Keliraeda is just about to hit lvl 64, so she won’t be coming. She could use some help with a different instance, though: Stratholme. She just needs a run as far as the Chapel. I decided to go ahead and do the paladin quest chain for what has now become simply a very expensive tabard (used to be the lvl 60 Charger quest, but that’s moot now that pallies get the Charger at 40).
Where did you see this? Seems to me that two gear resets in back-to-back patches is a bit extreme… but I guess that’ll get the most people into Icecrown. And, if Blizz thinks that the Coliseum was a poor raid (which seems to be the raider consensus, although I kinda enjoy it) maybe they want new 80s to just skip it.
I would leave the heroics dropping conquest and have folks raid ToC to get the 232/245 gear - once you get it down its a very short raid (about an hour last time we did it, and that was with 3 wipes). I think the new 5-mans will also drop upgraded gear (maybe lvl 232?) which should be more than enough to get you into the door of ICC.
I wouldn’t mind doing Strat with you on Kene or Kenda – I’ve never been in there* and would like to get a taste for it before Rillian goes in to tank it in a few levels. Not tonight, obviously, but some Friday or Monday night when I’m online.
*Actually I think Kene went in there last spring for one of the Elder holiday quests, and wandered around for a while. This was before dual specs so it was pretty difficult as Holy and I think I died a few times.
Yeah, I think our current Alt Instance crowd are 3 levels or so too low to go into Strat, even with a 64 helping out. That place is crowded.
My jewelcrafter buddy is cutting me epic gems. I transmute and give them to him. He cuts them and sends them back to me. I don’t have the best gems socketed right now, so his contribution will help me. He’s also an enchanter, so I can have him DE stuff for me. I also maybe need to keep my shards after dungeons. I usually end up with at least one high-level shard after an instance, because if an enchanter is along, they DE whatever people don’t want and we roll for the results. I usually just sell them but I should hang onto them for necessary enchants. I haven’t been doing all the dailies and stuff I used to do since I have the rep I need from various ones, but I should probably start them again. Those six Ebon Blade ones I used to do every day–taking about an hour total on a bad night–earn about 79 gold, not counting money from mobs and drops. Then there are the Hodir dailies, the Brunnhildar one, the Frostborn, and so on. None of them take me very long, so I tend to do them if I’m short on cash. I can also pick herbs as I go along and end up with several stacks of them to sell.
I’m going to try hTOC again tonight, after skipping it last night, and I hope it goes well. I also hope the Black Knight drops that gun.
Heh. I’ve ended up running my 80 pally solo through Strat (and Scholo) multiple times while working on Loremaster. Scholo in particular was kind of annoying in that regard. Most of the instances I’ve done to complete quests have the different quests spread amongst different questgivers, so you’re able to gather up all the quests and then go in and get them all done at once. Scholo, OTOH, has some questgivers who send you in to take down a particular boss/retrieve a specific item, and then once you return to them they send you in after the next boss/item on their list, usually requiring you to kill a boss that you already killed the first time through and making you wonder why they couldn’t have sent you after that boss at the same time they sent you after the first one.
I soloed Muz through Strat. It was ver’ nice. Only time I got in a little trouble was when I decided to take on the whole square full of Scarlet Crusaders all at once. DKs are still pretty disgusting, even with the nerfs.
News item here. It’s not a given yet, just something they’re looking at, but WoW Insider is pretty reliable.
The new 5-mans will drop 219s on normal and 232s on heroic, yeah.
I just got an email from my friend who plays Mordrin, and he’s going out of town starting this afternoon so won’t be online tonight.
I’m still up for BRD tonight if somone else can heal (or we find a pug healer); otherwise we may have to wait another week.
Honestly, I wouldn’t be surprised if this is how it works from now on. (Every new tier of gear brings a new level of badges, and all of the old raids/instances get bumped up to the previous max-level badge, so there are only two types of badges being dropped in the game at any given time.) It fits in with the new mantra of making endgame raiding more accessable. They won’t get the numbers in ICC that they want unless they have some way to gear people up short of having them spending months running each of the preceding raids.
If you can, teach yourself to play with keybinds and mouse movement. It’s approximately fifty billion times more efficient. I know it’s a huge pain in the ass to learn, but the investment in time and effort will pay off. (I had the same problem going the opposite way, recently, when I got back into BioShock and had a whoahello WASD moment of trying to get used to keyboard movement again.)
First, get yourself used to using keybindings by practicing on a Training Dummy in an old-world capital. Start small–when I first started playing, I mainly only hit keys 2, 3, and 4. (Ring finger on 2, middle finger on 3, index finger on 4.) When you’re comfortable with those, you can add other numbers, letters, and modifier key combinations (Shift/Alt/Ctrl + a key). If you have extra mouse buttons (including your scroll wheel click), you can add those in. Even your mousewheel up and down scrolling can be rebound from their current functions. (I now use Shift+mousewheel for moving my camera in and out.)
Once you’re comfortable using your keyboard hand to trigger your abilities, time to combine it with mouse movement. Take your butt to a Battleground! And prepare to die a lot. The idea is not to win, but to practice your new layout against enemies who won’t cause you durability damage when you die.
Not any I’ve ever known. So, my guess is…
[ul][li]Like you said, he’s used to playing a Rogue.[/li][li]He’s heard that DPS wants to attack from behind an enemy, and hasn’t realized that it doesn’t work that well unless you have a tank to keep the mob facing away from you.[/li][li]He’s practicing his circle-strafing for PvP or for some other fight where he needs it.[/ul][/li]
Oh god, I hated all that crap so much. It makes slightly more sense when you think about this being pretty much an end-of-game instance back in Vanilla WoW, so they wanted to keep people busy. But you’d think that they’d have condensed things down a bit after TBC went live.
