Blogowned?

After months and months of working as intended, the firewall at my job has finally blocked Blogger as a "Message Board/Forum" and I can no longer view it. Since I only update my blog from work, I suppose this is good by.. or a move to Wordpress if that still works =\.

http://porkchopexpress.wordpress.com

WOTLK Thoughts: Shaman POV

Switching perspectives from a Moonkin to a Shaman, lets take a look at the upcoming changes for our second favorite hybrid class in WOTLK. Current issues with the Shaman class, in my opinion, are (of course) threat, AoE, crowd control and having too many useless Totems and weapon enhancements. Has Blizzard fixed this yet?

Totems

Show someone that has never played a Shaman before your totem selection. Pretty overwhelming, no? The sad thing is that some of these totems will never be used or have very limited use in a majority of the games scenarios. I've been 70 with Mutoh forever now and couldn't tell you the last time I've used Windwall Totem, Flametongue Totem, Stoneskin Totem or Sentry Totem (I do not PVP on my Shaman). It looks like we have some pretty good changes coming our way!

-Windwall Totem has been removed from the game.
-Flametongue Totem will now be a +spell damage totem instead.
-Stoneskin Totem will now increase armor instead of reduce physical damage.
-Grace of Air Totem has been removed from the game.
-Strength of Earth Totem now increases Agility as well.
-Windfury Totem now increases melee haste by 20% instead.

Weapon Enhancements

Rockbiter Weapon will be replaced by Windfury Weapon at level 30.
-Frostbrand Weapon's snare effect chance increased from 25% to 50%.
-Earthliving Weapon (New) - Imbue the Shaman's weapon with earthen life. Increases healing done by X amount and each heal has a 20% chance to proc Earthliving on the target, healing an additional X over 12 sec. Lasts 30 minutes.
Trainable at level 30.

Spells

Ghost Wolf now costs 13% of your base mana to cast and will no longer cancel the Water Walking effect.
Cleanse Spirit - Cleanse the spirit of a friendly target, removing 1 poison effect, 1 disease effect, and 1 curse effect. Restoration Talent.
Unleashed Rage now effects the entire raid.
Lava Burst - You hurl molten lava at the target, dealing 888 to 1132 Fire damage. If Flame Shock is on the target, Lava Burst will consume the Flame Shock, causing Lava Burst to critically hit. (655 Mana, 2 sec Cast, 8 sec Cooldown, 30 yd Range, trainable at level 75.)
Hex - Transforms a Beast or Humanoid into a random critter for 8 seconds, reducing the target’s movement speed by 75%. While moving, the hexed target cannot attack or cast spells. Only one target can be hexed at a time. Damage done to the hexxed target will not break the effect. This is a "magic" effect and can be dispelled. (0.5 sec Cast, 20 yd range, 1 minute Cooldown, trainable at level 80.)
Feral Spirit - Summons 2 Spirit Wolves under the command of the Shaman, lasting 30 sec. (1 Rank, Instant, 2 min Cooldown, Enhancement talent.)
Thunderstorm - You call down a bolt of lighting, energizing you and damaging nearby enemies within 10 yards. Restores 5% mana to you and deals 595 to 679 nature damage to all nearby enemies, knocking them back 20 yards.
(1 Rank, Instant, 45 sec Cooldown, Elemental talent.)
Spirit Link - You link the friendly target with up to two nearby friendly targets, causing 50% of any damage taken to be distributed to the linked targets. If any target takes a blow greater than 30% of their health, or shared damage would reduce a target's health below 20%, the link is broken. You can only have one link active at a time. (1 Rank, Instant cast, 12% of base mana, 40 yd range, Restoration talent.)

Talents

WOTLK Moonkin Spec

http://wotlk.wowhead.com/?talent=0xzruiIoAdhAzotZf0fzb

This is most likely what I'll be heading for with WOTLK. Boosted DPS from Treants, all the good talents (minus Imp Faerie Fire), Omen of Clarity and Master Shapeshifter which I'm sure will be in EVERY Moonkins spec. Who doesn't want +4% damage? I'm really loving what Blizzard has done with the Balance tree (outside of that shit heap called Eclipse).

I Can Has a List?

Joo R CORRECT SIR!



HUZZAH!

Oh Noes, Wall of Text!

Ding 70.. again. The 5th time hitting 70 isn't as exciting as the first, second, third.. maybe as exciting as the fourth but by the time I had half a bubble to go I just wanted it to be over.

For the most part, I didn't enjoy leveling my Warrior at all. I'm glad shes 70 so I can start doing the PVP thing but the ride there was far from fun.

