Randomness and Lich King Achievements

During the closing cermonies from the mogolympics, JD had picked my polearm outfit as one of the judge's favorites and he sent me the loot code I needed to get my new pet. So I spent Friday figuring out how to do that since I've never had a loot code to turn in before. Which was pretty exciting and didn't take as long as I feared it would. So I decided to keep working on Tyledres's new transmog set which meant running some randoms. I'll admit that I'm now tired of the new heroics so I qued up for old ones.

I was surprised when I got Zul'Amen. My experiences with the troll dungeons is that currently they're more of a nightmare to finish than when they were the "new" content. My theory is that when they were the top dungeon to run you were more likely to encounter better geared players and more of the group would know the fights. When you have fresh levelers and have to try and explain to everyone every fight things don't go as smoothly. I was lucky in that this group only had one person who needed fights explained and that one of the dps took over explaining so I could stay focused on tanking. I can do both but I tend not to be good at doing both at the same time. Since it was Zul'Amen I figured I'd put in a good effort towards getting the mount and if it happened it'd be awesome but if it didn't no big deal. Thanks to a really awesome hunter and healer we traveled though the dungeon at a nice pace and managed to get the bear mount for the rogue in our group. I was really surprised when we got to the Hex Lord and I saw that one of the mobs was Darkheart. Undead! The priest chained him at the same time that I made him my minion. Apparently being a minion wins out. Darkheart made a really nice pet doing some good damage and since the control lasts for 5 minutes I was able to use him to help kill the last boss as well. I may have a new favorite ability. 

Darkheart and me. BFF for 5 mins.

The next instance I got was Zul'Gurub and I again had a really amazing group and we sped though the place flawlessly and I can't think of any other time where the last boss was killed so easily. It's hard to believe that it was a group of random strangers. 

I did a few more dungeons and finished up running scenarieros on all my alliance 85s. The only 85 I haven't run yet is my hordie Arita but I don't think she's geared enough to go. 

Than my guild master started looking for people to finish up some achievements in 10 man ICC to get the drake. We quickly formed a group of four of us with me calling dibs on being the healer on my Paladin. The guild master Tiernan grabbed his lock and we had Lauralantha a fury/prot warrior, and Riandel an 84 shadow/disc priest. After a check to see what achievements we needed we quickly decided to run regular ICC to make it easier for us. Between all of us there were only 5 achievements that we really needed to get and none of them where the heroic ones. I only needed 2 of them myself, Full House and Been waiting a long time for this.

Marrorgar went down easily and we even picked up boned but getting Full House was more complicated. Our first attempt we ended up wiping because the tank was in the wrong stance and my healing picked up too much aggro. But it was also called because we had some trouble with the adds. The original plan was not to dps her at all until we had the 5 types of cultists needed for the achievement and than burn her into phase 2. But the two of them couldn't burn her quickly enough before she transformed another cultist which changed how many types we had. A quick readjustment of the plan and our tank got himself in the right stance and we had our achievement.

Festergut took two tries as well even though we weren't going for the achievement simply because we couldn't kill him before his stack got too high and killed the tank. A quick change of spec and our warlock was ready to offtank when the tank died and Festergut went down easily.  At Puturicide we needed to pick up Nausea, Heartburn, Indigestion which we managed to pick up in one try. We didn't need any achievement in the Crimson Halls but killed those bosses fairly quickly. We needed to pick up portal jockey from Dreamweaver so the priest switched to his healing spec and we both took portals with the warrior picking up the third portal and the warlock being the tank/dps on the outside. 

Sindragosa was more difficult as we needed to get all you can eat from her. The four of us could have killed her but since we were doing an achievement run we where having difficulty getting rid of the stacks of mystic buffet. We eventually managed to pull in two more guildies and the lvl 84 changed to his 85 main to give us more dps. The two guidies we pulled in was a druid Mapleleaf and a mage Teatime. Having Time Warp and the extra dps helped us to just burn the boss down before anyone's stack could reach 5. 

