Grin and Bear Tank It

New Blog URL

2011-07-30T13:31:00.001-07:00

I have a new blog and it is at www.grinandbeartankit.com

I'll be deleting this blog at the end of the week. So if you have me linked you may want to update the URL on your blogroll. :D Thanks.

Enjoy!

Simple Advice: Dailies

2011-07-03T07:44:00.000-07:00

I’ve never been an in-game tycoon. I used to have to scrounge out enough money from my alts to buy my flasks for weekend raids in WOTLK. I did constant heroics and when you do that you end up making a small amount of money from it and I always was content with that being enough to get me by. I’d walk buy the mount vendor in Dalaran and see his sweet bear mount, then keep walking cause I knew I didn’t have the money for it and if I ever did I would feel like there were better things I could be spending my hard earned gold on.

Recently I was told by my good friend Kierphas that he was finding good ways to make money using his Alchemy/Blacksmithing/Mining/Jewelcrafting toons. Since I missed the first 7 months of cataclysm and have only have been playing it for 3 weeks total now, I only have Inscription and Herbalism maxed out. So I looked into what kind of things Inscriptionist’s have been doing to make money. Glyphs are a tricky market, and I don’t have time to take down my auctions and put them back up everytime someone undercuts me. So I have reduced myself to selling inks and so far it’s been pretty lucrative. So step 1, using my professions to gain revenue, complete.

The best advice he gave me though was the easiest. Do Dailies!

So I decided to set off doing the Tol Borad, Therazane, Fishing and Cooking dailies. I did them everyday I was back before I left for all of June. In that week or two that I did it, I came the conclusion he was right. I was making a lot of money, and although it was a little time consuming, money isn’t all I was gaining from the expenditure. I was gaining marks and reputation with Baradin’s Wardens in Tol Borad which I could later down the line use to buy some very cool items. Then in Therazane I was also gaining rep to exalted to buy shoulder enchants for my toons. Since Fishing is such a hassle to level up normally, I was gaining one (at the least) skill level in it everyday. And of course with the cooking daily I was getting marks to continue buying recipes I could definitely use later. I guess you all probably knew all that, but it’s more fun to write it out anyways. I was basically doing something that gained me revenue and had other incentives later down the line also.

So let me just say, as someone that casually did the argent tournament dailies and only ever became the champion of ONE race. I’m really excited for the new phased dailies in patch 4.2. I got back from my month long underway the day 4.2 hit, and the first thing I did was go out to Hyjal with Nashette and started the Thrall/Go’el quest line.

Before I finish my thought’s on the dailies, let me just chime in on that quest line real fast. It was definitely a pretty epic feeling quest line. All those important figures and me in one place made me really feel part of the overall story. Something that I think gets lost in the monotony sometimes. We aren’t just killing trash mobs repeatedly to get to bosses because it will make our characters better. We do it because there actually IS a story to it all if you take the time to read the quest text and the words that the NPCs in the world around you are saying as you go. So off to release Thrall I went. After the first port when I saw the 0/100 meter on my screen I got a little discouraged. That’s a lot of mobs to kill. Well I was pleasantly surprised to find out that if I dropped a consecrate and got some damage on more than one mob but didn’t kill it personally I still got credit for the kill if someone else did, even if that someone else was on the opposite faction. That made it simple, do damage to mobs and help kill as many as you see and you get lots of credit for it. I can see this being annoying once the shine wears off the new dailies and there aren’t 100 people around doing the same quest as you. But right now if you do it, it’s pretty easy to do. So the last phase was in the Firelands and that’s the annoying one. I, as I’ve seen with quite a few others, was quite annoyed with the fact that people decided this was the perfect place for some world PVP. So as I was consecrating the mobs around the totems you have to “power up” I accidentally got flagged for PVP. Then it was over. Smack! Right in the face, I’m laying facedown in the dirt waiting five minutes for my flag to wear off. This happened twice to me. It was quite annoying when you are just trying to quest, not trying to get ganked by 10 people. Once I stopped doing AOE damage and my flag was gone, I was able to finish the quest. It may have been a bit slower than it could have been, but at least I was able to complete it. Too bad I didn’t get the chance to warn the people around me I kept watching get smacked into the ground. Once you free Thrall you are awarded with some pretty sweet swag. You get to pick between 4 ilevel 365 cloaks. This is a nice upgrade and stop gap til friendly with the Avengers of Hyjal for completing a very epic questline.

