World of Warcraft

While Halloween may have come and gone already, I recently perused through this year’s pumpkin contest winners. Here are my top 3:

Don’t miss out on the halloween fun before it goes away! If you are 70, be sure to check out the Headless Horseman event, it’s a great time with some solid loot as well.

Enjoy your weekend!

I recently saw this on TV the other day and couldn’t believe it was an actual commercial. Toyota has had a line of commercials stressing the durability of their truck line, putting their trucks through such fictional events as getting slammed with a meteor and then driving out of the crater. In the latest installment, a Toyota truck gets eaten by a dragon. What’s the result? Find out for yourself!

Not bad I think, looks like they tried to capitalize on the “leeroy jenkins” video that was the rage some time back. I’m sure Blizzard enjoyed the publicity, and I think everyone likes to see the game become a bit more mainstream.

I don’t know about you, but it can be rough just starting out in PvP. My poor alt warlock, with no resilience and damage running high in The Burning Crusade, is torn apart in short order sometimes. You may have a chance in some of the better raiding gear, but you’ll be at a serious disadvantage to your properly-geared pvp counterparts. What’s your quickest way to get the resilience you so desperately need?

You have 2 viable options. Your first will be a few select heroic dungeons, and the other will be arenas.

Let’s start with some gear you’ll want to collect from Heroics. For the sake of simplicity I’ve picked out trinkets and other items that most classes can use:

Alembic of Infernal Power: Heroic Underbog - Drops from the Black Stalker
Splendid Fire Opal: Heroic Underbog - Drops from most Bosses
Argussian Compass: Heroic Underbog - Drops from the Black Stalker
Beaming Fire Opal: Heroic Blood Furnace - Drops from most Bosses
Steady Cryophase: Heroic Ramparts - Drops from most Bosses

Whew, that should give you some things to aim for, no? You’ll also want to start getting into the arenas. I’m not going to give you an entire summary of all the gladiator gear that’s available, but here’s the link to everything you’ll need, including a time calculator. If you can’t get a 5v5 going for the most points, simply grab a friend and get to fighting. The queue times are almost always low, and you’ll only need 10 matches, win or lose, to earn arena points each week. Get your resilience as soon as possible by buying the off-hand weapons/items, as they are one of the cheaper options out there.

Good luck, gladiator.

As you can see here.

I’m not sure if you are familiar with the idea of daily quests, but they’ve been a welcome addition for many players. Essentially they allow you to do a number of quests once a day for reputation and a good amount of gold. I’ll be sure to write up a daily quest guide in the future to explain where to go and how to do it in more detail. In the mean time, however, I’ll sum it up by saying I average about 50-60 gold for about a half hour of questing, which certainly does help for saving for my epic flying mount!

The new patch promises some new daily quests as well. These include heroic dungeon quests, as well as Battleground daily quests, which will reward honor. Originally on the PTR, you would receive 4,000 honor for completing the daily quest. This seemed a bit excessive, but quite a number of players were excited at the chance to get some pvp/resillience gear in a short amount of time, especially considering the season 1 gladiator gear will be available to purchase for honor as well come next patch.

Alas, it was not meant to be. As it turns out, this was a mistake, and the quest will actually reward a mere 400 honor for the turn in, as well as a moderate amount of gold. Personally I don’t think it’s a huge loss. While I really enjoy PvP and arenas as a whole, it’s hard to miss what you never had in the first place. Also, who doesn’t like free honor anyway?

Hello all! As you can see our wow blog here has fallen by the wayside, and I’ve been brought in to spruce things up a bit! I’ve been a long-time wow player, even had a hand in the Beta, and I’ve really enjoyed the game and hope to bestow upon you some up-to-date knowledge and upcoming tidbits about improvements, patch notes, new armor sets, etc.

