ICC 10 HC Sindragosa is no more

Today I joined my new guild, and a bunch of other warlocks, to kill Sindra HC.
We wiped a few times, courtesy of dc's, a few innocent mistakes, and rng.


But then, it all came together, and down she went, Sindra 10 in Heroic Mode.

That's all folks !

A couple of hours today in BG's and in instances, and the deed is done, my last two toons are now 80.

That makes it 10, one of each class, slowly leveled up to 80, during WOTLK, and having fun doing it.

I hope I will have more fun (and less hours wiping) in Cataclysm.

Shattering: The plus and the minus

A happy day and a sad day, today.

It's a happy day because I think.. I think I may have found a guild for me in Cata, to raid during the day. We raided today in a half guild half pug-mode, and we did Ruby Sanctum 10 (another reason to be happy) and Lich King 10. That's already a plus, because as I wrote before, I was stuck without RS10 as Arcadia downed it the week I was on holidays and we didn't go back in again. There's another countryman in the guild, which is a bonus. We'll have to see how it goes the next few weeks.

It's a happy day because there will be new graphic contents to see. New places to visit.

It's a sad day because the old World of Warcraft as we know it, will die tonight. Zul'Gurub, the most beautiful instance and the first one most raiders played, me included, 5 years ago, will die with it. Also with it, will die my hope of getting the Thekal tiger. Tomorrow we will have things like some weird tracks in Azshara, a fissure in the Barrens, and a new threat to deal with. I hope it's not too childish, /train style, I'm fed up with crap like that.

It's a sad day because the AQ40 chain quest will be partly disabled or changed.

It's a sad day because most decent persons I met during my ride have scattered through different servers, different guilds, and again and again I have to build a reputation with a new team, as I explore a scattered world.

In the last days I've been leveling up cooking to 350 for all my 10 chars. It's 100x easier this week with the Pilgrim cooking. The only annoying part is that cities are under attack all the time so the portals are intermitent. But tomorrow we won't have portals whatsoever, so I might as well finish it tonight !

Today, the 4xboss portals of the pre-Cata event were open, so I farmed a bit with my tanks for some free lvl 251 gear that may help me start tanking in Cata.



Entering in ICC again today reminded me how I am vomiting this place. I'm not sure I will enter it again. That was nearly 9 months, 3-5 times per week, 3.5 hours each time = over 500 hours inside ICC. That was *WAY* too much, now that I think of it. I remember Ripit leaving and /qguitting in the middle of a Sindra25... and I now understand how he felt. He couldn't simply be one more second inside that place. It was not polite what he did, but that's human behaviour.

My last two toons, Lonegrim and Patalogica are 77/78, and tomorrow we will have a reduction in the required XP, so I'll use it to my benefit and go up to 80 the next few days, and achieve what I did for TBC, ie, to level all 10 classes up to cap level.

So let's wait for the Shattering, and long live Deathwing !

Long live the King

During my slow and painful hunter road to 80, I decided to hunt rare pets.
Well, today I successfully tamed King Crush, the imba devilsaur from Sholazar Basin.
Next on the list are Loque Nahaq, Aotona and Gondria+Arcturis, the spectral spirits.
Come on Cataclys, let's get going...
I wonder if I should stack 4k justice points for my main while waiting.
My beloved Arcadia guild is now an undead guild, most ppl have left.. and DAMN!



As I'm writing this, I've spotted Gondria crawling in Zul'Drak, but the cat is lvl 77 and I'm 76 so.. guess what ? "Creature is too high level for you to tame."
Damn damn !

The End is Near

Azeroth will change soon. There are earthquakes all the time. In the last days elementals showed up raging all over the world. Not an elemental invasion like in previous days, but something is different.
A few quests showed up for players to act against doomsayers in Stormwind and Orgrimmar (and Goldshire and Razor Hill).

Meanwhile, I keep up on leveling my last 3 alts. Matadora finished today, a happy lvl 80. First I struggled a bit with dps with bad gear, but it's now kicking ass. Here are the last moments of leveling, courtesy of Youtube.

Check it out.

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 !