Don't get me wrong. I love my Warrior.. but man, I hated the grind to get there.

The night started out good. Farming for flasks on Mutoh I got 2 Fel Lotus in under 10 minutes & Jandrae's quest for a good Moonkin weapon ended last night in ZA when the Amani Punisher dropped.

No more than 5 minutes after hitting the big seven-o on Adiar, Call and my wife wanted to start our 3v3 arena team to get points for this week before Tuesdays restart. We named our team Good Eats because the three of us love the Food Network show of the same name, but that didn't stop us from going 0-10.



As you can see, Good Eats is 1337 according to our team rating. We did awful for the most part. I'm still wearing about 60% green quest rewards and had a whopping 13 resiliance thanks to the Thick Felsteel Ring. I hadn't had time to go pick up the 3 pieces of blue rep PVP gear but honestly we didn't care if we won. We just wanted our points.

Hopefully I'll have time to at least get the S2 shoulders before we try arena again.

WotLK Thoughts: Moonkin PoV

Moonkin have been the bastard stepchildren in the caster universe for quite some time. A majority of players have no idea what they bring to raids outside of a +5% crit buff and 9 times out of 10 will take another caster over a Balance Druid. When WotLK is released, will the boosts to the Balance tree be enough to move our feathered friend out of the shadows and in to the spotlight?

Before I get in to the changes, let me address what has the bane of Moonkin since we've trained in Moonfire - Gear, Threat, AoE and Crowd control.

Gear

I leveled Balance on Jandrae from 10 to about 47 and respecced Feral from 47 to 50, hated it and respecced back to Balance until 70 and beyond. The lack of caster leather in WoW is no secret. Outside of the belt from SFK, every ounce of caster leather I wore up until about 50 was cloth. Once you hit Outlands, gear doesn't become an issue since they tossed some Moonkin love our way with plenty of caster leather quest rewards, epic craftables and a boat-load of Badge of Justice gear BUT you could still find a piece of cloth for every piece of leather that was better. Hopefully in WotLK Blizzard takes notice and includes leather (and mail for the Shaman) that is par with the cloth gear our caster counterparts receive.

Threat

We're not called Boomkin for nothing nor do we get a huge armor boost in Moonkin form for bragging rights. Starfire hurts. Srsly. If your group doesn't have a Paladin for Blessing of Salvation or a Shaman that wants to blow his air totem for Tranquil Air you're in deep kodo poo. What makes that pile of poo larger is if you don't have Subtlety enchanted on your cloak or talent points in Subtlety in the Resto tree. Any Moonkin worth his feathers will take Intensity's mana regen boost over a threat reduction talent any day of the week. Thankfully, with WotLK, Natures Reach will provide a 30% reduction in threat to all Balance spells, on top of increasing their range, eliminating the threat reduction aspect for DPS spells through Subtlety. Ty Blizzard.

AoE spells

LOLicane. Thats all I have to say. Before Moonkin form was introduced, the 31 point talent for Balance Druids was this laughable AoE that, at the time, had a 10 minute cooldown. As if the damage wasn't bad enough, right? IMO the highlight of Hurricane is it's ability to reduce the attack speed of whatever it's hitting by 25%, not so much the lackluster damage. The cooldown has since been reduced down to 1 minute which is OK but it's not really long enough to take down an entire AoE group. The cooldown to Hurricane will be completely removed in WotLK in addition to the new spells Typhoon and Starfall.

Typhoon - Deals X amount of damage to enemies and knocks them back 5 yards.

There really isn't anymore info and no one is really sure how the spell will work. My guess is that it will be a slow moving frontal-cone-ish spell and will mostly likely have low damage due to it's ability to knock back mobs/players. Information on Starfall seemed to dissapear as soon as the original beta notes leaked but from what I remember it's a channeled AoE spell that targets a radius around the Druid dealing X amount of damage plus an additional X amount of damage to mobs close to the mobs effected. In short, it deals more damage if the mobs are close to each other. It's an AoE + splash damage but it's channeled like Tranquility.

With the cooldown being removed from Hurricane and the addition of one (possibly two) new AoE spell, we should finally be able to hang out with the Mages and Warlocks. Maybe not in terms of overall damage but at least keeping the AoE going. Another ^5 to Blizzard for this one.

Crowd Control

Outside of ZF, ZA and a few pre-BC raids, we never get to use Entangling Roots in a group PVE situation. That is until WotLK! Entangling Roots will now work indoors and will finally be a viable form of CC for Druids. Want better news? Diminishing returns have been removed from Cyclone in PVE so it can now be constantly spammed on mobs without seeing the dreaded "IMMUNE" sign. All this just in time to never have to do the 3rd boss in heroic Magister's Terrace ever again.

