Much wootage

Am currently 5/5 for S2 gear, plus the trinket, plus the cape. That totaled is 214 resil - squarely out of the "facemeltable" category as I remember it.

It's a bit tempting to nab the boots, belt, or trinket for +30 or +34 additional resil (the goal being ~250 resil) before I hit 70... but I think I'll just level for a bit for now.

Guns, no roses

I'm proud to say I blew a couple hundred gold on my bank today. Bought all four remaining bag slots, bought trade bags for two of them, organized things like a neatly-organized person would. (I'm not fond of the idea of bank alts, if only because my computer isn't fond of the idea of switching characters.)

So, like a good warrior, I'm looking ahead to what I can use for tank-ish gear. And, of course, I came across "the" gun. Well, yeah, that's a great gun. What's it gonna cost me?

Eek.

Found one on the AH for 1,500g. Now, granted, I could farm that if I wanted to once I hit 70, but really, I'm in Nagrand already, and I'm a miner... I could probably get all of those mats (short perhaps the primal nether) if I wanted to without paying a dime.

So I hung my head, I pulled down my auction of a stack of Khorium bars, and I reviewed the contents of my mining bag. I shuffled things around a bit, and now I've got a bag devoted to the materials for this thing. So far, I have:

• Khorium bar: 20/20
• Felsteel bar: 8/8
• Hardened adamantite bar: 1/3
• Primal fire: 1/12
• Primal air: 0/12
• Primal nether: 1/1

Well, it's a start.

Made of awesome

Titan's Grip + 2x Brutal Gladiator's Decapitator.

It sounds like awesome.

A change of pace, or Fury Kitty: Now with 50% more godmode!

It's always new for me when I pass into a new PvP group - it was a pretty big change to go from 49 to 50, and an even bigger change to go from 60 to 61, as I said below.

I dinged 64 the other day, and around that time I noticed that my guild's officers and leader had all not logged in for about a month, with one exception. Which sort of explained why I was usually the only member of my guild online, I suppose.

In my adventures through Outland's messed up marsh and peninsula, I met up with a rogue and a warrior (an orc like myself, but specced Fury - I, at the time, had been specced Arms for AV spam, though I've specced back to Fury since). We did some quests in Hellfire together, and helped each other out in Zangarmarsh and, more recently, Terokkar. I like to think we're good friends, and we certainly have a lot of fun together. (Yesterday, the warrior and I raided Honor Hold and took down the Fel Reaver with the help of about five allies, who promptly turned their weapons on us afterwards. It was glorious. They share a guild, name of .

So the other day I figured what the heck, no one ever talks in my guild chat, no one's going to miss me as no one plays, and these guys are pretty cool. So I left my old guild (I didn't have permissions to kick my paladin alt, so I just left her there out of laziness) and joined up with them.

As this is clearly a very manly guild (we are gods, after all, and furious ones at that), I will be making a celebratory video within a few days. I just need to get fraps and/or gamecam or something like that, and try to find a better video editor than windows movie maker.

New BGs

So, of course, the moment I hit 61 I got kicked out of old Alteric Valley. This happened at 60 with Arathi Basin and Warsong Gulch, but I don't play those two as much, so it wasn't a big deal. On the plus side, Eye of the Storm is now an option.

So yesterday I hop into Alteric Valley, thinking I'll farm myself some honor, and immediately notice that there's around two dozen games going on in my battlegroup. I also notice that there's a wait time of approximately three seconds, which I suppose could be attributed to lag.

So I enter the battleground, figuring I'll mount up and run around trying to kill stuff for a while, and a third fact makes itself immediately present: I'm the only 61 in a group of 70s. Oh, great. And the mage has more than twice as much health as my pitiful 5k; don't I feel useless. And then I hit O and tab over to Raid and there's only one other guy under level 70 in the entire 40-man raid (a level 65 shaman).

So what did I do? I spent pretty much the entire battlegroup attempting to get next to Drek'thar. Because, and I'm sure this will sound familiar, the alliance got to him in approximately 5.3 seconds, and proceeded to block off the entrance (as well as our bat-people for turnins; I highly doubt they survived, but I was too busy to look). I think I succeeded once, and we won maybe half a minute after that... the entire match was over in five minutes, tops.