But, now it’s back to the phased dailies. Now that I’m actually doing dailies the idea of the Hyjal phased dailies is pretty exciting. All in all it will take me 5 days to get out of phase 1, putting me 2 days behind. If you don’t know, to fully unlock everything for the quest hubs will take 23 days total. The fact that it’s not ALL open right now and you have to work for it is one of the things that I think is really cool about this. It’s not just something you can pick up day one and be in the same place as someone that’s been doing it for a month. You have to work for the gear that they are offering. I know this type of thing has already happened once with the Argent Tournament, but I was on deployment when that was released so I never really got into it to begin with. The other exciting thing about it is the fact that once you get to a certain point, you get to choose which vendor you want to unlock and what gear you want to give yourself access to first. So open a vendor, buy new gear, spend a few more days questing to open up the next vendor. There are vendors to unlock so it will be nice to get to make a choice on what you want to do instead of it all being so linear like most things WoW related.

So with all the new functions and content available in patch 4.2, I’ve been really enjoying the new daily hubs. Then of course there is the new raid tier, new boss in Tol Borad, Dungeon Journal, etc. There’s plenty to talk about, but since I’ve not really got much interaction with those things yet, I’ll leave them for another blog. Maybe this weekend I’ll hit up some Firelands trash if I can find some time. But for now I’ll keep plugging away at those dailies and watching my net worth rise.

21st Centurty Digital Boy

2011-07-03T07:38:00.000-07:00

The difference from when I was a kid to myself as an adult, entertainment wise is astounding. When I was a kid, all I needed was my bike and a sunny day to be happy. I and my buddy Jeff would ride our bikes all around Gilbert just finding trouble to get into. And even when my bike got stolen, we were able to find something to do. I raised a pig for the state fair to sell to get money for another bike. Once that venture was through, it was back on my new Mongoose riding around building ramps, and jumping over things. Now I won’t lie and say we didn’t own a Nintendo, and then a Super Nintendo, then a Playstation, but those weren’t things that I really cared about until later in life. As I got older and out of high school, I started running out of time to do things like spend the whole day outside riding around on my bike. With college classes, 40 hours of work, and a girlfriend to boot, time became an inside thing rather than an outside thing.

I guess starting about sophomore year I was introduced to NEW and EXCITING things like AIM and Napster. So if I wasn’t out with my friends I was inside talking to them and downloading (not knowing it was illegal) music. The interest I gained from using the dial up internet my Dad had, led me to other interests I could pursue on the internet. My friend introduced me to e-fedding. E-fedding is an online way to run a wrestling federation. You create a wrestler and through writing roleplays against other people you win matches. So if you are able to write a better storyline against your opponent that week then you win. I started off with my own wrestler, and then it turned into me wanting to make my own federation. From there I learned how to write HTML code and use Photoshop to doctor images for the websites I was designing. As the internet progressed, my skills had to progress along with it and I started learning about RSS and PHP. Halfway through the eight to ten years I was e-fedding social media networks like Xanga and Myspace started up. So I started getting into those also along with the new addition of Xbox Live (Halo 2 online was my life for awhile). There was a lot of internet being put into my days when I wasn’t involved with offline interests.

So by summer 2006, I was connected to the web with high speed and there was no looking back. Then one day in August, http://www.blogger.com/img/blank.gifwhile at the Phoenix MEPS station, my internet interests took a sudden hit. I enlisted in the US Navy. Since I went to boot camp on September 11th 2006 (Patriotic I know), my interests have taken a backseat to my livelihood. Throughout my schooling (the first 18 months of my Navy career) I never had my own internet. So imagine being so engrossed in the internet and having the carpet ripped out from underneath you. There is only so much you can do in an hour at Starbucks, and really, why would I want to sit at Starbucks for the internet anyways. So I didn’t really do much internet time and substituted my time at my favorite local bar. My own personal “Cheers” helped me to pass the time with my friends and start to ween myself off the internet from where I had been earlier. So there I was about to go to my first ship, newly married, and finally moving off of the base.

When me and my wife got our first place, as you can imagine, internet was one of the things we both knew we needed to have. This wasn’t just for personal interests, because as you all know; internet helps out in many more ways than just passing the time. So finally I had my own fast internet again. And I started using it, as if it never had disappeared. I was back on Xbox Live, back to e-fedding, and starting to play WoW for the first time. Over the past 3 years, internet became a big part of my days again. Now don’t get me wrong, I’m not saying I can’t be satisfied off the internet, but I enjoy being able to look up any information I need with a few clicks. So having my own fast internet is something I don’t see changing for a long time.