So, with that in mind, we’re going to start off with some news concerning the upcoming patch. As some of you may know, 2.3 has quite a number of exciting changes, one of these buying new sets of armor available for purchase via badges of justice. What do these armor sets look like? Here we go!

Cloth Set Druids Hunter Paladin Rogue Shaman Warrior

Not bad if I do say so, I think the warrior set looks particularly over the top but still pretty great. Questions, comments, stats? Feel free to drop me a line or leave comments!

Hello readers,

Well, we all know about World of Warcraft. The biggest online game ever made, with over 9 million players worldwide. Out of the 9 classes, the least played is a druid. thought it in fact has the most potential out of any class in the game for healing, dps’ing, and tanking alike.
“Why is this?”, you may ask. Put simply; levels 1-10 are hard for druids. I, being a fairly avid WoW player, can’t even remember how many druids I have made, thinking that I would level it up to 60 (more recently 70, and in the near future 80) and use it for my guild. Sadly, every time I was distracted by the appeal of my warlock. Though on many occasions I’ve had the opportunity to use a 70 druid (a restoration, and once a feral), and have seen what they are capable of, but the extreme boredom accompanied with using the same two spells over and over and over again, was too much for me to handle. Though, I will make sure its duly noted that in general, I have a very short attention span to begin with. There’s my spiel about druids.

Another thing I really don’t like is Terokkar Forest. On my Hunter and my Warlock alike, it was possibly the most boring, repetitive leveling spot ever. The only change in scenery is going from strange, glowy green forest into strange, blue sandy wasteland. Even the instances all look the same! I mean, all the Archindoun instances are all in the same spot, with the same summoning stone, and the same scenery inside the instances. Narrow blue hallways leading to large blue chambers. I will give credit for a bit of variety in the quests, but the general idea behind them is always the same. Theres a threat to Horde interests, you have to go investigate it then neutralize it. I only found 1 gathering quest in the whole freakin’ area. Though I did like the quest where you dressed up as a weird Orc warlock thing and walk into Grangol’var Village and talked to all the people inside of it, while simultaneously avoiding the hunters. Well, thats all I have to yell about for now,

-The Yellow Beast

So far, my favorite racials as a Rogue are the gnomish racials. Escape Artist and the engineering bonus are just too handy. Blood Elf racials aren’t bad either, any melee type would love a complete silence that restores 30 energy at the same time. Stoneform is fairly handy too, but really only against other Rogues, Warriors, and Hunters. Orc racials aren’t bad, but they’re like the Dwarves, only viable against anyone with stuns which are pretty much Pallies and Rogues. Other classes have stuns, but nothing all that major. Trolls have one of the best pve racials though, Berserking is insanely good if you time it when you have low hp on a boss fight. Undead, of course, have one of the best racials ever, Will of the Forsaken is still pretty powerful considering how uber fear is now. Humans are fairly decent too, but they were better before the nerf to weapon skills. Perception is handy, but only viable against druids and rogues. Lastly, Night Elves have some of the weakest racials. Shadowmeld is handy because it doesn’t share a cooldown with stealth, so it’s nice to use while you’re waiting for stealth to cooldown. But the extra dodge is practically worthless.

Since I’m new, I may as well introduce myself. I’m Intoxicate, named after my Blood Elf Rogue on Aegwynn. She’s only level 13, but hey, it’s fun nonetheless. Anyway, I’m gonna jump right into it, starting with Rogue talents. Rogues can easily be one of the most versatile classes in the game, for instance, one can own in pvp, do a fairly decent amount of damage, and even assassinate an unsuspecting cloth-wearer. The only problem is, Rogues need to spec into certain talents in order to do anything to the best of their abilities. If you want a pvp build, then you want at least 30 points into Assassination and 30 into Subtlety, the spare point leftover is a toss up as far as I’m concerned, that one completely depends on your preference. As for high end damage, you’ll want to go deep into the Combat tree for that one, any sword rogue or combat daggers rogue will have at least 41 points in Combat, and generally 17 or more in Assassination. I prefer 19/42/0 for Swords and for Daggers I prefer 15/41/5. Now, for assassinating someone, Mutilate is probably the best way to go. So, you should have at least 41 points into Assassination. My favorite is 41/2/18. That’s all for now, I’ll continue adding new things everyday, so keep checking in.