I'm... not pleased. Being a low-level in the 60-69 region isn't that bad; you can still actually get stuff done, though it's far more difficult, but the high-level players don't tend to have twice as much health as you, along with (I suspect) at least three times as much armor and offensive stats for comparable classes. Granted, I don't have any resilience at this point, and I'm sure there's more than enough people who actually picked up the level 60 PvP gear (an idea I thought foolish at the time, but now I'm not so sure) and probably have a couple hundred resilience, and getting said resilience could help out somewhat, but...

Facing off level 61-69 players against level 70s just isn't fair.

I've poked around the auction house more than once; I've talked with people who've leveled more than one level 70; the consensus everywhere is that level 70 gear is far, far better than level 69 gear, just as level 58 Outland gear is far, far better than level 60 Azeroth gear. (See also: my recent quest rewards.)

And, of course, once I reach 70, there'll be me with a couple hundred resil facing off against people in S3, S4, and what have you.

Surviving's looking tough...

Bahahahaha!

Well, finally got my laptop back... and proceeded to use it to do jobhunts of various kinds. Managed to grab a couple, which brings my wow time back to something semi-normal. And, lately...

I've successfully obtained my medallion! I had to burn some marks on a cloak, a standard, and a wolf, though. Betting this is the first and last time I'll find myself with too many marks and not enough honor.

Yeah, I got my epic mount training. I figured there was no way I was going to use half the gems I had stored in my bank for jewelcrafting, as I didn't start training jc until level 30-ish, so they sold for a good amount. Found some other things, too, and mined a stack or two of thorium, which brought me up to 600g - enough for the training and another 120g left over.

So what's next? Well, this is the part where I take up a bunch of space planning out my PvP equips.

Obviously, I'm going for the S2 Battlegear set, with Vindicator's and Guardian's stuff mixed in as appropriate. I'm reasonably confident when I say I can get the armor set before I hit 70, which will bump me up to 211 resil (including trinket and cape) and 42 hit rating, verses 142 hit cap for Mortal Strike builds and 395 cap for dual-wielding builds. (Wow, that's not a lot of hit rating. Maybe I should steal a boomkin for early raiding.)

• Head: Merciless Gladiator's Plate Helm - 14,500 honor, 30 AV marks. This may well be my next target - 25 resilience is very good, plus it's got the meta socket for one of those fancy run speed gems.
• Neck: Guardian's Pendant of Triumph, easily. 15,300 honor and 10 EotS marks (those will be easy enough to come by).
• Shoulders: Merciless Gladiator's Plate Shoulders. More S2 set stuff. 11,250 honor, 20 AB marks. Only +20 resil, so last unless I get all 100 AB marks again soon.
• Back: Sergeant's Heavy Cloak - done! Decent amount of stamina, solid amount of resil, and, as I recall, only 7k honor and a few AB marks.
  
• Chest: Merciless Gladiator's Plate Chestpiece - 14,500 honor, 30 AB marks. +24 resil is great - tied for second best in the set - and I'll be sure to dump AB marks here first instead of those shoulders.
• Wrist: Vindicator's Plate Bracers - as I don't think I'll be doing Sunwell Plateau any time soon, that'll be 9199 honor, 20 WSG marks.
• Gloves: Merciless Gladiator's Plate Gauntlets - 10,500 honor, 20 AV marks. Another great set piece, and another one that requires AV marks, making it one I'll get quickly.
• Waist: Guardian's Plate Belt - 17,850 honor, 40 AB marks. Most notable is the +30 resil on this piece - easily worth the expense. Probably first bite after the S2 set - earlier, gladly, if I get full on marks again.
• Legs: Merciless Gladiator's Plate Legguards - 14,500 honor, 30 WSG marks. Baaaah WSG. At least I've got 50 or so marks from there saved up.
• Feet: Vindicator's Plate Greaves - 13,923 honor, 40 EotS marks. Bit pricy on the marks, but another +30 resil piece - easily worth a dozen EotS matches (or even 20).
• Ring: Veteran's Band of Triumph - 9,500 honor, 10 AV marks. This guy was hidden behind the Vindicator's Plate items, where it looked like there was nothing more to offer. A solid +22 resil, and very cheap too - 10k honor honestly isn't that much in the grand scheme of things, and only 10 AV marks? A very economical choice!
• Ring: Vindicator's Band of Triumph - 11,934 honor, 10 AV marks. Very nice stats - although the 22 resil didn't get upgraded from the S1 version - and not much more expensive than the previous ring. Certainly worth the price.
• Trinket: Medallion of the Horde - done! +45 resil, which is probably the best I'll find on a single piece of equipment before I get to arenas, and an excessively handy "use" effect. Well worth the 40,000 honor (though it must be noted that the blue version of the trinket has the same "use" effect and costs only 8,000 honor, but only gives +20 resil).
  