The reason I decided to write this though is the problems I have when I’m underway. When my ship leaves the pier, we, by all intensive purposes, have no internet. I went underway for all of June up to Alaska for some Navy business. In that time, we were given access to the internet from 6-10 every night (if you weren’t on watch, or sleeping for your night watch). If you were lucky enough to be awake and not on watch, then you got to use the internet. By internet, I mean the kind of internet your grandma still uses because she hasn’t upgraded from dialup yet. For one month underway, the only sites I visited were facebook (just to look since posting something always ‘broke’ the internet), the mobile espn site, and the mobile wow insider. Every once in awhile I’d try to check out my buddy’s blog (thebigbearbutt.com) but only if I was lucky would it actually load.

So basically, all that got me thinking. I’m living in the year 2011. We aren’t quite on track with the flying cars, meals in pill form (although seeing some of the thinks my hardcore workout friends eat I might disagree), or the cure to cancer and HIV. But the central theme to achieving a lot of those lofty goals people set forth in old movies like Minority Report, Total Recall, and Fifth Element involve constant access to the internet and the peripheral equipment associated with it. Having it ripped away from you for long periods of time is kind of boring. I simply had my laptop with some video files on it to keep myself busy for a month. It definitely made me think about how much I enjoy using the internet. The seven month deployment right before this last month underway didn’t help the fact either that I had a month of internet before I left for another month. So yeah, this was just a blog to make you think about it. Sit and think about the last time you didn’t touch the internet for one month. If you have never done it, just imagine it. It’s pretty crazy; it’s a part of our daily routine we often forget about. I just find it interesting how far we’ve advanced in technology through the years. I didn’t even mention the fact that I didn’t have a smart phone for basically 9 months either. But that’s another blog for another time.

LFM AV Premade

2011-07-03T07:14:00.000-07:00

I recently hit level 60 on my worgen mage and decided it was time to take her into some battlegrounds for the first time. After all, I had heard that mages have a very high damage output and frost spec provided some very good survivability in PVP. So I took to her to Alterac Valley for my first person versus person on my mage. I was pleasantly surprised by the fact that I was in the top five of DPS for the battleground despite the fact that I was level sixty in a bracket filled with all levels from sixty to sixty nine. So being the lowest level allowed in the battleground and being in the top five of damage for a forty man team pleasantly surprised me. It also got me thinking.

I remember semi-fondly the leveling experience of my first character. I was playing on a PVP server. If you've ever played on a PVP server then you know that leveling in neutral zones can be quite annoying. You're running around killing bears and trying to find their ears, which for some reason not every bear drops ears for your quest, and BAM! You're laying on the ground dead getting ready to run back to your body. Why? Oh that's right, a level seventy Priest (Hutch*) with nothing better to do just ran up to you and just smited you into the ground. So you run back to your body, pop back up and BAM! He jumps out from behind a bush and drops you again. Inevitably, this is the way it goes in all “neutral” territories from level ten to seventy.

I am in remembrance of those days full of trial for the simple reason that it drove my desire to PVP to a new level. When I hit level seventy, all I wanted to do was build up a good set of PVP gear and head out into Azeroth to hunt down the bane of my leveling existence (Hutch*). Back in BC, for me and my friends there was only one thing we all gathered up the guild to do and that was hit Alterac Valley. So now to the part I've been thinking a lot about lately. I really miss doing premades.

If you aren't familiar with the term, an AV premade is a group of forty people (or less) forming a raid group and with the help of an add-on (av premade) all getting into the same Alterac Valley fight at the same time. The advantages of this are pretty obvious. You get a group of that size or magnitude into the same battleground with the same goals it's not hard to win a battleground. It's a lot easier to work together with a group working together than it is with a group thrown together. You cut down on the people that are just there to kill a horde player (or alliance player), loot their body, then turn in armor scraps for reputation over and over. Everyone knows where to run and what to do making it very hard to lose when you almost always end up going against a group filled with the people I just described.

I don't do a lot of Heroic dungeons since I started playing Cataclysm, so I usually find myself playing filling empty time doing battlegrounds. I love running into a wild gunfight finding the person in need of the most medicine and healing them back up to 100% while the person they are beating on watches in astonishment as the last of his hit points are taken from him. It's fun to me to find an unsuspecting target and blast him with a moonfire, root him, then start blasting him down. All that mixed with the strategy involved with Alterac Valley makes it one of my favorite places to constantly go to for my honor points.

Cataclysm coming offered the idea of rated battlegrounds, and to me that sounds like the closest thing I'm probably going to get to a premade at this point. I am also an avid raider. My guild also is filled with people that are avid raiders, problem is most of them aren't avid PVPers also. So I haven not yet stepped foot into a rated battleground. I hope to do it eventually, but I'm not sure I'm going to be able to get at least ten people together to do it right now.