As if all this wasn't enough, check out these new toys for Druids that will hopefully make us more wanted in groups.

Revive - A non-combat rez spell. Works just like a Priest, Pally or Shaman rez. We still get to keep Rebirth as well for those "oh shit!" moments =D.

Brambles - In addition to it's old effect, Brambles now increases the damage done by your Treants. Also, any damage done by your Treants or Thorns will have a 5%/10%/15% chance to daze the target. Sexyness. I love my Treants.

Force of Nature - The Treant summon talent has had it's cooldown reduced from 3 minutes to 2 minutes.

Improved Faerie Fire (Feral) - This former Balance talent is being moved over to the Feral tree to replace the current Feral Faerie Fire ability. No longer will Moonkin have to waste 3 talent points but we also won't have to blow our global cooldowns to keep it up. +3% hit for everyone is nice considering Feral Druids keep this on their target anyway. Nice boost IMO.

Moonkin Form - This is my favorite future change and solidifies my choice for who I will be leveling first and raiding with in WotLK. Increased AP and mana regen on melee swings have been removed and replaced with a 2% mana regen for every spell crit. The original boosts, outside of the +armor and +spell crit, were useless. Giving you back 2% of your mana pool for every critical spell cast is not. I love you, Blizzard!

Improved Moonkin Form - All party members effected by Moonkin Aura will gain 20% spell haste for 8 seconds after successful spell crits. This effect cannot occur more than once every 30 seconds.

Natures Grace - In addition to reducing the cast time of your next spell by .5 seconds every time you crit, spell crits will also reduce the global cooldown on your next Wrath spell by 50%. This + PVP = Nature Cannon. Love it.

Omen of Clarity - No longer a buff but a passive spell. OoC now has a 6% chance to proc clearcasting from all attacks and spell casts (damage or healing) instead of just melee abilities. This ability cannot occur more than once every 10 seconds. Huzzah for clearcasting!

Good stuff, no? Blood Pact, Pally auras and Shammy totems now effect the entire raid instead of just their raid group. If they let Moonkin Aura (LotP for our Feral kin) do the same, that'll be a lot of happy casters. Is that a raid spot I smell?

A lot of this information was found through various WoW blogs such as Gray Matter (my personal favorite Moonkin blog) & YAWN (Yet Another Warlock Nerf).

Booty at the Dark Portal + Kara gets Stallowned.

I was dead set on reaching 70 last night with Adiar but I spaced that our normal weekly Kara run was moved ahead from Saturday to Friday night at 8:30 EST.

With the few hours I had before hand I got in to a group for Black Morass with Ash's Warrior and Munsond's Warrior. In the group was a Holy Paladin with an odd mix of Holy and Prot gear but he healed fine. Forsaken is desperate for a Healadin for our Kara group and after the run we extended an offer for him to run with us. Thankfully he took the offer.

We ran BM twice. Once for the quest and another to get Ash's Warrior, Devastator, enough rep for the helm enchant. Oddly enough, the Hourglass of the Unraveller dropped in both runs. I won the first one, along with the bow from the first boss and the legs from my Bold set. BM is nice and quick but sucks for XP. In the time it took us to do the 2 runs I could have gotten twice the XP from questing in Netherstorm.

Kara time came and the last 3 weeks have been awful for us. We've run in to a string of bad luck with healers no showing and when invites went out the new Pally was nowhere to be found. What our guild needed was a good solid Kara run and our only chance of saving this was a Paladin we had met 2 hours earlier in a PuG and he hadn't shown up.. yet. Thank Jeebus he finally showed up and in less than 4 minutes we had a full Kara group ready to go.

We blew through the bosses until we reached Aran. We had a hangup on him and wiped 3 times due to lack of spell interrupts and horrible luck during the elemental spawn phase. The first two times they spawned in the middle of an arcane explosion. While everyone was running out of the middle, the elementals picked off our raid group one at a time. The third time they spawned during a Blizzard so our melee was caught under it and died instantly.

At this point I was asked to bring in my Warlock, Veresitha, to help with elemental CC and we were doing Illhoof next anyway. They always need me to bring Vere for Illhoof since no one in our guild has a Warlock but me. We downed Aran and Illhoof, I logged back on to Jandrae and we cleared up to Prince. He was tanked a little to close so his aoe killed half of our raid during the first Enfeeble. We took him out the 2nd time, wiped on Netherspite and called it a night.

