We went in there with a combination of two guilds (Fatalis and Avenging Warpath) and one or two pickup members, and took down Anub’Rekhan and Grand Widow Faerlina. Other than a few mistakes (like a bunch of the melee standing in the Locust Swarm despite 3 of us having DBM on broadcast, or a pants-on-head retarded rogue attacking the mobs in Faerlina’s room that need to be mind controlled to stop her from Frenzying), it went pretty well. No loot for me, though; it was tank loot night, apparently!

Guess I didn’t need to worry about my output too much. Only up from here… :) The first pic below here, is my Recount’s recording of the fight against Faerlina. Above me you have: hunter, hunter, mage, mage, hunter - in that order. #6, me, is where the melee starts.

As for this second one, I didn’t record it, and I’m not sure what it covers, but there it is.

Back in tonight to fight Maexxna and hopefully move on to plague wing, I believe. If you’re interested, we’re looking for a few good people. Some healers would be nice - priests and druids especially - but mostly we just need interested, reliable people. We’re very heavy on paladins and shamans as it is.

Oh yeah. I got me a big ol’ bottle of the good loot mojo at last! Ran Gundrak tonight to attempting to help a bear druid get some gear (and yet I was the only plate wearer, so - well - see below), then 25-man Archavon where some DK pants dropped but I lost the roll on them, then off to Nexus, VH, and I think that’s it. Well, tonight the loot gods smiled on me at last (except for those DK pants), and I ended up with the following.

DPS gear (main spec):

• Snake Den Spaulders

• Flame-Bathed Steel Girdle

• Rift Striders

Tank gear (off spec):

• Horn-Tipped Gauntlets

• Ground Tremor Helm

• Pauldrons of the Colossus (shield block’s not ideal, of course, but there you have it)

Sheesh. Busy night! I even got a BOE blue tank necklace that was like a slightly worse version of the one I have already. I don’t know what brought on this sudden infusion of loot mojo… but I pray it continues into tomorrow, when I’m supposed to go into Naxx for the first time. Eek!

Aces High! seems to confound a lot of people. I’m pretty sure the following isn’t good practice for Malygos, but this’ll get you through the quest. Repeat this mantra:

1, 1, 1, 1, 1, 5, 3

That’s it. Flame Spike x5, Flame Shield, Revivify. Repeat until dead. The dragons’ll take you a little bit longer to kill, but you can nearly do it without paying attention. You do still need to pay a little bit of attention, because if Arcane Surge comes while you’re still early in the Flame Spike routine, you need to skip ahead and activate Flame Shield anyway or you will die.

Oh, and if you run into two drakes, run away. Usually you only get one but occasionally two will aggro. You’ll find you can use your speed burst and revivify to speed to the middle of the nexus near the bottom; head back up once they de-aggro. Or, better yet, just pull the scalesworn elites away from the pack - you can in fact cast your mantra above while moving.

Dragons are awesome. Happy hunting!

Bre, that gun-loving heal-slinging dwarf chick, asks: what’s your unicorn? Unicorn, in this case, doesn’t literally refer to your one-horned mythical horse with a particular fondness for virgins, but rather that one piece of elusive loot that always gets away. For Bre, it’d be the Sonic Spear, and I can sympathize by proxy - I know plenty of other hunters who never got Murmur to give up the goods. As for me? Hmm. For the most part, in TBC the answer was “any loot at all,” but my specific unicorn…

Well, I had two. Twin unicorns? I tried, tried, and tried again to get the Hex-Shrunken Head and Amani Divining Staff time and time again. The Hex-Shrunken Head only dropped once, and one of our shadow priests beat me by 1 on a roll for it… grr. As for the divining staff? Well, let me just sum up our loot mojo like this: we had six Tuskbreakers in a row. Six. SIX. SIX FREAKIN’ TUSKBREAKERS. We don’t even have six actively-raiding gun users! The last week we ran Zul’aman? Rage.

The last week we ran Zul’aman, though, I guess the game was feeling sorry for me: it finally let me replace my crappy main-hand non-heroic dungeon blue with Wub’s Cursed Hexblade. When I finally get around to leveling Queklain, that’s what he’ll be swinging into Wrath with.

So what’s your unicorn?

I’ll be updating the theme here, and it’ll probably take me a couple hours because I’m an incessant fiddler, so those of you actually visiting the site itself will probably find things broken.

Those of you on RSS: carry on as usual.

An alternate title for this post would probably be “why I never want to see Silithus again but now have to spend a few more hours of my life there.” See that Professional Master achievement I got there? Yeah, that’s for mining, now at 300/375. I only stopped to go get the Master Mining because apparently I can still possibly get skill points from ooze-covered rich thorium nodes.

