I got put in H HoR last night. With a DK tank. Who had never been there before. Who was not def capped. Wearing PvP gear.
Needless to say it did not go well. After a few tries, the Boomkin went Feral and tried tanking, which actually worked much better and we got all the way to the very end (the last ice wall) before the LK killed us. A few more seconds (or a little more dps from mr. I’ll-just-dps-in-pvp-tank-gear and we would have had it. I couldn’t try again, it was time for the BDL raid. Oh well.
Does the RDF favor those damn ICC dungeons for people above a certain gear score? Lately it seems like my daily heroic is one of those pain in the ass runs more often than not. Fuck the Lich King. I just want my frosties.
Hehe - I just encountered a hunter named, “Lookatmypet”. I looked at her pet. It’s name was “Dontlookatme”
My pally’s actually going after the Gatecrasher’s Gauntlets, the non-tier gloves. She doesn’t have a single piece of T10, and these will replace her one remaining piece of T9. She bought the Raging Behemoth’s Shoulderplates off the AH quite some time ago, and when I discovered the iLvl 264 non-tier pieces (Castle Breaker’s Battleplate, Malevolent Girdle, and the aforementioned gloves) all matched those shoulders (as do the BS crafted Legplates of Painful Death and Hellfrozen Bonegrinders), I decided to go that route. Now if I could only find a matching iLvl 264 helm, all of her visible armor would match. Right now she’s wearing the Helm of Thunderous Rampage, which is an iLvl 245 recolored T9 helm that doesn’t really fit with the rest of her kit.
Here’s her Armory page, so you can see all the pieces together (except the helm and gloves)
Heh…I liked the BooBoo Bomb. Some talent you could get that would explode for decent aoe damage on a hit. Summon the cute little bear pet, load him up with dynamite, send him in to get one shotted, and BOOM!
OK, so I was a druid of Karana. He didn’t care much about bear abuse. Tunare prolly would have made me reroll as a necromancer.
Clearly I should have played past 53 (or whatever it ended up being) 'cause that is funny!
There was a druid once completely roleplaying the PETA thing, which was fine to a point, but she followed us around for a whole weekend, crying and moaning and putting herself between us and the little bears we were killing so we could make new armour.
I guess it was worth it, considering that yeah, it’s been at least 10 years and I still remember that.
I also remember actually losing my whole level 8 Paladin body in the inn in EC.
I mean, completely lost. Couldn’t get to it, couldn’t drag it, couldn’t do anything; it just was lost in the geometry and I rerolled. (dang gryphon chased me into the inn, sigh) NOT FUN.
Ok, not gonna reminisce about that no more; EQ activates the same hormones that allow women to give birth more than once, soothing the memories until all that remain are happy pink glowing ‘awwws’ and 'neat!'s and a sense of Survivor’s Giddiness.
Repair costs?
Pfft. Whatev, magelet.*
*One of our guild was a wiz who exuberantly showed off his new pillar of fire spell, accidentally suiciding in the process. So he’s my perma-noob sidekick in the ongoing World of Gaming Conversation and Wisecracks that plays in my head.
May have just been confirmation bias, but damned if it didn’t seem that way on both of my Alliance 80s. Once my pally had “qualified” for H:HoR, that’s where she seemed to end up for her first random every damn day. Likewise, my mage kept getting funneled straight into H:FoS (mage would much rather run PoS). In fact, after taking 2-3 months off from running heroics, she was doing Direbrew runs and I noticed how close she was getting to 60 Frosts, so I queued her up for her first random heroic in some time … right straight into FoS. Twice. Though for her, the RDF seems to like VH lately - been in there three times now. I think that’s six random heroics, 2 FoS, 3 VH, and 1 HoS. Pally’s only done 3 since I started doing them again during Brewfest; 1 Nexus, 1 ToC, and … can’t remember what the other one was.
Heh. That reminds me of the old Magic: The Gathering card, “Goblin Grenade”. The artwork depicted a goblin, clutching to its chest a large explosive device with a lit fuse, running full speed toward the enemy. The card was a “spell”; you “cast” it on any goblin creature card you had in play, sacrificed that goblin, and dealt 5 points of damage to your opponent.
The flavor text on the card read, “If only we could teach them to throw the things.” (Yeah, M:TG goblins were none too bright.)