Hokie Spirit Memorial Fund

April 16, 2007, will be remembered as one of the darkest days in the history of the Virginia Tech community and the world beyond.

To remember and honor the victims of those tragic events, the university has established the Hokie Spirit Memorial Fund to aid in the healing process and generate financial support.

The fund will be used to cover expenses including but not limited to:

• Grief counseling
• Memorials
• Communication expenses
• Comfort expenses
• Incidental needs

If you plan to give, please click the link below:

Here’s a grinding tip for my fellow Holy Preists trying to kick it in outland. One really nice talent on the Holy tree is “Surge of Light”. If you max this talent out, this is what the passive ability will do; “Your spell criticals have a 50% chance to cause your next Smite spell to be instant cast, cost no mana but be incapable of a critical hit. This effect lasts 10 sec.” This is really nice, especially if you have a high critical hit rating. It saves mana and is instant. Now one thing I found is that the the “be incapable of a critical hit” is not quite acurrate. You will see in the video below that I have a critical hit with surge of light.

Another nice spell is “Shadow Word: Death”. I mentioned this spell in my last post. This is really helpful in the grind - when you are soloing. The high rank of this spell is not available until level 70 but the first rank is ready at 62: “A word of dark binding that inflicts 450 to 522 Shadow damage to the target. If the target is not killed by Shadow Word: Death, the caster takes damage equal to the damage inflicted upon the target.” Make sure that this spell will finish off your target or it backfires and hurts you for just as much damage.

Look up my post on the “Fear Attack”, because in this video, I use it along with examples of “Surge of Light” and “Shadow Word: Death”

This is a special project that I have been working on for got2wow. The idea came to when a few guildies asked me exactly what level was required for entrance into Outlands. I remembered reading that a character could enter upon reaching 58, but was that too young? Then I remembered I had a 56 enhancement shaman on Illidan and the sparks flew. This is the story of his journey to 70, and the quickest path from 58 to 70.

When the “Before the Storm” patch came out on 12/5/2006, I decided to stop leveling my shaman in an effort to PVP grind for the rank 12 and 13 gear for my Hunter so that he could level quickly to 70 in The Burning Crusade (BC). I logged back into my shaman upon considering the 58-70 project and found him in Winterspring with what looked to be two levels of double experience (xp). I knew the project was meant to be. I turned on my music and went to work in Winterspring grinding on Furbolgs for rep and xp. Enhancement shamans have an incredible ability to grind in that they can heal, do very good damage per second (DPS), and can also regenerate mana with their shamanistic rage ability. Upon reaching 58 I immediately headed to The Dark Portal.

The first fact I gathered in Outlands was that as a level 58 severely undergeared shaman, I was still able to complete most grind quests as long as I was careful not to pull more than one mob. After completing a few quests and realizing that the xp scaling in outlands was giving my shaman extremely good xp per hour rate, I decided to investigate instances in outlands at 58. I had no problem finding a group for Hellfire Citadel (HFC) Blood Furnace (BF). Even though this is technically the second Outlands instance, after Hellfire Citadel (HFC) Ramparts, I still had no problem finding a group. The group was composed of a 64 Rogue, 61 Paladin, 62 Mage, 67 Shadow Priest, and 58 Enhancement Shaman (myself). I was told to main heal, which I did on skill alone. I had very little +healing gear, but I had been Restoration Spec before so I knew how to heal. The help from the Shadow Priest was undeniable with Vampiric Embrace. The run took an hour and fifteen minutes and I gained 7.5 bars. This was FAR quicker than what blizzard had said the projected leveling rate was, which was around 10 hours per level. I continued to run HFC Ramparts and BF, along with questing in Hellfire Peninsula.