So than the 6 of us headed to the lich king to get I've been waiting a long time for this. Having only two people who could dispel the disease made this fight a little more complicated with trying to stack the disease to 30. When the numbers are low a few ticks of this could be survived but when they start stacking up they could one-shot someone. This wasn't a problem if there were enough ghouls and minions for it to jump to but when there was nothing but the lich king and us it got deadly quickly. After two attempts to try and stack it right from the beginning of the fight we decided to dispel the first one into nothing and let the stack of ghouls build a bit. We had only intended the first one to be dispelled into nothing but we ended up dispelling the first 3 into nothing. But there was a really nice big stack of minions for it to jump to. After it built to 30 we killed the Lich King. 

And I got to enjoy my nice new mount!

Why do you play your spec - Leveling toons

After some thought I decided I'd talk a bit about some of the toons I'm leveling. I have a tendency to change specs while I level because I like to change things around. Duel-spec helps a lot because I can experiment with the different specs more.

Adorothia - Warrior, Korgath. I started Adora to experience the worgen starting area. Next thing I know she's hitting level 20. She's also the only toon where I used the random name generator to create her name. I never really thought she'd get very far in leveling. Heh. Adorothia is now level 53 and even though she has duel-spec she spends all her time as prot running dungeons. I don't know how I ever leveled anything before dungeon finder. Prot has some fun tools and has been working well for dungeons runs but I haven't had much interest in leveling Adora recently.

Vaunt - Warlock, Aegwynn. Vaunt is one of my earlier toons. Her name is from a moment where I thought warlocks where very similar to vampires and should run around saying, "I vaunt to suck your health, bwa-ha-ha-ha." with the very bad Count Countla Seasme Street voice. I wanted a felguard so I leveled Vaunt as demonology. It took forever but eventually she had a felguard at level 40 in felwood. I really loved her in Outlands when she learned Metamorphoses. Changing into a giant demon, jumping into the fray and doing massive amounts of aoe damage is something that really appealed to me. And than the Cata patch came and I no longer had Metamorphosis. At least not for another couple of levels. So I finally bought duel-spec and tried Destruction. She eventually managed to get the few levels she needed to pick up Metamorphsis again but she's been gathering dust ever since.

Vâunt - Warlock, Korgath. I reuse names I like but only for the same class. And I like Vaunt's name even if it's a terrible joke that no one understands. I started her as destruction and since I hadn't tried affliction I picked that up as her other spec. I haven't done much leveling with her in awhile either.

Sitroh - Hunter, Korgath. I have a few hunters but this is the one that I play with the most regularity. Sitroh is a survival hunter. I like explosive shot. I enjoy playing survival and the changes to what abilities we get is pretty nice. I used my talents to pick up an interrupt and with trap launcher I can no do some decent aoe damage. My other spec is beast master which I haven't touched yet. I had thought I might become crazy about collecting pets but I'm pretty happy having just a ghost saber. I have a few other pets but other than my green ghost bird I don't use any of them. Sitroh has been the toon I'm most concerned with leveling right now but that's partly because I have a friend that I'm leveling Sitroh with.

Hortis - Paladin, Dunemaul. Hortis is an attempt at a blood elf paladin. Since I enjoy leveling though dungeons I made Hortis prot specced. She can't seem to get a decent pair of pants. She spent a lot of time leveling in a pair that looked like a belt with some chain drapes and finally managed to replace them with a bikini. Apparently she seems to have no problem wearing skimpy gear.

I have other alts but none that are currently as important as this set so I'm officially calling an end to my Why do you play your spec series. It was pretty fun to reflect on what brought me to this point with all my toons and I really enjoyed delving a bit into my story telling. But I think one of my favorite parts about this series is that it's not done. I'm only telling the back story and catching up to the present. Things can always change.