Overall it was NOT a bad Kara run. We wiped 5 times in total but the Paladin got at least 6 or 7 drops. We also cleared every boss but Netherspite and one shotted Nightbane which is normally difficult with new healers. What does this mean? He'll come back each and every week to get more gear and provide our DPS with Blessing of Salvation lol. We needed a Paladin and we got one. He even joined the guild!

Next week, hopefully we have enough DPS so I can bring Adiar. I'd love a shot at Despair or Gorehowl.

Warriors.. Come Out To Playyeeeyaayyyy *clank clank clank*

I respecced Adiar to the recommended Arena spec of 35-23-3 (minus that last point in tactical mastery) and hit level 69 last night. I have 95% to go until 70 and hopefully I can grind that out tonight.

Call's Warrior, Shimontka, is sword spec but said it never really procs but he's stuck since he dropped a crapload of time and money in to makeing Lionheart Executioner. I read that mace spec was getting a nerf and that it's really only good if you have Stormherald for the extra stun chance. I'm a fan of axes and since Poleaxe Specialization not only boosts two weapons, it's also getting a boost in WOTLK so I went for that.

Call is helping me learn the ropes of the "Slam rotation" and I'm impressed with the damage output when I'm not rage starved. The Slam rotation (SR from here on out) is situational in PVP since most players are moving around constantly but with a .5 second cast time it's still very powerful. Lots of casters have to stand still and casters are Warrior food.

In a nutshell, SR consists of building 45 rage any way you can (Bloodrage or Charge is the best start for quick rage), using a swing timer mod such as Quartz and using a 3.5 speed (or slower) weapon. As soon as your auto attack connects you use Slam, follow that up with Mortal Strike and after both hit (including your global cooldowns) your auto attack should be 1 second or less away. Repeating this looks something like this.



You basically get a normal swing, slam, MS, normal swing, slam and then a bit of dead time to wait for the MS cooldown. If you are in Berserker Stance and have enough rage you can Whirlwind during the second auto attack but it's better off to just wait and build rage to start up the next auto attack, slam, MS rotation.

I'm still getting used to the timing. Since Slam resets your swing timer you want it to connect the split second your auto attack does so you have less "dead air". If you wait for the auto attack and then use Slam there is .5 seconds of dead air and lost dps. This is where Quartz comes in. When you have .5 left on your swing you use Slam. Sounds easy but it's also easy to mess up while your paying attention to your health and other things.

If I don't care for how Slam works in PVP I can always spec out of it and put the points in to something else. No worries. It's just the highest burst damage Arms spec for PVP so I'll start there and work around it.

Warrior Arena - Tips & Tricks

I've been watching some Warrior perspective Arena videos online to see if there is something similar they are doing that I can pick up on.

I don't think 2v2 will be where I'm headed since the point value isn't that great so I'm trying to focus on 3v3.

Some things I'm noticing -

1) Get a healer! - Seems pretty simple but all of the higher rated teams had a healer of some sort. Warriors are nothing without a healer but with one, they're friggin panzerz! Find a high resil healer and make friends with them.

2) Learn LOS - Countless arena videos showed the Warrior and their melee partner luring in an opposing melee class and then pounding him behind their healers LOS. This also prevented opposing casters from sitting back and slinging spells at them non stop.

3) Sword & Board - Think arena is all about 2h? Think again. Use an "outfitter" type mod to swap out your weapons if you are fighting a mixed melee/caster group. While your team burns down the melee, keep your shield equipped and spam Spell Reflect every cooldown to mitigate the damage you take and deal some damage back. Against casters with the ability to heal (I.E. Moonkin, Elemental Shaman) this might even force them to stop casting to heal themselves or just stop wasting mana. Once the opposing melee is down, swap back to your 2h and swing for the fences.

4) Use Common Sense - Hamstring everything, Mortal Strike everything, Whirlwind everything.. Keep your anti-fear abilities active and be ready to use your trinket to get out of CC on a moments notice. Make an Intervene macro for your healer. Blah Blah Blah.

Sounds good on paper, lets see how it actually works when I get in to an arena team. This is a really nice 3v3 video I found over on vimeo.com called "Preach". I like that he lists the team he's facing and what their tactics were.


Preach - The Way of the Warrior pt 1 from Mike Lamb on Vimeo.

Blades Edge Mountowned.

Brandy is still pushing to get her little Dwarf Hunter to 70 by the weekend so last night we finished up Nagrand and started the hellish grind through BEM. This our least favorite zone in Outlands - I HATE building that costume.

We took out all of Sylvanaar and 95% of Toshley's Station before calling it quits. She dinged 69 and I dinged 67 on Adiar. 3 more levels to go until the mind numbing PVP grind!