I only write this to reminisce about the long hours I spent in premades back in BC. I started out playing PVP before I raided, and I probably always will PVP. I just hope that I can find a way to have as much fun doing it as I did back then. Did any of you participate in AV Premades? Maybe I'm only part of a small group that did this, even though I thought that it was pretty common.

*Hutch: Elocine and Kierphas can tell you all about him. He hung out in Hillsbrad Foothills terrorizing anyone that went through. He was well known to Horde on the Gurubashi server cause all he would do besides arenas and battlegrounds is hang out in Tarren Mill ganking lowbies.

What's in a name?

2011-05-28T08:04:00.000-07:00

Well as I sit here on this week long underway with nothing to do but stare at my laptop screen, I figured I'd write a blog about something that we all have and each have a different story for. Your probably wondering what I'm talking about but it's really simple, character names. I know a lot of the time I'll sit and create a character in a few minutes only to sit staring at the screen trying to think of what the name of that toon should be. Every character has a unique story to their name be it personal experiences or the random name generator. So here is a rundown of the names of my characters and where I got them.

Nashamire (Level 81 Balance Night Elf Druid)
This one is an easy one to explain. I grew up in Arizona and I'm a huge sports fan. Growing up in Gilbert I was always a big Suns fan. So when I first started playing wow this was the second toon that I created and I was lost on what to name him. So I decided to name him after the two best players on the Suns at the time, Steve Nash and A'mare Stoudamire. So I took Steve's last name and the back half of A'mare's name and created Nashamire. That's pretty much how that happened.

Nashette(Level 85 Holy Draenei Paladin)
Nashamire was my main for the whole time I played as a Horde so he was my first level 70 toon and my main in BC. But after all my friends kind of stopped playing WoW I decided to move to a different server to play with my friend Elocine and started Nashette. Well since Nashamire was my main and the toon I spent the most time on I decided to name my paladin in tribute to him. So the female version of Nashamire became Nash-ette. I'm sure this needs no explaining but you know how people add “ette” to things to make them feminine? That's basically what I did with her name.

Nashes (Level 46 Frost Worgen Mage)
I figured I'd move to this toon next even though she's my newest toon because her name also starts with my infamous “Nash” moniker. When I created my mage I figure I'd be playing her a lot and besides my death knight Jip, there was no other toons that I named anything other than Nash that I continued to play on a consistent basis. So I figured to avoid confusion in guild chat I would keep the Nash part on the name so people knew who the lowbie was piping in on everything. So I decided I'd figure out a way for Nash to fit in the name while still keeping with a mage theme. Well, even though I think of ice now, when I thought of mages I thought of fireballs. Out of fire comes ash. So I decided N-ashes would be a fitting name for a mage. And since I'm not going to list him in this list I also have a priest I named “Nashlight” because the plan was to make him a holy priest.

Jip (Level 80 Human Death Knight)
Well when I first heard about WOTK bringing a new hero class I was pretty intrigued. I thought that a new class would add a lot of new possibilities which was pretty exciting. The confusing part to me was the fact that these new Death Knights started at level 55. I thought it was going to cause a lot of problems with balance since more than likely every person with a main leveled to 80 would give a DK a try since there was only 25 levels to get through to have two capped toons. I thought it was a bit of a way to skip out on the meat and potatoes of the game which is all the leveling you do in all the areas of the game that the developers had spent some much time creating. I basically thought it was a Jip so that's where the name came from. He was my free ride to a third level 80. In essence, he was my Jip.

Argamatese/Leinadia (Level 54 Beast Mastery Draenei Hunter)
There are two names on this toon because this toon has incurred both a realm transfer AND a faction change. So she WAS a he before. I started playing wow on a trial account and the first toon I ever created was an Orc Hunter named Argamatese. Sounds like a strange name doesn't it? That's what all my friends said too after I started playing. It's a very simple name. I must have had pirates on the brain when I created him cause the name is just the phrase “Argh... maties” squished together and changed a bit to look like a name. Well after being on the shelf over on the Horde side for a long time after I moved over to the Alliance, I decided to move my oldest character over to my current server where he might get played more often. So after doing that I decided that what I wanted to do was make him a her and created Leinadia. I took inspiration for this toons name from Elocine my friend Nicole's toon. Elocine is basically her name backwards with an e on it. So I decided to turn my name backwards (Daniel) and add a few letters to make it look like it could be a girl name.