• Trinket: Talisman of the Horde - 22,950 honor, 10 EotS marks. It was either this or one of the Battlemaster's trinkets, but this has +34 resil - second best on this page - as compared to the +80 attack power/+40 crit strike rating. I also figured a flat heal would be better than boosting health and then losing it in 15 seconds, possibly resulting in death. It's not a great heal, but then, it's not that great a health boost (1750, which I wouldn't be happy with losing in the middle of heated combat).
• 2h weapon: Merciless Gladiator's Decapitator - 27,000 honor, 40 AV marks. Powerful weapon, and the S4 version is one of the best axes in the game, as I recall. And orc racials say axe over sword.
• Ranged weapon: Merciless Gladiator's War Edge - 8,000 honor, 10 EotS marks. It's this over the awesome crossbow only because the crossbow's AP boost doesn't apply to melee. That said, the war edge is about three times cheaper than the crossbow.
• Shield: Merciless Gladiator's Shield Wall - 15,000 honor, 20 EotS marks. Easily one of the best shields in the game, I'll take this and let it sit until I get a proper tanking set going (including T4, in all likelyhood).

So... totals for the rest of the stuff I need. That'll be... 198,056 honor (yipes), 70 AB marks, 110 AV marks, 90 EotS marks, and 50 WSG marks. (Pretty sure I counted that right...) As of right now, I have... 78 honor? Yeah, go me. And along with that, 90 AV marks (I predict I'll be buying a certain headpiece soon...), 86 AB marks, and 57 WSG marks. No EotS marks yet, but I'll be hitting 61 soon-ish, and getting the 10 needed for some of the cheaper items won't be too hard, even at just 61.

Oh, gem slots. Uh, for the meta, absolutely nothing beats one of the +8% run speed gems, and the best of those for me is the Swift Skyfire Diamond. For the yellows I guess would be Steady Seaspray Emeralds, and reds would be Sovereign Shadowsong Amethysts. Oh those don't look easy to get... And I need three reds and five yellows. Good thing I went JC...

Well, this'll have to do. I guess I could put in more offensive-oriented gems, as I suppose I'll be using this set to learn Kara, etc, and get T4 prot gear, but I don't think I want to waste any more time and money on the gems than I already will be...

(Ninja edit because I forgot the weapons and shield. Oops.)

Quiet

Yep. Laptop had to go into the shop, and my dad's decided that I'm not allowed internet until I get a job. His logic on that is failing, but meh. Laptop should be back hopefully by the 10th or so... at which point I'll (hopefully) be able to spend a weekend farming the last 7k or so honor I need for my shiny trinket.

Thanks for the comments, and apologies for not responding to them...

Mounts at 30?

So according to WoWWiki's 2.4.3 patch notes, mounts will now be available at level 30. Great - my Paladin is currently level 25 or so, and maybe this will get me focusing on her over my variety of other alts.