I'm going through AtlasLoot to see what instance drops I could use that would help in PVP and making a list of how much honor/tokens I'll need for full S2. I need to see how my gear looks at 70 and then see which upgrades are bigger.

I also need some Arms PVP advice but I'm not sure where to look. I tried Arenajunkies.com but they don't give class specific advice, just advice against every 2v2 & 3v3 team possible. I checked the WoWhead forums as well but didn't find much of anything. I've got a spec but I need to know how to gem, what Meta to get, advice against classes 1 on 1, etc. I've been DW Fury since level 20 and have no Arms experiance at all.

The first week in Arena should be embarassing which should make for a good blog post.

The Pre-Expansion Slump.

I'm at a point right now where I don't know what to do to stay occupied until WOTLK is released.

Our guilds current Kara run will most likely stop and, honestly, why do I want to waste my time raiding 25-mans when I'll be leveling to 80 soon? I don't want to invest the time, gold & stress in to 25-man raiding only to burn out, level to 80 and DE all the old gear.

With Season 4 just starting, I'm almost positive the expansion won't see the light of day until the end of this year or early 2009. With that in mind, there is tons of PVP to be had.. but.. I don't really care for unorganized battlegrounds or Arena.

So where does that leave me?

I'm weighing out my options and trying to figure out what to do from here. I'm thinking of doing the cookie-cutter "PVE, PVE, Alt" scenario where I dedicate one toon to running heroics & Kara when the option arrives, one toon just for PVP and then work on one alt in my spare time.

PVE

I have no intentions on doing anything with Veresitha before WOTLK. Her gear is great
and I have no need for Kara or heroics and doing either of them is only going to get me epic gems (woo) or a hefty repair bill. Drim is gearing up his Druid tank so I respecced Mutoh Enhancement to help him fill a spot in PuGs. His Elemental set is great and I pulled way too much threat so the downgrade in DPS will still help Drim fill a spot without having to worry about Mutoh tanking the whole time lol.

I love my Moonkin but I'm in the same boat as Mutoh. Her gear is great and I hit hard but that plays a factor when grouping with my friends undergeared tank alts. I only need a weapon for her and that only comes out of Kara or heroic MgT so chances are she'll be my PVE toon of choice.

PVP

I don't twink as I find it to be a waste of money and honestly the most whining comes out of the 29 BG bracket. No thanks. Chances are that I'll level my Warrior, Adiar, to 70, spec PVP Arms and then just rock BG's for S2 until I get a few pieces. At that point I'll do some "free point" arena wherever I can until I get the hang of it and then look for a serious 3's or 5's team. If I PVP as any toon it's going to be Adiar since Arms Warriors are brutal.

The good thing about PVP is that I can get a ton of new gear and rewards in a short amount of time and then just enjoy the Arena experiance to get slow upgrades. Unlike raiding where I'd have to wait and wait for those drops I actually know what I'm getting and what BG I'd need to do. Since I would get a majority of my PVP gear early on I wouldn't mind replacing it all as I level to 80.

ALT

This is going to be the hardest decision for me since I have 3 toons I'd like to play and MIGHT wind up just alternating them based on their rested XP. I'd like to focus on Serpe exclusively but sadly I only play with 2 or 3 people on the Horde side and they aren't always on. Still a toss-up here.

It's patch day!

Which, in short, means that Serpe gets her mount! She's right on the borderline of 30 but that should make the grind to 40+ much easier and faster. I'll also be picking up a mount for my Night Elf Priest, Telura. Good times!

Speaking of Serpe, I haven't had much time to invest in her lately. This weeks Kara run on the Alliance side went poorly and there was a bit of the ol' guild drama. We decided to postpone it until Monday night (from Saturday) after only downing Attumen and Moroes. Monday night rolls around and we're 2 people short. 2 of our 3 healers no showed.

I offered to respec Jandrae to Resto to help with healing duties if the Hunter in the group brought his Tank and our Tank brought his Priest instead. No one responded, my wife brought the idea back up 10 minutes later when nothing had been done and still no one responded.

We called it completely, dropped group, hearthed and took a bit of a break.

My wife is upset because she respecced her Shadowpriest (who she spent a lot of time gearing up) to heal for nothing. They mentioned going to Kara on Friday this week instead of our usual Saturday time to see if it makes a difference. I'm not holding my breath.

I deleted Aulbeth and Vahl and made a female Dwarf Paladin named Seahorn and a female Night Elf Hunter named Tunaroll. The woman wanted to roll a Resto Druid so I told her I'd tank for her. She's been wanting an Elemental Shaman as well so I rolled a Hunter to play with that toon.