Theramore - Makeshift Mog

Last night the Theramore scenario started in Wow and I logged on and ran it with both Aritâ and Tyeldres. I'm not too sure how I feel about it though. When I ran it I felt rather blah. Here we are running around and killing Hordies with 3 dps. It reminded me a little of running some old heroics or raids that you could pretty much power though. Afterwards I found a summery explaining the events from the book Tides of War. Now I feel an impact. Theramore isn't being overrun but destroyed. The alliance didn't loose a battle but had the equalivant of a nuclear bomb dropped on it. Hmm... Something truly devastating. I haven't run the horde event yet and I'm not sure if my other Arita will be geared enough for it. But it leaves me wondering if we're going to be part of that destruction or if we're going to be part of something else or even if we'll have the same event as the Alliance.

What I did feel was that I wanted to wear my new tabard in remembrance of Theramore. My druid has a mog set that I really like and I left her alone but I really felt that my death knight needed to change. I played with mogit but I find I have the most trouble coming up with outfits for Tyledres. She's a death knight and I  like keeping her in the skulls and crossbones. Tyledres wants the enemy to look at her and feel fear. You don't get that look wearing bikini's or bright shiny paladin armor. I really think the best choice for armor would be the ToC armor. It's got some golds and blues but they're not super shiney and are instead more muted. Tyledres doesn't have that armor however. And a lot of other pieces I wanted came from Lich King raids or the toc5 man. I've tried but I can't seem to kill those 3 horsemen by myself. I get close but than one runs away or bugs out and I'm SOL.

So I decided to try coming up with an outfit a different way. I went to my bank and took a look to see what Tyldedres has managed to collect. I was pleasantly surprised to see how much gear she's got. After some thought I figured I'd pick up the pants from one of the vendors and threw together some gold and silver gear and than filled in the pieces where I didn't have anything with death knight starter gear and changed my swords to Rimefang's Claw. I really need to replace the shoulders and boots and I have an idea of what pieces I'd use to replace them with. It does mean I'm going to have to try and get as many dungeons and bg runs as I can to try and get the items I want. I'm also thinking about changing the chestpiece but I want to get the pieces I feel stick out the most replaced first.

Why do you play your spec? - Other druid

Arita. My last 85. While my hordie Arita was actually my 5th level 85, she's also the one that has seen the least amount of play time. One of the biggest reasons is that she's not on the same server as most of my other toons so it's easy to forget about her but also because I already have a druid.

Arita was started at the end of Wrath and was actually a good way though Northrend when Cata dropped. I had some friends on the horde side on that server I wanted to play with and even toyed with the idea of making my new Arita my new main. But than my friends decided that they were going to quit wow and I found myself hordie was all alone. So I went back to the alliance where I knew more people. I did finish leveling Arita but than she sat around unused.

When I was leveling Arita I leveled her as resto and balance. I didn't want to play feral/feral since that's what my alliance Arita is. The balance spec didn't last long. I didn't truely enjoy playing it. Instead I managed to cobble together a feral set and figured I'd use the spec to level as tank/dps and I could que up as all 3 roles. I gave balance another try in Outlands, Northrend, and even Cata but I couldn't seem to get though a level without throwing in the towel and changing the spec back.

At 85 Arita had a feral/feral spec but still had a fairly equal quality of intellect leather in her bags. She was parked in Orgrimmar and sat collecting dust until I started joining in JD's Laid Back Raids. Some weeks the raids are for alliance and other weeks they're for the horde. So I joined into the horde side with Arita. She was terrible. I had to remind myself that she was going into the raid in fresh 85 gear. It didn't really help.

Than can the talent changes and I really wanted to try the new balance celestal glyph and to run around in my tree form as resto. So I changed Arita's spec to Balance/Resto. I spent some time setting up healing addons and trying to find any gear on the auction house and than inflicted my newbiness on some randoms. Somehow I managed to get though a few heroics and even managed to pick up 2 achievements that I didn't have before. I was too busy enoying being a tree to really give balance a try until the laid back raid.