Manaspring/Hoth (Level 59 Elemental Goblin Shaman)
This toon was the first toon I ever created on the azuremyst server. I named him Manaspring after the shaman totem. That's nothing out of the ordinary but I did it in tribute to my friend Hess who always threw down that totem when I was new to wow because I was constantly going OOM on my boomkin since I was still trying to figure things out. So I named my Shaman after my lifesaving totem. After this last deployment I was really wanting to play a goblin so I decided I'd get back onto the Horde side a bit by faction transferring him over. And to my surprise I decided to type in the name of the famous Star Wars ice planet (Hoth) and the name wasn't taken. Sitting here thinking about it, Hoth might actually make more sense if it was the name of my Frost mage, but whatever. Haha.

So it would be cool to hear from my friends how they came up with their names and their meanings to them. It's always fun to reminisce. Maybe some comments are in order.

Guess Who's Back... Back Again.

2011-05-28T07:44:00.000-07:00

So here I am, then of another deployment and before I get to all the WoW related stuff I just want to say that deployment is probably one of the worst and, at times, best times of my life. Never did I ever imagine that I would get the chance to see the world like I have. Thailand was never a thought in my head. Hell, I had never even heard of some of the place I've been to, for example Bahrain. The people I've met in the Navy I will never forget and long after I'm done with the Navy we'll always be friends and have all the times on deployment to remember. The part that makes it the worst is the time away from my family and friends back home. I miss my wife and daughter daily, and most days it keeps me from being able to really enjoy myself. It was 7 months of water, and sometimes land. It reminds me of living in Arizona growing up, everything around us was desert and there was this thing called the ocean somewhere out there but I never saw it enough to actually believe it. That's how it is when you are in the water, there is land, or at least you've heard of it. But since you hardly ever see it, it starts to feel like it doesn't really exist. The good thing about being in today's Navy that makes things a lot easier is the fact that I have email and am able to talk to people off the ship whenever I want to instead of the way it was in the old days when they had to wait to get to port to use a pay phone or send out letters. In summation, deployment was another great time filled with lots of memories, but it was long and I'm definitely glad to be home with my wife and daughter.

So I'm back to my old ways, playing WoW whenever it is convenient and doesn't bother the wife too much. I spent a good seven months thinking about what the first thing I was going to do was when I started playing again. Well before I got back I got a tip from a friend that there was a small lack of raiding healers in the guild and that my odds of getting into a permanent raid would be a lot higher if I were to level my healer. So as was the case with Nashette, my Draenei Paladin, being my first level 80, she became my first level 85 toon.

So now I am a permanent part of team Snuffalupagus as a Holy Paladin healer and let me just say I'm very excited about this. Not only am I finally a part of an actual raid team, something I had been trying to get to happen all through WOTLK, but I am on a team with my good friends Mike (Kierphas), Stephen (Zanduran) and Andrew (Thereddeath). After all the pugging and alt runs I did in WOTLK it really feels good to be wanted on a team and be counted on as part of a team. Let's just hope I'm not too much of a letdown.

So now the main is out of the way. I've made my choice and holy paladin heals is the spec and class of choice. My new dilemma is what I want to be my next 85. I have Nashamire, my level 81 balance druid , whom I raided on as my main through WOTLK. Then I have Jip, my level 80 tank death knight. Seems like it would be logical to pick one of the two to go next on their way to 85, but I'm not actually sure either of them will become my second 85.

I have been playing a mage for the past week or so and have been loving it. I went from creation screen to level 46 in probably about 30 hours. With three pieces of heirloom gear adding 30% extra experience on top of the extra 10% I get from our guild level, the leveling experience is flying by. I still have a cloak to buy when I get the gold for it and that will add another 5%. My favorite toon to play has always been my boomkin, so the idea of playing another caster role has fit me pretty well. I forsee this toon hitting 85 with a quickness.

Then today I was checking out some articles on wow insider's blog and started reading about how Death Knight tanking was going in Cataclysm. It seems to me that it's got some pretty awesome new mechanics with all the healing and shielding you can do for yourself. I'm really wanting to get back and do some tanking now since I do enjoy filling that roll when I can. So now I'm really starting to think that I'd like to roll my DK the five levels it will take to cap. The only thing I know I'm going to really miss tanking on my DK is dual wield tanking. I'm gonna be sad to have to give up my two Lucky Old Sun's.

The next toon that has a chance to be the second 85 I level is my Druid. I had a lot of fun in WOTLK leveling him up http://www.blogger.com/img/blank.gifto 80 bear tanking. And then of course, being a boomkin, I ran heroics as a bear tank to get emblems to buy my upgrades for my boomkin set. It was a fun little setup I had going considering how much I enjoy both aspects of my druid. On a side note, thank goodness for dual specs. Problem is, since I've gotten back I really haven't been able to get back into my druid the way I was before I left on deployment. So for now Starcaller Nashamire will probably sit in fourth place, sad as it may be.