Talk about alt-itis.

I can has hael?

I didn't get to play Serpe last night at all. My wife is leveling her Huntard (which is level 67 atm) so she and Drim wanted to run normal Labs for quests and gear. I offered to respec resto on Jandrae and heal for it but we wound up having to do Seth Halls first.

Overall I did OK. My ADD prevented me from focusing on my HoT timers, the tank and whatever DPS pulled aggro at the time but other than that it went well.

Keeping 3 Lifeblooms rolling was more than enough to keep the tank up even during Murmur. Is that really all there is to Druid healing? I'll be respeccing back to Moonkin eventually but since I'm not really playing Jan I'll keep her Resto for now.

No playing WoW at all tonight due to working late and then working in the morning tomorrow. FTL!

So this is what happens in SM?

A bit of the old Druid salad tossing? I think so.

This was taken after last nights SM Library run. I now know why they call it "SM".

Dwarfpriest.com

I'm going to do my best to avoid making this blog look like the Yellowpages but I came across this blog today that is pretty stellar. DP does an amazing job of giving in-depth advice without using a wall of text (something I am very bad at). There are sections on there about cast rotations, specs, healing, Shadow Priest dps, gems, gear, PVP advice against every class and how to overcome them & more. Just overall an awesome blog that any Priest should read.

Even at level 27 I found info on there worth taking notes on and it really gave me an idea of what to prepare for.

13 Levels to Go.

Dinged 27 last night after blowing through all of the Tarren Mills quests. Twyst came on his mage and tore the place apart so I could finish faster (*chuckle*) and get rid of all the orange and red quests in my log. Thankfully 26 gave me a much needed upgrade to SW:P since mine was getting pretty weak against same-level mobs.

I picked up a Deadly Blunderbuss from the AH to finish up the Warsong quest in Ashenvale and ran out to Splintertree to pick up the FP. After that I called it quits and went to bed.

Forsaken is running ZA tonight but I can't go. They're starting around 8pm and I don't get home until around 10:30pm. Ah well, I'll just play Serpentina then =X.

Mind Flay Rank 1. Woot?

I know the first rank of this spell is total dog shit BUT I'm a sucker for new stuff. I skipped getting this at 20 to put 5 points in to Wand Spec and I can honestly say it was a better move. Wand Spec is helping me plow through mobs and knock out some quests much faster than I would have by taking Mind Flay at 20 instead of 25.

Ran a horrid RFK pug earlier today where a Hunter had the blue gloves from SM Library but need rolled on some green leather gloves that were crap (+str and +spi nonsense). I called them out on it asking why they had need rolled them to which I promptly got a "BRB" response. They were the group leader so I figured I was about to be kicked from the party until they passed someone else lead and left group. Ah well. We tried to 4 man it but the DPS Warrior in the group thought it was cool to steal aggro from the tank (even going as far as to post in part chat every.. single.. time.. they did it).

My buddy Twyst helped dps on his Druid, Splendour, but after a few wipes we called it. I made out with the shoulders from Death Speaker and about 70% of a level. Not too shabby. It was better than questing I suppose.

15 more levels until Shadowform!

Shadow Word: Birth?

I guess that's kind of gross.. OK it's pretty friggin gross, but it's all I could think of on a moments notice.

Long story short, I have 4 70's across the Horde and Alliance on the Silvermoon-US server but I'm currently leveling and loving my Shadowpriest, Serpentina. This blog is going to be used during the course of her existance to record all of the misadventures of bad PuGs, leveling tips, gear info, spell rotations and that sort of boring crap you've come to know and read in every elses WoW blogs.

As my "info" section states, I've been playing and raiding in WoW since May of 2006. I have 2 70 Warlocks (1 Horde, 1 Alliance), a 70 Elemental Shaman and a 70 Moonkin. I luff teh castorez! I've always wanted a Shadowpriest but feeling that they were just a poor mans Warlock I never followed through with making one.

This is it, dammit! I'm determined (see; bored).

I quit my raiding guild on the Alliance side, started up a female Undead Shadowpriest on the Horde side, rejoined my old guild in The Unliving and I'm ready to level.. sort of.

So sit back and let me HEEL JOO WIFF SHADOW BLOG p0wERZ!!11one!1 *cough*

On a side note, just to avoid confusion, here is a list of my toons and my friends that will be mentioned. QUE MASSIVE WALL OF TEXT!

My Toons

Serpentina - Female Undead Priest. My current primary focus in WoW the 2nd Shadowpriest on my account. Currently a low level tailor with no second profession.