I do feel a little terrible for having very little idea of how to play my spec but I don't think it'd have matter too much anyway. But I think I have a better idea now. It's interesting. I'm not sure if I can stick to playing balance but it's a good time for trying new things right now and soon there will be some changes as to how your specs will play anyway.

Why do you play your spec? - Mage

I seem to be running out of toons to talk about. The only 85 I have left after this is my other Arita. She's a druid too. It seems the only naming scheme I have is to reuse names for the same classes on different servers. So I have my Korgath alliance Arita and than my Dunemaul horde Arita. But this isn't about those other toons. Today I wanted to talk about Azilem my mage.

I'm still surprised I have an 85 mage. My first attempt at a mage didn't get past level 5. Glass cannon indeed. My previous attempts as a mage typically had me spending more time trying to find my corpse, again, than it did me actually killing stuff. Until I made Azilem, my highest level mage was level 25 and I thought that was a fantastic achievement. I had dabbled in the different specs but I spent a lot of time dying.

Than I discovered the concept of pulling at maximum range with frostbolt. And than hopefully having the  mob killed by the time it reached my squishy little mage. I also had a friend who told me to level frost. So I leveled frost. Made it much easier since I didn't have to worry about any other spell than frostbolt. At least not at first.

Somehow she reached level 60 and I had a friend who wanted to level a healer and had a shaman around the same level so we leveled up together. He also told me that while frost was fine for leveling by myself if we were going to be running dungeons he wanted me to take a better dps spec. So after taking a look and reading about arcane and fire I choose fire. Mostly because the idea of managing mana was a scary thought for me. And Pryoblast! is such fun.

But I haven't really played my mage much at max level. Sure she can run RF and do some bg's but I definitely enjoy my melee toons more. Instead Azilem spends her time looking nice and making portals for guildies.

I do have one fun story to relate about the new changes. I had picked some talents and than took her to Dustwallow Marsh. I'm not sure why I did that. But I had heard from somewhere the frost was supposed to be decent to use in pve so I decided I wanted to give it a try. I logged onto my mage and wondered why I was in Tharamore. I was setting up her frost spec when I saw that the guards where running around. I quickly realized that a rogue was attacking the tower! I wasn't sure about attacking him but he soon took the decision from my hands when he tried to stunlock me down. I love iceblock. If I couldn't do anything I might as well not be getting hurt while not doing anything. Followed by a quick blink away and shortly there was one dead rogue. I figure part of this was because Pain was attacking him so I figured I should try to get away. Only to find myself stunned again. Frost Snap and Ice Block again. And the rogue was dead again. I was now finding this pretty funny so I decided to stick around. Normally I see a rogue and they scare me because a well-played rogue is pretty nasty. A good frost mage can do some mean stuff too. But I figured it was one terrible rogue because I shouldn't have been winning. Of our 5 battles Azilem won 4. There are times when I think being on a pvp server isn't much fun and than something like this happens and I realize just how awesome it can be. Provided the other people are worse than me. I never did get around to doing a dungeon but I felt that frost was still a spec that I'd want to hold onto simply because I could now remember that one time I beat a rogue.

Why do you play your spec - Death Knight

I thought about posting something else for a bit but than figured I wouldn't be happy with myself until I managed to finish this series. Than I debated whether to post my mage next or death knight. Finally I decided Tyledres would be next because so far all the posts have been in line with who was actually leveled first and the death knight was leveled before the mage was created.

Tyledres is a newer toon for me. I didn't create her until Cata was well under way. It's not that I haven't had death knights before. When Wrath launched I was there with hundreds of other people trying to get though the death knight starting zone. It's a really neat place. The class also really confused me. And every time I thought I might have an idea what a death knight was it would be changed. So I ended up starting a death knight, getting it though the starting zone, and than deleting it an awful lot.

It's not that I didn't like death knights. I thought they were so cool. And I had a guild master who was able to play a beastly death knight. My guildies and I dubbed him God after he practically soloed one of the heroic dungeon bosses. He was really good and he was what I thought of when I thought of death knights. I've had a healer friend who absolutely hated death knights. Her experience was with the really terrible ones. I have no doubt that of these two examples I was more a terrible death knight than a good one.