Then again, my Druid is level 19 right now. I'd been looking forward to travel form, but once I hit 30 I can blow 35g or so on a proper mount and get +60% ground speed, as opposed to the +40% of Travel form. I guess a proper mount has the disadvantages of cost and cast time, but really... the cast time isn't a huge deal, and neither is the cost, even for a first-time player. I took a tip from a friend and took mining as one of my professions on Melgarr, my first character; once I hit 30 and discovered Mithril, I had the 100g for my mount by the time I was level 38, after buying a few equipment upgrades. (I also treated myself to full plate armor with most of the money I made in that period, but that's a different story involving overpriced mithril bars and underpriced level 40 gear on the AH.) Now, I grant you, not everyone will know that kind of trick... but I would think (and I've not leveled many gatherers, but I would think) that any gathering profession could make 35g pretty easily, and it seems basic logic to me that a new player would take at least one gathering profession, as he needs money for his training until he reaches level 70 and, well, won't have too many other ways of getting money before he hits 70.

So what do we do about travel form? Do we bump it down t a level 20 shapeshift, like Ghost Wolf? Well, that sets the unprecedented situation of having two shapeshifts available at the same level (cat form being the other). It also makes Feral Swiftness near worthless (rank 1 is available at level 20, and you give up Feral Charge for it - not a fair trade for your bear form.)

Ok, so we move cat form back a bit to make up for it? Maybe? That doesn't seem like a good idea to me, as it would require redoing a number of lower-level talents and abilities to match the new level. You also gain Seel Form at 16, which already feels crushed between Cat and Bear (at 10)...

So moving cat form back seems a poor idea. Adjusting Feral Swiftness might be a better idea, but what do you adjust it to? In a raid situation, a cat druid doesn't need dodge percentage, however useful that might be while leveling. Then again, from what I know most raids are indoors and thus deny the move speed increase as well. Outdoor PvP (the three lower-level battlegrounds come to mind) make great use of the speed boost, especially as you can still attack in cat form (as opposed to losing travel form as soon as you breathe on someone). You can also carry flags in cat form with Feral Swiftness, which seems odd to me - the only other comparable speed boost I know of that one can use while holding a flag is Sprint, which is nowhere near maintainable, despite the much greater speed boost - in WSG, you can use it to either get to the flag or get the flag back to your base. So maybe Feral Swiftness should take a hit for the PvP side of the game.

The other concern I have is that level 40 was the "big level" - you get your armor upgrade in a few cases (to plate, or mail, or whatever, as appropriate for your class), you get your quest for a new weapon in others, and pretty much no matter what your character, if you were playing smart you got an awesome talent (Mortal Strike, Bloodthirst, Shadowform, etc), This was all in addition to your mount of awesome and win - I'm sure everyone remembers the first time they mounted up and realized they could easily outrun pretty much any enemy they ran across.

Before level 40 was hard for me. Levels 1-10 were pretty awesome (it was my first character, after all; I seem to remember an 8-hour first sitting in which I hit level 16 before deciding bed should come into play at some point) and 10-20 were alright (I got some neat tanking abilities, but tanking just isn't my thing), but 20-30 were kind of rough. I had Berserker Stance to see me through, though, and the quest to get it, while difficult, was made awesome by the reward. This was my first real "I'm a DPS warrior" ability, and it was great to finally leave Battle Stance. (It wasn't so awesome to realize that I wasn't well enough geared to deal with the 10% extra damage, but a couple levels took care of that.)

30-40 was... difficult. It felt grindy, but not excessively so, I suppose, but looking back I have to wonder if that was because I knew there were so many awesome things waiting for me once I hit 40. And thinking about it, I have to wonder if a large chunk of the anticipation wasn't for the mount, and whether I'd have dealt with it as well if I already had my mount.

And speaking of mounts, those recipes from before still haven't sold. It might be a sign to get off of my new mage and/or stop whoring AB and AV, but I'm not sure. All I know is, I'm not going to be super happy to be among the level 60s in AV that are still riding the +60% mounts.

Edit: Finally figured out how to put some fancy links on the side. There's two blogs there and they're both awesome; go read them.

Hrm...

So I'm clearing out some nasties in the Western Plaguelands (The Weeping Cave, to be specific) for experience and perhaps some Thorium, and I come across a recipe that Auctioneer reports has been seen sold for 150g or so, and recommends I sell mine for 130g or so. Seems reasonable, assuming, of course, I've scanned recently (have I...?) and this isn't similar to the times I've seen gray daggers up for thousands of gold each just to mess with my addOns.

