It's a kind of magic

A kind of mage-ic indeed ! I thought I would have an enormous pain to grab my 70 mage and spec it to play. Last time I tried, I was fire, but solo playing was using too much mana and I had no fun. I never did, and still refuse to play arcane. I think arcane mages are simply not fun, for those that want to play without much effort. All they do in raids is spam Arcane Explosion, Arcane Missiles, and that's about it. Blizzard should never allow easier specs to lap more difficult specs. Well, 4.0.1 arrived, and so last night I specced fire and went for the kill.

Oh My God !

I like it. I like it very much. Comparing with the rogue 78, where I barely can reach 2k dps, or my hunter which can only do those miseralble AoE shots, the mage 72 easily does +2.6k, amazing AoE, amazing crits and nukes. It's a whole different world, and much different from my frostmage leveling experience in TBC.
My firelord goes in with the Living Bomb opener, spread on each mob, followed by Flame Strike and Blastwave to avoid sudden visitors. There are triggered abilities, Fire Blast and a brutal Pyroblast, plus Scorch to provide the +5%crit and the main Fireball ability for single target. Dragon's Breath if aggro goes wrong. And the funniest, a warlock-envy, the Combustion is now a periodic doubling damage spell. That's nine NINE fire damage abilities. Combine that with Mage Armor when needed and we have ~100% mana all the time. Couldn't be better. I'm consistently doing 40-50% of the overall damage.

So I guess I'll have all 10 level 80 classes by December 6th, with little effort.
Long live heirlooms.

Hunting for pleasure

After a long long time, I decided to pickup my hunter, now that my rogue is on track to 80 (77 atm), and out of rest time.

I must say I never liked hunters as pve. I had good fun with him as pvp in Alterac in the old dayz (Knight Captain rank) shooting from far far away in those long AV nights. But besides that, I never took him to raids or instances.

Well, this time I decided to give it a go. And surprise, it worked well. Being a ranged is so much easier than meleeing as rogue, the target is clearly seen, aggroing gives us enough time for threat dropping or trapping, and with a clever BM spec I built (later on I checked that it's the pve spec most BM hunters are using, as expected since with 31 points per tree, there's not much difference, everyone specs the same...).

Well, my good old dwarf is now 73 and kicking ass, although tanks and DK's are very difficult to race dpswise.

I know most non-old-school hunters are whining all the time because they lost the Volley ability, and now have to rely on Multi-shot to AoE, loosing to all those DK, mages, etc that have multiple AoE abilities. Oh well, I say, learn to use Exlosive traps in conjunction with Multi-shots, and you get double AoE again, and with no focus loss. Ofc it's easier than setting an AoE point and just channel, like it was done with Volley. But then again, it was too easy, just like Rain of Fire is too easy for locks or Blizzard for mages.

Talking about mages, Patalogica is now the only class I'm having second, third, multiple thoughts to restart leveling (stuck at 71). Oh dear, am I really gonna do it ? Get a power leveler to do it... free of course. May be I can convince a neighbour teen to do it ! I'll pay in cheeseburgers !

Zang Tuum Tumb

How does a rogue work ? Just like that, zang tuum tumb, mob dead. After so much time, and since I've got nothing else to do, I restarted leveling my beloved rogyie from 73 up, in dungeons (where else?). My combat spec seems to work, although I miss AoE with no cooldowns. Still, Slash and Dash, Blade Furry, and Killing Spree are great stackers.

Oh well, tomorrow we have the 4.0 patch and I'll be able to check the new tanking specs for pala, druid, warrior and specially DK !

Boredom and gquit

In the last week, I started farming some Primal Lifes for the Darkmoon reputation also did some PUG battlegrounds, but quickly got bored. My boredom increased when I looked at the guild activity and logs and concluded nearly everyone is leaving or not showing up until Cataclysm.

So... what the hell am I doing in an empty guild, with nothing to do ?

I got Moonprince in to keep checking things and /gquit until Cataclysm.

Now at least I can join some place where I can talk to someone or listen to funny or idiot comments in chat.

I thought about joining a PVE guild, since I am so good geared and I didnt even had the chance to use my 6.1GS and do something with it (and still need LK25 and RS10). Problem is... I can't stand ICC anymore (neither can the wife, although I could join a day-raiding or after-hours raiding guild) and RS10 is not exactly a *must do*.

So now I'm looking for a PVP guild. I found two recruiting, just need to think a little which one to go to. Arena season is finished, new talents are coming, so probably in a few days everyone will want to test those in battlegrounds. So do I, I will again pwn in Demo mode !

In the meantime, I'm switching to LOTRO and DDO, where there are guildies online.

The good the bad and the worst

Yesterday I repeated the Ulduar 25 achievement run, this time focused on undyings toward "Champion of Ulduar" and more achievements. The good part is that I got 100 points more, plus the bonus of killing Algalon, the hard mode optional boss and an extra Supermassive achievement. The bad part is that I stupidly died on Mimiron because I ran clockwise on the Laser Barrage instead of counterclockwise. The worst part is that because of this I will be excluded from further undying runs. Crap. This is the way hardcore works. You make one mistake, you're out, even if you'be been running with this team for weeks in Naxx, EoE, Uld, Ony, always doing the right things and even watching the raid leader fucking up, like stepping on mines last week. Oh well, as we say in Portuguese, que se foda.

Now back to farming gold for my last Pristine Black Diamonds, I've turned exalted with the Steamwheedle cartel (no more Dire Maul for me) on time, as I had set the goal of 30 Sept. for that, but Shan'dralar still needs the last Librams delivered. Nearly insane (sort of, Darkmoon is far from over).