Eventually I leveled though the death knight starting zone enough times that something finally clicked in my mind and I was finally able to be a decent death knight. I managed to level to about level 70 and than I stopped. Eventually I had a friend who was leveling a hordie on my server. I didn't have any empty slots left so I couldn't level with her. I eventually deleted my death knight to make a troll one. The name I had been using didn't seem to work for a troll and I eventually came up with Tyledres. My friend than decided she didn't want to be horde anymore and switched to alliance. So I deleted my troll and made a human death knight. I really liked the name Tyledres so it stuck. Before I had made my death knights night elves but I was starting to feel like I had way too many night elves. I wanted more humans so that's what Tyledres became. 

I leveled Tyledres as blood and unholy. I choose blood so I could tank and I choose unholy because I thought having a permi-ghoul would be awesome. Frost just didn't seem interesting to me at all. I didn't touch the unholy spec. I spent my time as a blood death knight running dungeon after dungeon until I reached level 80. Than I switched to unholy. I'll admit that I was afraid to keep trying to tank the cata dungeons. They weren't easy when I went though on my druid and she had been wearing ICC gear. My death knight was in leveling greens. So I figured I'd been out in the world doing quests and that unholy would be easier for leveling since it's a dps spec. 

I stopped at level 83. I just couldn't keep going. I try questing, I tried dungeons, I even thought about trying pvp. Unholy was not working for me. I felt that I spent way too much time trying to build up to the good damage abilities. And I had to choose between making my ghoul stronger or summoning a gargoyle. I also took a lot of damage and to try to heal it I threw off my rotation. Than a friend said, "Why aren't you leveling blood? It's faster." 

So I switched back to blood and wondered why I ever stopped playing that spec. I love bone shield, I like my blood worms, and having a second weapon was a blast. I also tanked dungeons and I never once felt weak. She was a death knight and she was godly. She was also very lucky. She managed to hit 85 and by the next day was already running the hour of twilight dungeons and before the week was out was running dungeon finder. The gear was dropping and not just for her tank spec. By the end of the week she had a nice tank set and a decent dps set. I also had my choice of weapons. So I tried to look up the best dps spec. Different sources said different things but I noticed that of the two frost specs DW frost was supposed to be better than 2H if the weapons where close enough. So I went DW frost. 

I loved it. I wasn't completely sure what I was doing at first but I was doing damage. Howling blast is amazing. It's not a really flashy spec or very complicated but I have a blast playing it. It's fast, no build-up, and very steady damage but with some dps cooldowns. 

I eventually took my death knight into battlegrounds but originally as blood because I didn't have dps gear and I was more concerned with surviving than trying to do damage. Normally I tolerate pvp or else I really dislike it. But I loved killing stuff with Tyledres. I think part of it was my first battleground. I got twin peaks and had a group with 5 rogues. 5 really good rogues. And I got to carry the flag. Lots of achievements there. Eventually I got enough pvp gear to feel confident making the switch to pvping in my frost spec. Still lots of fun. I eventually changed my frost spec from a pve one to a pvp one and loved being a pain with my chains of ice, licheborne, and even started figuring out how to catch people in my pillars of frost. I don't think I've ever loved pvp as much before.

I'm very happy with Tyledres as my main. I never really planned to make her my main but she managed to get her way to 85 and than refused to let me out of her grip. I love some of the new changes to the specs. I can now choose to either DW or use a 2H for my frost spec without visiting the trainer to fix my spec. I can also pvp or pve without having to change my spec either. While I don't necessarily want the same talents for either of them the ability to change my talents on the fly is something that's mind boggling for me. Really? I can have this talent and than change it later to run bgs and change it back to run dungeons? Only for the cost of a reagent? Much nicer than running back to the trainer ever time I turned around.