Want to hear about pain? I could tell you the long and sad tale of “How Oakbrow Got his Epic Weapon”. <twitch> <shudder> <twitch>
But instead, I’ll spin a yarn of a struggling young druid. Coin was scarce back in the early levels of EQ. A wolf pelt would fetch mere coppers, and you risked the rath of the homicidal Holly Windstalker to get even that. And the new spells you could get at level 14 were so expensive! You’ve have to farm for hours to buy just one. And the holy grail of early druid magic was Spirit of the Wolf. Yes, good old SoW. Run speed boost that opened up the exciting world of kiting. But it cost sooo much. And I was sooo poor.
And right there in West Karana there was this npc. I forget it’s name, but it was a bard. Pretty tough fight at level 13 or so, but I could do it. And the bard dropped Silver! And an instrument or weapon that you could sell for Gold! So I farmed that npc for several hours. Killed it dozens of times. Saw the little note each time about how my reputation with something called League of Antonican Bards was going down, but didn’t really know what that meant.
Turns out, that message meant that the League of Antonican Bards was getting seriously pissed off about me killing one of their members. Pissed off to the point that all of them now wanted to kill me on sight. And would. No matter where they found me.
So picture a happy young half elf, all proud of his uber new run boost spell, just can’t wait to go buzzing around the city of Qeynos at Warp Speed! Like the big druids he sees with their shiny gear! Oh joy! Oh Shit!
You see, Qeynos was a multizone city. When you entered, on your way to everywhere interesting, including the the bank, you had to pass right in front of the guild hall of the League of Antonican Bards. With all those max level bard trainers and npcs. That all wanted my head on a stick. And killed me deader than hell right on the street in broad daylight. And killed me again when I went back for my corpse. Which I had to get, because it had all my money and gear on it. And killed me again when I came back to try for the corpse. Took me like 3 gruesome deaths to get the corpse out of aggro range of the highlevel npcs. Lost enough experience to drop back to level 13. Which meant I could no longer cast my new uber spell that I’d worked so hard to buy.
Had to bank on the other side of the continent for the next 30 or so levels. Until I got high enough to solo that castle with all the vampires in it. And then I had to just camp that place for about a month to fix my bard reputation back to where they wouldn’t kill me. Then I had to camp the same zone some more because I had to get the bards to really like me to start the epic weapon quest mentioned above. Now that quest was REALLY painful.
Answering my own question, I found a bunch of mage specs here.
Yeah. Definitely going fire, probably that top spec as my primary. I just can’t resist what I see as enormous potential for destruction. PVP, PVE, whatever. It’ll burn. Burn baby burn. Scorch that is mana free, and can be cast while moving. Flaming Orb…whatever the hell it is, I like the sound of it. Living bomb. Dragon Breath. Blast Wave. Stacking dots. Combustion. Pyroblast!
Still undecided about a secondary. Arc looks to have a nice raid buff the other specs don’t have, Arcane Tactics. Sorta like Boomkin Aura, but boosts damage rather than crit. Also has a talent to make Arcane Blast apply Slow. Stop moving so fast, so I can nuke you more. Love it. Really nifty boost to Arcane Explosion–a talent that reduces casting time, and reduces threat by 80% (for 2 points).
Frost looks good too. Perma-pet with freeze, and a talent to make all pet freezes give two charges of frost fingers? Yes, please. Some weird new defensive shield-circle thing. Dunno if it’s a talent or a new spell…but takes three seconds to set up, then will freeze everything that touches it…enroute to you…and give all of your spells that tasty frozen target bonus.
Almost wish I could buy a third spec, just to try all three trees. I think I’m gonna like the new talents…
I’ve been wondering if it’s that Fire spell Prince Teldaram (or whatever his name is - the vampire dude) in Old Kingdom casts. You know, big flaming ball that shoots fiery rays at everybody in range…
Yay! My nelf hunter managed to get to Revered with the Kurenai before the servers shut down for the patch. I didn’t bother with Kurenai rep on any of the three previous Alliance toons (actually, I could never find the damn quartermaster either - I just happened to accidentally stumble upon him with this toon the other day), or Mag’har rep on either of my Horde toons to quest through Nagrand. But I want to get me one of those fancy talbuk mounts. I’d seen people on them in Northrend but had no idea where they got them until I came across that Kurenai quartermaster.