Abigore - Male Undead Warlock. My first 60 and 70 in WoW and who I spent most of my 2+ years playing. I retired him to play Alliance in November of 2007 and used him for PVP only for a short while in early 2008. Abi is a 375 Shadoweave Tailor and a 375 Herbalist.

Veresitha - Female Human Warlock. My first 70 on the Alliance side and also my first female toon. Vere is my highest geared toon at the moment and she was used to raid Kara, Gruul, ZA, SSC, TK & very little Hyjal until disbanding from Grand Theft Kodo due to personal reasons. Vere is a 375 Enchanter and 375 Shadoweave Tailor.

Mutoh - Male Draenei Shaman. Mutoh is my 2nd 70 on the Alliance side and is currently specced for Elemental although I do respec Resto from time to time when the guilds need me to. Mutoh is currently my farmer as a 375 Herbalist and 375 Miner, but sadly isn't used for much else at the moment.

Jandrae - Female Night Elf Druid. Jan is my 3rd 70 on the Alliance side and has always been (outside of 2 levels) Balance specced. I raided with her as a Moonkin in Total Dominance in ZA, SSC, Hyjal and BT before quitting in July of 2008. I currently use her to run Kara with Forsaken once a week and may use her to run ZA if they start up a solid group. She is a 375 Tribal Leatherworker and 375 Skinner. Jan is currently my favorite out of all of my WoW toons.

Adiar - Female Night Elf Warrior. Adiar was my 2nd Warrior on my account but my first Warrior, Aulbeth, was deleted once she caught up to him in level. Adiar is currently benched at level 64 and will most likely not move any time soon. I leveled her with an Enhancement Shaman friend of mine who stopped playing awhile back. Adiar is a low level Engineer and Blacksmith.

Telura - Female Night Elf Priest. Telura was the first Shadowpriest on my account but I stopped playing her at 35 to focus on leveling Jandrae. Sadly, once Jandrae hit 70 I never went back to playing her and she's still benched at 35. Since I've re-rolled as Horde and my main over there is a Shadowpriest, there is a large chance that I will not level her. Telura is a Tailor with no second profession.

Aulbeth - Male Blood Elf Mage. Male Human Mage. Male Troll Warrior. Yes, I have 3 Aulbeths (2 now that the Warrior is deleted). I really like the name but never stick with the toons associated with it. The Blood Elf Mage is on the Sisters of Elune RP server. The Human Mage is on Silvermoon with the rest of my toons and the Troll Warrior, as I mentioned before, was deleted at level 54 when Adiar caught up in levels.

Vahl - Male Blood Elf Paladin. Vahl was created when The Burning Crusade released so I could check out the Pally class. He was benched at level 34 when I re-rolled as Alliance in November last year and eventually deleted. I remade him as a Blood Elf Paladin again to eventually be a mine and herb farmer much like Mutoh is.

Mcrib - Male Gnome Warlock. Mcrib is my bank toon on the Alliance side. Nothing more, nothing less. He wears a Lovely Black Dress and a Monocle from the fishing daily. Also nothing more, nothing less.

My friends/in-game names you should know.

Natallia, Catalis, Darbley, Evissia - These are all of my wife's toons. Nat is her epicced to hell Mage that raids Black Temple and Hyjal with an end game guild, Endless. Cat is her Shadowpriest that I run Kara with weekly on my Moonkin. Darbley is her constantly harassed female Dwarf Huntard that is named after me (the letters are mixed around) and Evissia is her Undead Rogue on the Horde side. All are 70 except Darbley who is 66.

Drimak, Aletea, Janthis - Drim has been a friend of mine in WoW for most of my time here. He and his brother Call joined my wife and I in our re-rolling to the Alliance side and raided with us in Grand Theft Kodo. Drim is an Orc Warrior, Ale is a Draenei Huntard and Janthis is a Night Elf Drood. All are 70.

Beltravi - Drim's woman. Bel plays a Night Elf Rogue and runs Kara with us in Forsaken from time to time.

Callieta, Shimontka, Feerana - Drim's brother and another close friend of ours for most of our time played. We played together on the Horde side with his female Tauren Druid Callieta and he joined us on the Alliance side with his female Draenei Paladin Feerana. Call raided with us as both Holy and Protection in Grand Theft Kodo before re-rolling as a female Draenei DPS Warrior, Shimontka, which he raids Kara with us once a week in Forsaken. All are 70.

Twysted, Splendour, Juicewithice, Shasloe - I've known Twyst the longest of anyone in WoW. We met in a BFD pug while I was leveling Aulbeth (the Warrior) and have played together ever since. Twyst never rolled Alliance with us and we didn't communicate much during that time but since I've re-rolled as Horde with Serpentina I've been playing with his Druid Splendour a lot lately. Juice is his Prot Pally and Shasloe is his Orc Huntard. Twyst raids in Blood Pact of the Chosen and has downed Illidan. Cookies for Twyst.