What to Take Away:
1. Starting in Outlands at 58 is not only possible, but far superior to leveling in Western Plague Lands or Winterspring for a variety of reasons.
2. The gear in Outlands, especially in the instances, are incredible upgrades to gear from Azeroth and will quickly bring an undergeared character up to par in Outlands.
3. The reputation gains from starting early in Outlands are incredible! This means that upon reaching 70, it will not be as long of a grind to get the exalted weapons.
4. The xp scaling means that levels 58-60 will fly by, whether in an instance or questing in Hellfire Peninsula.

Check back tomorrow for levels 60-62 and an update from my Hunter on the Arena and Karazhan.

Ok, So I entered the gates of outland just over two months ago. I have had a several busy weeks at work and lots of family time. Despite my distractions, I am halfway to level 70. As I calculate the actual playing time it took to get from 60-65, it looks like I am averaging between 6 and 6.5 hours per level. I honestly expected this to be much longer but it seems that Blizzard isn’t making it as difficult as everyone was saying it was going to be.

There are two areas that I have spent my time in. The majority of time was spent in Zangarmarsh, a spore-land filled with Ogres, Giants, Naga, and jungle types of creatures. I hit 65 in Nagrand - a plains land with herds of animals. Nagrand really reminds me of the Barrens, aside from the floating rocks and such

As far as technique goes, there isn’t much that has changed. One pretty useful spell that I have picked up is Shadow Word: Death. This works real good as a finishing-type spell and is instant. I’ll try to get some video of this spell in action on my next post. In the meantime, here is a look at Jwink sporting level 65.

Time is a luxury that a gamer quite often can’t afford. For me, your Average Joe Gamer, time truly is just that - a Luxury. I do not have the time consistency of, say, a student. For the gamers out there who are middle-schoolers or high-schoolers, they are able to come home in the afternoon and jump on for a few hours - averagely. There is always the student who is restricted on how much game-time can be used - which I am an advocate for… but let’s not change the subject. We are talking about an adult’s time and when he can get his game on!

If I have a busy week at work - I don’t play, period. These past two weeks have been a perfect example. It is just three words - Daylight Savings Time (DST). This event was rumored to have been started by Benjamin Franklin as an effort to save candle burning time, now it is used to save energy - for me, it has been two weeks of headache (Thanks ALOT Benjy!). Bush decided to move the regular time to “Spring” forward this year, and all subsequent years, from the first week in April to the second week in March (and extend it in November). The problem with that is all of the computer code has DST built in, so I have to go around to servers, workstations, Treos, Blackberries, and any other time-keeping devices and get them straight - needless to say, I didn’t get much playtime.

Things like this affect yours truly and prohibit him from playing. But this is all part of leveling from 60-70 from a full-timers perspective.

Ok, so since I have started writing, I have had a chance to play a total of about 9 hours of WoW. I have been on Hellfire Peninsula and have completed all of the quests there. I started extremely undergeared and underpowered. Jwink’s entire wardrobe has changed - which means that Blizzard makes it possible by supplying some decent gear as quest rewards right out of the gate (no pun intended).

Jwink is now level 62 with all of the above complete. I managed to get some footage of the level “ding” using some of the tactics that I have been writing about. Enjoy.

In my previous post, I spoke about how to protect yourself, but I also mentioned how to be annoying without being swatted - without getting aggro. The answer is the wand. It causes no significant one-time damage, but really adds up over time. It is also really great for reserving your mana for when you need to heal your group.

Using aggressive spells (ones that cost mana) in a group for a holy priest isn’t as neccessary as when you are soloing - so when the heals aren’t needed, bring out that stinger and let it fly.

Here is a video of Jwink supporting a Paladin and a Warrior in one of the group quests on Hellfire Penninsula;