Also helped capture Halaa - dropping bombs on the guards that had been gathered up by a pair of 80s Good timing, too - I needed to buy more of those good arrows. I’d also collected enough of that Oshu’gun Crystal Dust to get enough tokens to buy the 18-slot bag. I think that bag’s about the only thing you can buy from the quartermaster any more - everything else requires the other kind of token, which you apparently earn by PvP-ing in Halaa, and there just isn’t much of that going on these days.
Tonight we got a bunch of people together to go say hi to Yogg-Saron in the two hours before server reset. A final hurrah, as you will, before we’re all QQing over our brand new classes.
Tons of bad puns on insanity and body parts were had as we ducked green clouds of evilbadness, flirted with Sara (don’t stick your dick in the crazy!), and Saw Things.
We didn’t get far before reset, but it was fun.
By and large, we were all impressed with the complexity of the Yogg fight and the lore thereof. Much more interesting than ICC where it’s all “see evil undead. kill evil undead.” as far as lore goes. I really hope that Cata has at least one raid that’s as similarly impressive.
Oak, thank you for the story; you’re exactly the kind of people I miss in games!
You just can’t ‘goof up’ like that in WoW and have it be ‘fun’; a lot of gamers seem to have forgotten what fun it is to just be a dork.
This excuses my Paladin who used some npc guard in EC <before the tunnel became the auctionhouse> for weapons practice enough times that she was not allowed in Freeport anymore. Runs through there were fun And yes, I gave up on the paladin to make a druid, strictly for the SoW; even though I never charged for SoWs or ports, I was tired of paying for them and wanted my own
My WoW mage hit 80 last weekend, and I’ve always meant to double-spec, as I play arcane like a blind archer in PvP and seem to forget I have anything but instants <which, as arcane, I have a lot of!> but still. Sounds like changes are afoot, and it’s time to study.
I’m looking for the latest specs as well; Elitist Jerks has tons of class threads running but few seem organized enough to spit out the recommended spec in the first post, yet. Priests are a notable exception so far.
I need my hand to be held. I have an 80 disc/shadow priest, 80 feral bear/balance druid, and 80 lock/mage/hunter. That’s a lot of respecs to figure out!
I’m hoping my old guild will be raiding tonight / tomorrow…I want to try frost and see everyone’s jaws drop when I pop out that dps! As far as I know Oak, the flame orb / frost curtain are both 80+ spells, so you won’t see them til Cata drops.
I had some trouble figuring out combustion on the PTR…the dot damage it applies gets lost in all the ignite spam, and it’s hard to tell exactly what it’s doing, but it certainly sounds good. Living bomb + a few fireball / pyro crits, then combust, should be pretty huge numbers there.
And I got a little misty-eyed with all the EQ discussion. My board name here was my Dwarf Paladin name in EQ from 2000 (I had quit, then re-subbed before Kunark). Man, I do NOT miss the days where we had to camp a zone waiting on a boss to spawn. I used to run EQShow so we would know when Coirnav spawned, so we could get flagged for the Plane of Time. Damn European guilds and their killing bosses at 5 A.M. our time!
Well, I managed to finish grinding out my Netherwing rep and get my drake before patch last night. And you guys need to keep telling the nostalgic EQ stories, it’s distracting me from FFXI nostalgia. =P
Related: Anyone have any good info for v4.0.1 for Enh Shamans or Retri Paladins (my other build that I don’t talk about =P)? Elitist Jerks hasn’t come up with anything definitive yet for either, and I’m on standby to raid tonight. =P
So I guess I’ll be on a brief WoW vacation until I get my new computer (probably this weekend). Not the worst thing in the world, though I kind of wish my last play experience was something other than multi-wipes on a raid boss.
Flame Orb is exactly the same spell that one of the Princes (I can’t remember which one–it probably is Taldaram) casts in the Blood Princes encounter in ICC. It flies around, single-target hitting the nearest target with little fingers of fire for several seconds, then explodes in a large ball of fiery AoE. Looks like it’ll be fun.
And yes, I gave up on the paladin to make a druid, strictly for the SoW; even though I never charged for SoWs or ports, I was tired of paying for them and wanted my own 