The last toon in the running but falling far behind is my level 59 goblin shaman. For those that don't know (so pretty much everyone but me, Kierphas, and Elocine) I started out playing as an Orc Hunter. So for all of BC I played a Horde toon. All the friends I joined WoW with basically stopped playing so I started a Alliance toon on my current server to play with Elocine and meet some new friends to hopefully keep me interested in the game. So after two and a half years of playing Alliance I decided I wanted to check out what Goblins were all about and get back to having a Horde toon. So I faction changed my Shaman over to the dark side. I played about five levels on him before I realized that I really wasn't into my Shaman the way I thought I would be when I got back. So he'll get to 85 eventually, but he'll probably be number five.

So here I am with a decision to make. The decision is pretty much mad up in my eyes, but I always like to hear from friends and find out what they think. After all, my Shaman and Mage I'm not particularly familiar with. So if you have any ideas on DK tanking, Mage DPS, Shaman speccing, or the mechanics of bear tanking in cataclysm, I'm up to hear them.

Rant: It IS a game, but it is also more.

2010-02-05T20:25:00.000-08:00

Bear with me (Pun intended) when you read the title of this post. World of Warcraft is a video game played on the computer to entertain the user. It goes along the lines of playing a first person shooter, RPG, Sports game or another other genre. It is a game that you turn on when are looking to be entertained for awhile and have fun with it.

The difference between WoW and most other video games is the fact that there is no "pause" button. The whole game is played in real time. If you sit in the spot where you just killed an elite mob and go make yourself a sandwich, the odds are that when you return you will be laying in a pile with the elite patrolling over your body laughing at you. As Hedwig and Matheo know, when a baby starts crying it's hard to explain to them that you can't come over there just yet because Skadi the Ruthless is spinning in your direction. In a lot of situations there are people depending on you hitting that 5 button one more time or the group will wipe. It's a team game that when in dungeons, raids, PVP, and group quests requires you to lean on other people and for them to lean on you.

So what are you getting at Nash? I'll tell you. It is a game made for entertainment but when played it should not be treated like Halo. It should not be treated like Mass Effect 2. You can't run around doing things in the game without thinking about how it would affect other people.

The reason I write this is because I recently tranferred my 44 Orc Hunter to the Azuremyst server and was shopping for a good Horde guild (GASP!). I finally found one, but not after the drama I created in the first small one I joined. One of the guild officers didn't think there was any problem with him leaving the guild he officered to go to another guild for the purpose of getting guild bank access in the other guild and ninjaing their GB then returning. He then started bragging about it in guild chat about how pissed off they were.

Well I proceeded to berate him for his actions and let him know that I couldn't believe he thought that that was ok. His answer to me, and the one he stuck to the whole time mind you, was that it was "just a game" and "it doesn't mean anything". This is the whole purpose of this post guys. It does "mean something" and it might be "just a game" but it's a game that people spend HOURS and HOURS a day playing and working hard to get the things that they put in the guild bank to help out their fellow guildies. So someone purposely ninjaing guild banks to get stuff for their own guild bank is rediculous.

You aren't going to NPC banks and taking their stuff. You aren't pickpocketing NPCs for some awesome loot. You are undermining the work of people that actually play the game with respect for the other players. I got the idea for this post from the recollection of a recent pug that Blackbear wrote about in his blog. Their was a DK in their totally disregarding the fact he had no idea who he was playing with. I think BB might have forgotten, but the last draw was the DK's use of the word "nigger" in party chat. If BB hadn't initiated the kick, I would have. You are being held accountable for what you say in game, and that is both offensive and bigotry at it's best.

So the point of this post is that yes, we are playing "game". But I tend to take seriously something that they make me pay for monthly. People get banned from WoW all the time for doing things that they think they can get away with cause it's just a game. So think about that all you loot ninja's and trade chat trolls when you start doing things that others in game would frown upon and just think to yourself...

It is a game, but it is also more.

You Be The Judge: Pure Stam > Mixed Stats?

2010-02-05T19:46:00.000-08:00

So I recently ran VoA and got a nice Tier 7 chest piece. As you all know, I recently hit 80 so this is a welcome addition. The problem is, I'm not sure that putting gems into it and wearing it is better than the crafted item I currently have on my chest.

Now check this out. I currently have...
Polar Vest with
Solid Sky Saphire for my Blue Slot
Shifting Twilight Opal for my Red Slot
Vivid Forest Emerald for my Yellow Slot

That is a total of +229 Stamina (Roughly 2.2k HP), +8 Agility, +8 Hit Rating and +115 Frost Resistance.