Shadowslip, Kaelly, Nolees - Shadow played with us on the Horde side and re-rolled as Alliance with us last year as Kaelly, a female Draenei Priest. Shadow is known to play and then dissapear for months before returning back. Nolees is his female Night Elf Shadowpriest. Shadow is his Rogue.

Obscura, Nobumoto, Morthius, Lethargy, Gut - "nObs" is an Aussie player on the Horde side who played with my wife while she leveled her Rogue. nObs won everyone over with his antics on vent and his awesome accent that every Horde player listed here loves him. nObs is in The Unliving which is the same guild Splendour, Serpentina, Abigore, Maurvis and Evissia are in.

Maurvis, Paincakes, Slevin & Woffles - Maurvis is a RL friend of ours that started playing after we did. His girlfriend, Woffles, is my wife's RL best friend and plays a lowbie Draenei Hunter on our server. Maurvis played with us on the Horde side and raided with us in Mente Conceptus before the guild fell apart and he joined The Unliving. Slevin is his Rogue on a PVP server and Paincakes is his Draenei Warrior on Silvermoon.

Chikin, Tullia, Kaltesblut - Chikin is a RL friend of ours that got us in to WoW. She played with us in Mente Conceptus but didn't follow us when we re-rolled as Alliance. Tullia is her Shadowpriest and Kal is her Mage.

Ashrah, Velkan, Sindel, Devastator - Ash is a friend of Nat's that we raid Kara with in Forsaken and she raids with in Endless. Ash used to raid in Grand Theft Kodo with us. Ash is his Mage, Velkan is his Rogue, Sindel is his Huntard and Dev is his Warrior.

Munsond, Marathonman, Alterego, Hotplate, Monii - Munsond raided with us in Grand Theft Kodo and is the guild leader of Forsaken. He currently raids on Munsond with Endless along with Nat and Ash but leads Forsakens Kara runs once a week. Munsond is his Warrior, Mara is his Mage, Alter is his Priest, Hotplate is his Warlock and Monii is his Shaman. Also has a brother, Pinker, who no longer plays.

Guilds

Angus Assassins - The very first guild we ever joined. It was an "all Tauren" guild but since our RL friends were in they let us in. Eventually disbanded and led to the formation of Mente Conceptus.

Mente Conceptus - Formed by the group of us after AA disbanded. I was made guild leader until we re-rolled Alliance at which point I handed it over to Chikin. The guild still exists but all of my toons are in The Unliving.

The Unliving - An Aussie guild led by nObs and his friend Awrath. I didn't have anywhere else to go when I came back to the Horde and didn't want to sit around in a desolate Mente Conceptus so nObs tossed me an invite. I love the guild so far. Even though most of them are 70 and I don't "play" with them often, there is always someone online for some hilarious chatter.

Space Goats - When we re-rolled as Alliance, my wife funded the creation of Space Goats. We were an "all Draenei" guild, hence the name Space Goats, but eventually used the guild as a permanent home for Kara raiders. I got tired of leading horrible Kara groups and joined Grand Theft Kodo.

Grand Theft Kodo - After my wife, Drim, Call and myself left Space Goats we joined up with GTK to raid. We joined during their "rebuilding" phase as a lot of their key players had left. I'm split with my liking of GTK as they had some good raiders and are doing pretty stellar in BT progress at the moment but sometimes their leadership comes in to question. I eventually left due to personal issues that came up when my wife decided to leave and join Endless.

Total Dominance - After leaving GTK, TD posted in trade that they were looking for a Moonkin to raid BT/Hyjal. Mine was Kara geared at best but they let me in and I raided with them about 2 months before calling it quits. They were a late night raiding guild and their hours just didn't match my play times. I was getting 1-2 hours of sleep during raid nights before going to work and decided that work was a higher priority (I R SMERT!). Left and joined Forsaken with the rest of my alts.

Forsaken - Forsaken is a guild that was led by Munsond before he joined Grand Theft Kodo and eventually left to join Endless. Ash was also in Forsaken prior to joining GTK. When we all /gquit this is where all of our alts went, including Shimontka, Janthis and Fubaryou (who has since passed away IRL on June 21, 2008). We currently run Kara once a week with a pretty solid group but nothing more.

Endless - Endless is an end-game raiding guild that my wife, Ashrah and Munsond joined after leaving GTK. I have no association with them outside of knowing people in the guild.