then you can easily hit Kara-ready tanking stats soon after hitting 70.  I did the daily pvp quest every day from level 60 and usually one other game.  My dps was terrible but I took some healing kit and helped by adding a few heals here and there - this got me my shoulders.  I then spent one whole day pvp-ing to get enough to get my helm at level 69.  Even if you did this at 70 it’s still only one day.

Belt, neck, one ring and clefthoof set were crafted.  Wrist, idol and one trinket were quest and the other trinket, ring, and the gloves were bought / rep items.

So, really, it’s entirely possible to hit Kara right after hitting 70 but it does require some preparation.  Of course, I’d totally recommend doing plenty of tanking prior to hitting 70 so you’ve had experience as this is as important as just having decent gear.

Kara, really?

Yep! Though I’m not sure our raid lead agreed at first either. Oddly, this week one of the groups hadn’t finished Prince / Netherspite - they wanted to go again to finish it but didn’t have a full group.  Tanks are always short in our guild so I offered myself.  I rattled off my stats to our druid lead and he approved me to OT - he would MT Prince since his gear is, obviously, a lot better than mine.   So, off we go, get Prince down and… our druid lead had to leave.

I got to MT Netherspite two days after hitting 70.  /cheer. I know Netherspite can be tanked by a non-geared tank but I was tanking him between phases too so we could go all out on dps (low dps group).

Now, tanking one of the easier bosses in Kara (tanking wise) doesn’t mean, necessarily, you can tank all of Kara easily.  However, you could easily main tank the earlier bosses (for a guild newly starting Kara) and definately off-tank anything.  Druids are one of the easiest classes to do this with - like the tailoring casters you can hit Kara with gear which will last you a long time.  Hell, if I’d tried harder I could easily have even gotten a more druidy cape ([Thoriumweave Cloak]) and Earthwarden already.

The one big downside to this is that my kitty gear is pretty lame, still.  I’ve been concentrating almost entirely on my tanking gear and have only picked up kitty upgrades as they’ve come along.  My run in Kara yesterday, though, grabbed me some [Skulker's Greaves] so I’m on my way to getting my kitty gear on par with my tanking gear.

Netherspite

The Netherspite fight has special meaning to me.  On Mharai, my first druid, I was invited to off-tank Kara 5 minutes after getting attuned.  I hadn’t expected to go, hadn’t read tactics, had no buffs except food buffs.  I had my druid mentor with me (one of the best druids I’ve ever met) and we stood and practiced beam jumping.  It was just so much damn fun, I was doing something which was more than just ‘tank and spank’ and was getting to be the ‘main tank’ during that time.

It’s always been one of my goals since those first few Kara runs to main tank Kara and, hopefully, it won’t be long until I can fulfill that wish.

OMG DMG!

One of the odd things about going from being DPS / Healer for so long is getting used to taking damage again.   On the first pull I had this moment of “OHSHIT so much dmg!”. Then, of course, I was heal spammed.  I wasn’t actually losing that much  health but I was tanking three mobs who were higher and hitting harder than anything I’ve tanked on Jhai up until now.  It feels nice to be the focus of heals by design rather than getting them because I’m a rogue who likes to attract a little bit of special attention from the trash mobs in Mount Hyjal.  *ahem*

Life’s all aboot strivin’ fer things - whether it’s fer a few shiny sword or just tae be the best person y’can be.  Doin’ things ye shouldnae supposted tae be doin’ is somethin’ ah like to strive fer.  Ah ken ah’m no amazin’ at it but ah like tae push mah own limits!  Seems a little o’ that attitudhas been rubbin’ off on the wee druid ah took under mah wing and now she’s doin’ allsorts!

It’s true - I like trying stuff to see if I can get away with it.  One of my favourite ways to do this is to go and play with elite mobs - on Mharai, when I was levelling,  I found it hard to get groups.  Low population server + fast leveller = scarce people.  So, I had to do it for myself! Being a druid I had a number of tools at my disposal, tank, melee dps and healer all wrapped into one.  It took a while for me to get my methodology down but conquering elites by myself really gave me  taste for that sort of thing.

On Jhai, as I’ve levelled, I’ve tried more of these sorts of things than I did on Mharai.  The confidence I’d gained by Netherstorm on one druid bolstered me to try much earlier with my younger druid.  So, with this in mind, I decided to plod around Nagrand and try my hand at the Nessingwary quests solo at level 67.

Banthar: No real issues here.  He has a lot of health but doesn’t hit too hard - tanking gear on, throw a few hots and charge in.  It came close and I had to shift and heal a few times (so much harder when you don’t have Warstomp!) but I made it through without too much fuss! I ended up having about 1/5 health at the end of this fight.

Jhai: 1 Nagrand: 0

Bach’lor: This fiesty talbuk was a whole different kettle of fish - he hasn’t got much health but he hits like a truck.  It came very close two times, got hm to 1% then… dead.  Ouch.  But wait, he died too?! W00t! One of my bleeds had killed him just as I died.   Obviously, I finished this fight with no health.

Jhai: 2 Nagrand: 1

Gutripper: The easiest of the three, I’d say.  Hits moderately hard and does moderate damage - the biggest problem was avoiding the tonne of mobs around him. I finished this fight at around 1/3 health.

Jhai: 3 Nagrand: 1

So far, so easy - they’re all 67 elites and not the special super-amazing-imba type world elites.

So, next up was the momma of all elephants -  Tusker.  She’s a formidable level 58 elite, hit’s like a bag of bricks and does a nasty bleed effect.  She also does a throwback and has a tonne of health.  Hmm.  Charging in with hots did no good and after a couple of tries I was getting a bit frustrated.

Jhai: 3 Nagrand: 2

I went back to levelling since I was close to 68 and, not long after dinging, remembered an old technique I’d used to use.  I can’t beleive I didn’t remember and it’s mentally prodded me into realising my druid skills are terribly rusty.

Pounce > mangle (4) > rip > bear > bash > run > heal > charge > etc.

Jhai: 4 Nagrand: 2

I had completely forgotten how useful pouncing and then taking a deep chunk of hp out was when trying to kill high hp mobs.  Bear is eventually a necessity as are heals but that little thing makes all the difference.  I killed Tusker so comfortably easily I reckon I could have done it prior to hitting 68 if only I’d remembered that one thing .  Ah well, live and learn!

Soloing

As a soloing class I’ve always felt druids beat most others - HoT’s, easily obtainable high stamina / armor and pretty good dps mean a class which doesn’t rely on having to kite mobs into oblivion (though this is also totally doable for a druid).  Of course, I think half the battle is knowing or at least being very comfortable with the class you’re playing.  I have a hunter - I’m terrible at huntering and don’t much like it so I find I don’t have the concentration or inclination to learn all the ‘tricks’ it requires to pull off the more spectacular stunts - my rogue and druid, on the other hand, I am much more comfortable about maneuvering becaus I like both classes and enjoy picking at their abilites.

I’m sure a while back someone mentioned posting on the subject of soloing things but I cannot for the life of me remember who - if someone could furnish me with a link I’d give much huggage!