I’m up to 11 now, over the hump!
And I’m 8 points from 300 Mining, at which point I’m going back to Outland. I smelted thorium into the gray last night.
I’ve been having a hell of a time with Mining. I suppose it would be easier if I dedicated a night or two to straight mining runs, but I’ve been trying to keep it up as I quest. My Mining skill was around 240-243 when I was in Un’Goro, and so of course all I came across was Thorium, no Mithril. I finally managed to get Mining to 245, and what’s the next mining node I come across? Rich Thorium. :smack:
Just be glad you’re not trying to keep blacksmithing up as you quest. My first toon was a miner/blacksmith, and by the time I got to outlands he had 300 mining and about 190 blacksmithing. I spent about 500 gold getting his smithing up to par.
That was on Razorscale, where I hit Challenging Shout instead of Demoralizing Shout and pulled Razor early. :smack: Fortunately, it was my turn to tank her next, so I was already in a good position (i.e., I didn’t spin her around and have her breathe on the raid).
Off by 9:30? Nice schedule, Grandpa. 
I did something like that in a PUG for one of the Auchindoun instances. I have a tendency to just auto-accept everything, and it came back to bite me in the ass when an Ethereal quest-giver inside the instance turned out to start an escort quest. Needless to say, we weren’t prepared, and we wiped.
Yep. When I was in that dip between 245 and 275, I was looking for small thorium all over the freaking place and all I found was rich thorium and, of course, ooze-covered, both at 275. I must have done circuits of Un’goro, Western Plaguelands and Blasted Lands for two nights straight looking for smalls.
Yeah, yeah. I’ve got to be at work at 7:30 in the morning, which means I need to be in bed by 10:30 at the latest if I don’t want to be totally fried. I miss college, when my earliest classes were at 11 am. 
ETA: Not that I usually get home that late. Most days it’s more like 4:30-5, so I have plenty of time to play.
Ouch. I don’t start 'til 8:30 a.m., and I live only about a mile from where I work, so I usually get up some time between 7 a.m. and 7:30. My current raid schedule of 7:30 p.m. to 11:30 p.m. works pretty perfectly.
And yeah, I, too, miss my college schedule. Sigh.
Yeah, hence the hard and fast rule. I’m completely addicted to WoW at the moment, but I’ll be damned if I let it start affecting my job.
Let’s just ignore the fact that I spend all day poking at this thread and checking WI for updates…
Grats on all those!
Now that you mention it, my ankle hurts a little…
Our guild policy for the mount drop is everyone Needs on it if they want. It was the first time I’d won a Need roll (that actually involved rolling, not just me Needing and everyone else passing) since I started playing.
Is there any secret use for the low level creatures you see in every zone? They are always level 1 snakes, frogs, rats, etc in the dungeons. Is there any purpose to them other than for atmosphere?
They’re primarily atmosphere, but there’s also some achievements (and in a few rare cases, quests) associated with them.
Metagamers are the best gamers. 
You used to be able to level beginning Skinning off of Deer and Rabbits. I’d always run my Skinners to Moonglade to burn through the first 75 points or so. I think I heard a report that this no longer works, though.
Critters can also be used as Rage batteries by clever Warriors.
There’s also the Giant Frog quest in Dustwallow Marsh.
I believe this also works for DKs and runic power, though frankly I usually build enough runic with my frost horn followed by my default opening salvo that going to ridiculous lengths to build power doesn’t usually make much sense. Sometimes I do before boss fights so I can get my gargoyle out early.
I think my favorite critter quest is the feed-the-basilisks quest in Zul’Drak, followed closely by the frog-kissing daily for the Argent Tourney.
Are there any bad-ass aggressives that disguise themselves as level 1 critters? That would be awesome.