Yo. Rummy is dual-spec, remember?
Sory I haven’t been posting lately. Have not been playing much WoW since my friend quit the game. Its just not the same.
Congrads on all the achievements you guys have gotten recently, lol, you’ve all been busy!
Thanks for the tip, SFG. Next time our regulars are on at the same time, I’ll definitely suggest it and see if they’re willing to try it.
Work was eating me alive last night so I didn’t get to run heroics. Instead, I wound up farming Underbog on my own for Sporeggar rep plus leveling my corehound, and finally got to exalted with them. I also got the 5 Exalted Rep achievement when I dinged. Woo! And double woo for having me a baby sporebat now. I think the sporebat and the sprite darter are my favorite pets so far just because of all the work I had to do. Well. And the Teldrassil Sproutling because I have a stupid love for the tree dance. 
That said, I downloaded Rawr and started playing with it. Once you’ve got its workings figured out, it’s pretty nice. I will say however that its gemming templates and recommendations in 2.2.20 seem to need work. You have to customize the templates to include the gems you like, plus they’re somewhat buggy by listing the same gem multiple times in the template selections. And the recommendations are a little… off… as well. (Vivid Eye of Zul? I don’t need one, I got your meta right here already!)
Shot From Guns, the CD on soul shatter is 2 minutes and consumes a soul shard. I use it whenever I need it, but given the shard cost, I can’t use it all the time. We can only carry 32 shards now and sometimes there isn’t enough trash to replenish shards. I’d like the old Salv back, even in nerfed form.
Regarding Emblems, I really wish they’d bump Ulduar 25s to Triumph. The only thing left in there for us is Yogg (and hard modes, which I don’t care about) so it’s getting to be a drag running it. I don’t need any gear from there and it would be nice to get a little love from Blizzard in the form of Triumph badges.
Last night we cleared all the way to Vezax (we skipped optional bosses) and I’m still hoping we run ToC 25 instead of Ulduar.
Oh yeah, while I’m pouring out random thoughts. Something is busted with my DPS. I was doing maybe 3.5k last night in Ulduar and I usually do much better than that.
I understand the mindset, and won’t be surprised at all if they do it (and Bosstone’s post seems to strongly indicate they will). I’m about as far from elitist as possible, so I have no problem with my “hard-earned” gear being deprecated. It just messes up the idea of character progression, and makes grouping for the “older” raids very difficult.
I kinda liked the idea that my toon has certain steps to take (80-lvl dungeons, heroic dungeons, Naxx, Uld, ToC, ITT) to get to “super hero” status. Shortcuts make it easier, to be sure, but at a cost.
It gets more folks in the newest raid, while obsoleting the old ones much faster and making a mockery of character progression. A trade-off to be sure.
One hundred times yes. It is significantly more efficient to keybind your main rotation spells and turn with the mouse (I still use the keyboard for moving foward and backwards, and for strafing).
I actually don’t use the 1-4 keys for my main spells, they are too far away from my normal left hand position, which is the same as a normal typing position. ESDF are the movement keys rather than WASD which allows for QWRTAGHZVB to all be easily reached, and a few more (like the nums and ~) to be somewhat accessible (for less-used spells like traps or misdirect - I often just click these).
It sucks to learn, and might not work for everyone, but keyboard-turning and spell-clicking is just way slower. I know some high-quality players that do it, but you’ll find a huge increase if you can get mouse-turning and keyboard-clicking down instead! 
I do actually use my left hand to trigger abilities, in addition to movement. I seems the natural way to do it, at least as a paladin, since a pally basically stands in one place and hits things until they fall down (and really, with the exception of a small selection of instant-cast spells, a pally cannot attack and move at the same time anyway). So since [normal] combat is basically “run up to mob, hit it”, it’s very natural to slide my fingers from WASD straight up to 2-3-4.
My mouse gets used primarily to click-target specific mobs, and to adjust camera angle as needed during combat. Also to click buttons for things I don’t have bound to hotkeys (Seals, Blessings, potions, bandages, etc.).
With my belf pally, I’ve started trying something new: right-clicking to target a mob, then holding down both mouse buttons to run straight at the mob in order to leave my left hand free to start casting Exorcism the instant I’m in range. Part of that is because I have Exorcism bound to the 0 (zero) key. It’s way over there because in most fights I only need to cast it once, as my opening move when I’m not actually in melee yet. Once I’m actually in melee, if I need to cast Exorcism again it’s easy enough to hit the 0 with my right hand.
Is this anything my toon Quasi could participate in, or would y’all rather we wait till y’all aren’t running instances, raids, etc?
Thanks
Q
PS: Never mind. Me and da Quas’ aren’t level 50-59! 
Did you check to make sure none of your gear are at 0 durability? The pluses they give don’t work if they’re completely damaged.
Oh yeah! I didn’t want to volunteer anyone, though. Some people hate healing. Ok we’re on then. I’ll probably still have to finish BRD with him sometime, but we might be able to pick up a group in between Wednesday runs. If we finish BRD tonight, I’d like to tackle Dire Maul East next week.
Yeah, you’re not ready for the instances we’re talking about yet, but if you ever need help with Wailing Caverns or Shadowfang Keep (or whatever is around your level now) just let us know either in guild chat, or here, or in the guild messageboard (burningdoglegion.com/boards).