The Tier 7 chest that I got is Heroes' Dreamwalker Raiment. If I fill it with Shifting Twilight Opal for my Red Slot and Vivid Forest Emerald for my Yellow Slot, that will give me +114 Stamina (Roughly 1.1k HP), +82 Agility, +8 Hit Rating, +54 Critical Strike Rating, +35 Expertise Rating, +132 Attack Power.

As you can see, that stamina is huge for the Polar Vest but there isn't much to it. With the Tier 7 chest there is a drop off in stam but a huge boost to a lot of other stats. So which would you chose? I could use an opinion. I am new to the whole feral tanking scene so if this seems obvious to you, please share your thoughts.

And for those that are wondering, I was able to purchase my Malfurion's Handgrips of Conquest this week. Now the only gear I have that needs to become "epik lewtz" are my neck, head, wrist and one trinket. So moving right along...

Bear Gear: Update

2010-01-30T14:48:00.000-08:00

Well, the last post I made about gear was my wish list. A lot has happened since then. So here is a little update to what I have gotten since then, and where it came from.

So the day after I posted my wishlist I had three craftable items on my list that I immediatly went home and bought the mats to to bolster my gear level and get things moving a little faster. They were as follows.

Polar Vest
Durable Nerubhide Cape
Titanium Earthguard Ring

I wasn't able to get the Ring crafted by anyone in Band of Misfits because no one was online at the time with the recipe. But a big thanks to Asarune for crafting me the Chest and Cloak. I appreciate it a lot.

So the runs then began to get gear from the instances and to collect emblems along the way. After six runs, one in which the trinket in question dropped but I lost the roll to my buddy Kochanski, I finally was able to pick up The Black Heart. The leather hands that I want from there never dropped but I got tired of it after six straight runs and decided to move on.

So after those normal runs, and their lack of emblems, I headed over to the new ICC 5 mans. With all the gear I had acquired up to the start of Forge of Souls, it wasn't too hard to tank them on normal. Me and some of the guys from Band of Misfits made our way through Forge of Souls and unlocked Pit of Saron for me. I then proceeded to run Pit of Saron about 5 or 6 times and the ring I was trying to get from Garfrost never dropped. I was able to pick up Garfrost's Two-Ton Hammer which was an upgrade from the staff I had from leveling in Gundrak.

Yesterday was also a very good day for my bear tanking gear status. I was able to get into a guild run of the weekly raid. We downed the first two bosses and I was able to pick up a Signet of the Earthshaker from XT-002 Deconstructor. After I turned in the weekly raid quest and got all my emblems, I then jumped into a 25-man ToC group with the guild and was able to pick up Drape of the Untamed Predator. So a pretty good haul for the day right?

Well, before I logged I decide to look at some emblem gear since I had a good chunk of emblems built up. So I decided to turn some Emblems of Triumph into Emblems of Conquest and drop them on Idol of the Corruptor which then earned me the achievement Superior. So all in all, yesterday was a very good day.

Next up on the list, earning Malfurion's Handgrips of Conquest from emblems while trying to find a good leather wrist item.

Til the next installment... you stay classy.

What if: Landro Longshot's Casino and Strip Club

2010-01-30T13:26:00.000-08:00

I'm big on making weekly blog posts, cause it makes me actually write something even when I don't know what I want to write about. For example, I'm going to start a new weekly article called "What if". I think you can just take a wild guess and know what it is. These are the "What ifs" I think of in the world of warcraft and decide to share with everyone else.

So let's just drop the "and strip club" part of the title of this post, because let's be honest, that will never happen. Don't get me wrong either, I don't want to see that on my screen anyways, I just thought it made for a good name to this facility. If you don't know Landro, he is the vendor that gives you all the free stuff from the wowtcg loot cards. He is a very sleezy looking dude, and thus I picked him to be the one opening this casino I am proposing.

So why would we open a casino in-game. Well the first reason I'll give is... why not? Think about it. The RPG "Fable" and "Fable 2" has a few pub games in it that are so popular they have become their own separate game sold on XBOX Live. In the actual game "Fable" you can bet your in-game money on the games and make a profit or take a huge loss. It's a risk system with rewards and devastating let-downs. I'm sure it would take some working to come up with a way to do it, but I don't think it's entirely impossible.

Second reason I would give to make this is a reality is that some WoW players (like myself) are not that adept at making money in the wow economy. Now on the flip side, I can play a mean poker or blackjack game. So if I can use my skills in that in game to 'risk' the money I've earned in game to make more money it would be very helpful. That way I would not have to use my lack of economic knowledge to earn ALL my money but there would be a good secondary option for me to try.