Well, whatever. If it's valuable, I'll know for sure when I scan, and that's a good chunk towards my riding training. If not, I'll throw it to my Druid for when/if he gets that high an Alchemy level.

I'm thinking this, and as I stab another baddie (decaying something or other, all I know is it looks like a Forsaken tree - is this why they can't roll Druid?), I pick up another of the things.

So assuming my Auctioneer's not been tricked, I'm pretty happy. But still... Seems kinda good to be true. Almost like getting two Crusader recipe drops in a row, but not quite as good.

I guess I could throw them on the AH and see if they sell, but I'm wondering if anyone can confirm or deny my thoughts either way?

Warsong blues

I don't know if it's just my groups, but man, Horde really doesn't seem too great at Warsong Gulch in the 50-59 tier. My team outnumbered the opposition 8-6 earlier today and we lost 3-1. Not entirely sure how that happened, what with us having about six guys level 58+ and they only having four.

Ah well. Four more marks (hopefully less than as many matches) and I'll be done with that place.


Meanwhile, farming honor for my [Medallion of the Horde] is being slower than I'd like. Granted, I'm over halfway there, but man does it get tedious after a while. (As a side note, my HKs show up on armory now. It's pretty neat!)

Also, I bought my mount today. It's pretty awesome, but I'm about 400g (and three levels) away from being able to use it. Hopefully mining in Outland will be as profitable as I'm predicting... and hopefully I'll have finished a level's worth of rest by tomorrow or Wednesday so I can continue Scouragestone farm. Supposing the daily PvP quests aren't Eye of the Storm, I suppose it'd be a bit faster, but still.

First post?

So I guess I actually got around to making this blog. And what does one put in a first post?

Well, I guess I could start out with a bit about me. My usual online handle is Armond. I'll respond to that whenever. I don't have an Armond in-game, though; I generally use that name for a warrior-type character, and it was taken on the realm I made my first warrior. I've saved it on another server, but I've not gotten around to doing anything on him yet.

I started playing about two months ago in mid-April. Even so, through various research and a not inconsiderable amount of experience, I think I've learned enough about the game to be relatively good at theorycrafting, which I love and do way too much of. Seriously. I always keep a window open with over a dozen builds in various tabs and constantly refer to it.

My main character at this point is an orc warrior named Melgarr. He's a Hyjal native, fury-specced (for now). He's rounding the bend for level 56; I expect to hit that level by the end of the day. I mine a lot on him (and by a lot, I mean a lot), and I've been told it's done me good financially, but I don't really have anything to compare him to. All I know is I had little trouble getting my first mount, but I'm not liking the way things are going, cash-wise, for my Frostwolf Howler; I bought the first tab for my new guild's bank, and I've thrown some cash around to my alts/lower-level friends (not to mention about 70g dumped into what turned out to be 30 levels in jewelcrafting), but I'm currently sitting at about 200g, which is around 150g less than I'm used to and 200-250g less than I'd like.

My playstyle consists of dealing as much melee dps as I possibly can. I come from Guild Wars, where tanking's a bad idea, so I'm not used to tanking and will probably be pretty horrible at it without practice. There's also huge amounts of +physical damage in Guild Wars (like, a weapon is bad if it doesn't provide +20% melee damage unconditionally, an additional [additive] +15% melee damage while above 50% health, and have a 20% chance to ignore 20% of your opponent's armor), which is probably where my fondness for melee dps came from.

As for the blog name, well... Melgarr also has a pet silver tabby, and one of my friends found it amusing that a big, strong, fury-specced warrior would have such a cute and fluffy little kitty. Can't say as I blame him.

I have a couple other characters I work on on the side, but I think it's important to hit 70 on Mel so I can work on getting some actual cash for equipment. While I plan to gear up with PvP things once I hit 70 (and am doing a moderate amount of PvP between now and then), I know that there will be better equipment for melee DPS once it comes time for heroics and whatnot.

I think that's probably about enough for one post... Bit lengthy, and I'm still not sure all the code is going to check out. But hey, it's probably enough for the few people that know about it right now.