We just completed the 25 man version of faction champs on Tuesday. It was tough and people were b*tching and moaning because they wanted to go kill Onyxia so we actually left after killing faction champs to go wipe repeatedly on Onyxia because we had wiped TWICE on twins (25 man twins is a lot harder than 10 man twins because there is a constant raidwide DOT, the orbs cause a lot more damage, the vortex is an instakill, add to this the fact that some of the raid were being real childish by pulling back on DPS and HPS because they wanted to go see Onyxia). That’s like taking a knee at the 1 yard line after a 99 yard runback because those first 99 yards were so hard and you think you might do better in the NBA cuz you played basketball as a kid.
I can’t tell you how pissed off I am by the behaviour of the folks that basically gave up on the TOC raid AFTER killing faction champs. Then we spent about an hour getting to Onyxia and explaining the OLD Onyxia game mechanics because most of the raid had never seen Onyxia before. Then when we got in there we realized that the similarity between the old Onyxia and the new Onyxia was superficial at best (melee dps is severely limited because they cannot attack Ony in phase two and the large adds have a short range AOE that will kill them).
I don’t think the unpredictability is because I don’t know how good my guildies are, the unpredictability is because you don’t know whcih faction champs you are going to get. There is all sorts of planning that goes into faction champions and if everybody dsticks to the plan and does’t freak out, you have a good chance of winning. Our last two 10 man faction champ attempts were one shots (we have completed TOC 10 since the first week it came out) and our first (and only) 25 man faction champ win was a one shot.
If you really see PVP champs as just a complex trash pull then I can see why you are having trouble with it.
It is plannable and predictable. It just requires you to create the plan on the spot and use skills that you may not have developed yet.
We still wipe on Auriya from time to time if the pull is bad or we have bad luck on the interrupts or someone isn’t stacked correctly and the tank gets pounced. The random factor is a bit bigger for faction champs but auriaya seemed random when we first started doing her too. Like I said, we have gotten to the point where we can consistently down faction champs on 10 man and we defeated faction champs on our first try ever (it probably helped that we had all been doing 10 man faction champs for weeks).
Its definitely harder than any of the other TOC encounters but its not random.
Try this one next time:
1.) The twins are tanked in the middle, right next to each other, facing the same direction.
2.) Everyone takes the same color (let’s say light), except for a handful of ranged or healers (people who can still toss off damage or heals while on the move).
3.) The handful of people who took the dark buff are in charge of popping all of the dark orbs they can.
4.) Everybody else with the light buff stacks up behind the dark boss and burns the shit out of her. All of the light orbs will be coming straight at you–no need to go get them.
5.) Stacking = more shared orb buffs + opportunities for lolcleave.
6.) Ignore bubbleheals. If it’s the twin you’re on, you’ll burn through it fine. If it’s the twin you’re ignoring, the damage you do during the bubble heal will at least come close to canceling out the healing effect, if not outrunning it.
7.) Only switch colors if necessary for a vortex. If you have to switch from light to dark, immediately make dark the new primary target. The only people who should switch to light after the vortex are the people who were previously the opposite color, so they can continue popping orbs.
I wouldn’t say it’s superficial. Really, the biggest difference is those large adds in the air phase. Still need to stay the hell away from the head or tail (standard dragon mechanics), still need to avoid getting knocked or feared into the whelp caves (see “stay away from the tail”), still need to tank up against the wall, still need to control adds (especially in ph2), still need to watch out for the breaths in ph2.
Isn’t the AOE on the big adds only when they’re not disarmed, anyway? Or is that attack just on the tank, in which case they only maybe have a cleave, which wouldn’t affect any melee that are standing where they should always be standing (i.e., behind)?
I read a strat for one of the Glory of the Hero achievements that involved Charging / Feral Charging a critter to get the tank in the right place.
Ah, the “burn through the heal” strat. I think this still works on regular, but they buffed the fight on heroic to make this impossible (the heal is now 50%, not 20%). Blizz doesn’t really like the “zerg” strategies…
As far as Ony I’ve only done 10-man so far but we just kept our ranged DPS on Ony except for when the big add came out and let melee handle the whelps. Seemed to work fine, and we had 3 ranged and 3 melee DPS.