I still enjoy tanking things as well but I tend to think of Tyledres's main spec as frost even if it's not the one she uses the most. I'm pretty certain that Tyledres will still be a blood/frost death knight in Pandaria.

Why do you play your spec? - Shaman

I leveled my shaman with the intention that she would be a healer. And since I was using heirlooms and I didn't want to mess with collecting two sets of gear I had made Mnementh's off-spec Elemental. I managed and I mostly managed because I spent my time healing in dungeon finder. I just couldn't seem to get elemental at all. Although to be fair I didn't really try to hard either. The dungeon que was always much faster when I was looking to heal than if I was trying to dps so I spent my time running around in resto spec. I even quested that way. It wasn't too difficult. Threw earth sheild on myself and keep casting lightening bolt until something died. Actually worked better for me than to try and kill anything as elemental.

I kept pushing though until I reached Northrend and than I stopped. This wasn't fun so why was I doing this? It's a kind of revelation. The reason to play wow is because it's fun. I'm not saying that having things too easy makes it fun because overcoming challenges can be fun. But pushing though something that was pure torture isn't how I want to spend my time. If I didn't like playing my shaman now why did I keep thinking it would get better? Why did I think that the idea of casting would eventually become something I'd enjoy? I only have to look at the classes I had at max-level to realize that I don't enjoy being a caster as much as I like being melee. Sure I can heal, I even like healing, but I don't like being a caster as much as I like being melee.

So I took my Shaman to Dalaran and the trainers there and raided my other toon's gold stash to help purchase and make an agility set. I wasn't able to get a complete set and I only had one new weapon but I hoped it'd be enough to get me started. I spent some time trying to learn how to spec and about the rotation and than trained and fixed up my action bars before heading back to questing in Howling Fjord. I also fell in love with my shaman. She still needed a lot of work but I seemed to be able to kill mobs quicker and move though the quests faster. It was also more fun for me. I like bright lights and flashy spell animations. Enhancement shamans have a lot of those. There's an ability that looks like a little tornado, lunging attacks, spinning, ghost wolves, lightening bolts, and fire nova. There's a lot of abilities to maintain and they all seem to have an accompanying animation. In a way it almost reminds me of the old protection paladin rotation. Press the button when it comes off cooldown, there should always be something, and certain abilities have priority.

It was also at this time that I realized shaman healing and I weren't getting along very well. There's a lot of interaction between the different spells a shaman casts and you have to cast them in very specific ways to get the most from each ability. It's very different from healing with a holy paladin where you cast a spell and it heals and you might or might not get a proc and certain spells with give you holy power. Shamans have to think about casting earth shield on the tank, who gets the hot, who to cast chain heal on to heal most effectively, and how many charges or the faster heal are left. And than there's finding the rest place to put healing rain but to make sure it's always up unless no ones taking damage, and lot of other things. I'm not saying holy paladins have it easy and have nothing to think about but healing on Hortis was so much more natural to me than trying to figure out what I was doing with my shaman.

I have another shaman friend who told me that from her experience shaman healers where either amazing or struggled to push out mediocre heals. I told her I was in the mediocre heals category. She thought it was funny because she felt I was really good on my holy paladin. I think it's pretty amazing that Blizzard had goals about making sure all heals had a similar toolkit but still played really different and they were able to do just that.

I still love being a shaman but I also knew she wouldn't be my main. I feel that only being able to play one-spec really limits what I can do. I don't enjoy saying, sure I'll heal but if this fight only needs 2 healers instead of 3 I won't be dpsing since I can't. Or saying sure I'll dps, or you're looking for a healer, sorry, I can't do that. I like being able to play at least 2 of the specs well and to enjoy playing them. But I also had another reason for not making Mnementh my main and that was the number of my friends who did play shamans. My guild already has a really good enhancement shaman who plays resto really well. I had a friend who invites people from my guild to her raids who plays a resto/elemental shaman. And finally another friend and guildie who plays a resto/ele shaman as well. I love my shaman but I was also happy with my other toons so Mnementh is very much an alt.