It has been a while since I made an entry here. I've been very busy at work and have not had a lot of motivation to play lately. And thus, no reason to write. But...let's see if I can summarize what has gone on in WoW since I last wrote.
Warlock LevelingI reached lvl 80 on my warlock last week. The last few levels seemed to take forever, until I realized it was because I wasn't playing more than an hour or two at a time, 2-3 days a week. It also was fairly difficult to find groups to run dungeons with. So most of my gear and xp was coming from quests.
One memorable dungeon run was in Violet Hold. It was with a really bad Prot Pally who couldn't (1) keep aggro, (2) react quickly enough to the opening of portals, (3) use Consecrate. A shadow priest and I were having a real hard time, constantly drawing aggro. We would hold off dpsing for longer than normal, allowing the "tank" extra time to gain aggro. But it didn't work. Bad PuGs are a dime a dozen. But what made this one special was that at one point we were about to wipe and I was the last one standing. The mob was coming after me. I was an inch from death when Haunt flew back at me, healing me for just enough to stay alive. All my dots on the mobs hit and it fell. Power to the warlocks!!!!! I scratched my imp's neck while the other ran back into the instance. We ended up wiping again and losing the whole thing, but I still hold that memory fondly.
The good thing about the extra questing to 80 was that I went further into the Icecrown quests than I have on any other toon. On my mage and priest, I hit 80 in Storm Peaks and/or early Ice Crown then went right to heroics and raiding. Since my warlock is guildless (or, I should say, he's my bank alt and sole member of his own guild), finding groups to do instances with has been hard -- as I noted above. So, I continued questing in Icecrown and found out there actually were dailies there! =)
Now, I've flown around Icecrown a zillion times on my priest, looking for ore. But, in all that time, I
never, ever, ever saw Onslaught Harbor. Imagine my surprise when I went to Death's Rise and picked up a quest that sent me to an area in the ocean. A whole new area!!! And the cloth drop rate there, astounding! So, I can say that everything happened for a reason. I needed a place to farm cloth and I needed to experience new content. I got both at the same time!
Speaking of farming cloth...I made a flying carpet! Tons o' fun! =) I remembered a friend of mine in my old guild showing me his when he first created it. I had wanted ever since to have my own. I was pleasantly surprise to see that my legs didn't dangle below it like my friend's legs did. I wonder if that's because I'm a gnome or if it's something they have changed at some point.
Oh...and that reminds me of a post I made in May about my
goals. Here's the portion for my warlock:
Warlock Level him to 80. -
Done Get into at least one raid. -
Done but not done. (see below) Get him to max Tailoring -
Almost -- 431 Make a carpet mount. -
DoneSo, I'm doing pretty well. I think the reason I initially said "max tailoring" was because I thought I couldn't make a carpet until reaching 450. I was happy to see I could make it at 420 or somewhere around there. I'll have to look at the tailoring recipes to see if maxing it is even worth it.
As for the goal of getting into at least one raid...well, I did get into a Naxx run, but I don't consider that goal officially met. I was farming cloth in Onslaught Harbor when I saw a message in LFG for a DPS to join an in-progress Naxx run. "Must know all fights". Well, if nothing else, I know all the fights in Naxx backwards and forwards. So, I got an invite. They were on Thaddius. We went to take down the first two mobs and wiped immediately because the left side pulled the mob too far from the charge. Clearly they had tried it a few times before I joined because after only that one wipe, they decided to go to Military. At Instructor we wiped a first time due to mistakes on the tanks' part. We tried again but wiped...I'm not sure why on that try. Then they chose to call it quits. So...I got into a raid, which theoretically satisfies that goal. But, it really wasn't a good enough experience for me to mark it off my list just yet.
Two interesting things came out of that run.
- I realized how spoiled I was on my priest and mage. My priest, just by virtue of being a healer, got into Naxx fairly easily and was able to perform well enough. When my mage hit 80 I made a point of getting +hit gear and was able to get into Naxx fairly quickly. Both had the benefit of being in a guild and having support from the members. My warlock, on the other hand, doesn't have enough hit yet to do raids. I barely did any damage while I was in Naxx. A completely different experience. I've been tempted to switch ownership of my bank guild to another toon so I can join a guild on my warlock. But, so far I've resisted that. I'm enjoying the challenge and perspective I'm getting from being guildless and friendless.
- While on Instructor another warlock in the group yelled at me to stop using Drain Soul. I was surprised. Instructor was at 3%; all of my dots were up; Shadow Embrace had two...um...charges or whatever that word is. Why not use Drain Soul? I whispered the warlock asking that, stating that it was doing 4x damage at that point. But he never responded. And...the raid was abandoned a few minutes later. I'll have to look into that. Perhaps Drain Soul is just not used by raiding warlocks? Or maybe just on Instructor because he has so many hit points or something? I hate not knowing the whys and wherefores of things like that.
First Ninja ExperienceOne more experience on my warlock. I saw, for the first time that I can remember, an evil ninja last night. It was an Heroic Nexus run. The lead was a very good tank. We sailed through it easily. On each of the drops he kept reminding everyone that he could DE. But he didn't overdo it by needing on them or anything. Then, when we got to the final boss, after the fight started he switched to Master Loot. We all missed it, of course, because it was lost in the chat screen. After the kill, he took everything and said, "That's why I'm an excellent tank. I f*ing steal sh*t. He left...with all of us just standing there saying "wtf".
Something tells me this wasn't the first ninja I have experienced. But, this was definitely memorable because it was so blatant. I logged and couldn't play for the rest of the night because I was so bothered by that.
Other stuff
I have played my other toons only a handful of times in the last month. The one time I played my priest recently I got the mount from the CoS timed run. That was fun!