What do you guys think? I think it would be alot of fun. If I don't have time to do dungeons, dailies, or raids, I would be able to get a few games of lets say blackjack for the twenty minutes I have before the baby wakes up and all hell breaks loose. And if it did happen, this would be the perfect way to add an iphone app that integrates into World of Warcraft. You could play the wow casino games on your phone by logging into your account and playing with your toons money. Now I dont' have an iphone anymore but I'm sure everyone that owns one would definitely not be opposed to this.

So yeah, anyways, what do you guys think of the idea?

Fresh Bear Tank Wish List

2010-01-24T09:50:00.000-08:00

So now that I'm at lvl 80, I thought I should set some goals in terms of gear that I would like to try and get pretty fast to be ready to do anything the guild might ask me to do, or more likely me ask the guild if I can do. :)

Here is a list of items that I have already secured to start off.
Duskstalker Shoulderpads
Polar Boots with Eternal Belt Buckle
Trollwoven Girdle

Thanks to Matheo for crafting me the Polar Belt and Trollwoven Girdle. And thank you to Blackbear for crafting me an Eternal Belt Buckle.

And here is the list of items I'd like to shore up for all my other slots along with how you get them.

Head
Mask of Distant Memory (Drops from The Black Night in Heroic Trial of the Champion)
Arcanum of the Stalwart Protector (Argent Crusade: Revered with Nashette)

Shoulders
Greater Inscription of the Pinnacle (Sons of Hodir: Exalted)

Cloak
Durable Nerubhide Cape (Leatherworking crafted BoE)
or
Eerie Runeblade Polisher (Drops from Falric in Normal Halls of Reflection)

Chest
Knightbane Carapace (Leatherworking crafted BoE from a recipe drop in Trials raid)
or
Polar Vest (Leatherworking crafted BoE)

Wrist
Gloves of the Argent Fanatic (Drops from either 2nd boss in Regular Trial of the Champion)

Leggings
Gored Hide Legguards (Drops from Gal’darah in Heroic Gundrak)

Rings
Titanium Earthguard Ring (BoE crafted, Jewelcrafting)
Ring of Carnelian and Bone (Drops from Forgemaster Garfrost in Regular Pit of Saron)

Necklace
Chained Military Gorget (25 Emblems of Heroism)

Trinkets
The Black Heart (Drops from The Black Knight in Regular Trial of the Champion)
Essence of Gossamer (Drops from Hadronox in Heroic Azjol-Nerub)

Weapon
Staff of Trickery (Drops from Cyanigosa in Heroic Violet Hold)

Idol
Idol of the Corruptor (Bought with Emblems of Conquest)

What I need to do it (Runs & Emblems):
Normal:
Trial of the Champion (2nd Bosses & the Black Knight)
Pit of Saron (Forgemaster Garfrost)
Halls of Reflection (Falric)
Heroic:
Violet Hold (Cyanigosa)
Anjol-Nerub (Hadronox)
Gundrak (Gal'darah)
Trial of the Champion (The Black Knight)
Emblems:
25 Emblems of Heroism
19 Emblems of Conquest

Introductions

2010-01-24T09:25:00.000-08:00

So after a year or so off from playing my druid, I finally got some good news while I was on deployment. You see, I had been wishing and hoping that someday they would allow faction changes because I leveled Nashamire to 70 and raided with him as a Horde Tauren Druid. Well after all my friends I joined WoW to play with stopped playing I decided to roll an Alliance Draenei Pally (Nashette) to play with another of my real life friends Elocine leaving Nashamire in the dust. I always hoped there would be a way that Nashamire was not "thrown by the wayside" but I didn't plan and go back and play with him on the Horde side when none of my friends were around.

Well much to my surprise and excitement, I read while I was on deployment that they started offering faction changes. So I went online while in the middle of the ocean and tranferred servers with Nash, then after that went through faction changed him to the Alliance side. So there he was waiting for me to faction change him on the Azuremyst server when I got home.

So after a few months of messing around with alts, like I always seem to do, I leveled Nashamire to 80 slowly by learning to bear tank from 70-80. I almost strictly leveled from 70-80 in dungeons.What made this interesting was the fact that I was a Boomkin the whole time I was raiding at level 70. So the prospect of something new really renewed my interest in WoW in general. So yesterday, 01.23.2010, I finally got my first level 70 to be my second level 80 and my new main. What a journey it's been for Nashamire and I'm really excited for the things to come as I bear tank my way through Northrend.

I'll be keeping you updated on my thoughts of what I like and don't like about it, and general WoW thoughts as I go along. Hopefully you enjoy it, but if you don't then I guess it's all just for my amusement.

Regardless, here we go...