My blacksmithing lags behind, at 277. Oh, sure, I could go pick up Master Blacksmithing too, but there’s really no point: none of the Outland blacksmithing plans are available until 300, so it’s a few more hours of running around Silithus. Silithus really is my new favorite place, especially when compared to my old favorite (Winterspring, which was remarkably devoid of nodes the last two nights) and my old old favorite (Burning Steppes). Three major “sets” of locations, usually 2-3 nodes per location, 4-5 ores per node? Yes, please! Sign me up. And if it means slaughtering the occasional bug, so much the better.

It’s been a thoroughly un-WoW weekend. Yes, I ran in circles mining and making blacksmithing stuff. I also stopped at one point to run Blackrock Depths by myself, which was quite a feat on my netbook (I was playing on my Acer Aspire One while watching the Colts game). For bonus points, if you’re soloing BRD: don’t kill anything in the room with Emperor Thaurissan before attacking him. It’s fun, I promise! And hey, I came out of it with a piece of gear I can actually use. Shut up, shirts are gear.

Sadly, I have no new information for aspiring Death Knights today. I did do one bit of experimenting lately: I tried out Skeleton Jack’s dual-wield build. For the first few minutes, it was mostly me bringing up my sword skill, and after that… well, I wasn’t terribly impressed. Me plus a ghoul with that build, puts out less than me by myself in my currently 17/54/0 build. I changed back after an instance run or two. #1? I don’t think so. Maybe once Howling Blast comes off cooldown and is truly spammable when you have the ability to use it. Of course, there’s rumors Blizz might nerf the thing anyway, as they don’t want dual wield to dominate for Death Knights; part of me wonders if they’re regretting making that an option now. :) One benefit of dual-wielding, though: if both weapons have Rune of the Fallen Crusader on them, the effect of it is up all the time. Of course, it feels like it’s up on every fight now, so who knows.

I did log on several of my alts, fix their UIs, and mess with their spec a bit, then I played them to make sure they’re playable. Valmafra (née Eladhon) is now Survival-spec, which I’m not sure is ideal for leveling but is definitely where I want to take her eventually… so far, it works exactly like a BM Hunter without Bestial Wrath, which honestly I never used all that much anyway. Thunderfist the Gorilla still holds aggro while I shoot things, so that’s that. I do feel a touch more mana-efficient. I suspect things’ll speed up a bit once I get Steady Shot.

Xajek went Disc/Holy to Shadow, which I figured was appropriate since he was no longer following a hunter around, and… holy crap. I do not have the first clue how to play a shadow priest. I just kind of flail mindlessly at the Mind Flay, Vampiric Embrace, Shadow Word: Pain, and Mind Blast buttons until things die. Occasionally I remember that I can cast Power Word: Shield in Shadowform and do that too. My mana constantly hovers at about 50%, and my health… well, my health constantly hovers at about 100%. I need to find some good guides on shadowpriesting, if only so I can get Xajek some more levels. Eventually he’ll be healy!

I have this sneaking suspicion that part of my wants to heal: I’ve now started (and gotten to the mid-40s, at highest) a priest, a shaman, and a druid all with the intention to make them resto or holy, as appropriate, at the highest level. If I find myself starting a paladin too, then I’ll just conclude that apparently I’d like to make the health bars go right, too. :)

Happy new year to you all. What’ve you been up to lately?

Kudos to you if you caught the link/picture combination-joke in there. Falcon PUNCH!

It’s been a busy couple nights since I got back. My loot mojo has been off mightily; while I’ve managed to get none of the items I actually want to get (and with the latter, I’m thinking it’s because it doesn’t drop on heroic at all), I have managed to pick up a number of off-spec tanking-oriented items (actually, I lost a roll for the bindings, and I think I may have auctioned the cape, but I digress). At this rate I’m going to be defense-capped (on a spec I don’t use) well before I ever step into a raid (where I am not a tank).

Someone give me back my loot mojo!

At least I’ve gotten some other things done. Hit revered with the Knights of the Ebon Blade, so I can now apply their snazzy head enchant to any helmets I happen to get tossed my way… now to try and hit exalted to get the boots. Only a few more heroics, I suppose, so maybe by the end of the week.

We did On the Rocks on a whim last night, and I can safely say to anyone thinking of trying it: as long as your healer isn’t stupid, you can do it. We killed Keleseth fast enough that he only laid down two Ice Tombs; the first was me (and I had popped Icebound Fortitude just in case…), while the second was the healer (at which point both of the death knights in the party popped Army of the Dead to take some of the heat off the tank). That sucker never saw what was coming to him.

I was also out in Shadowmoon Valley a bit last night; I started my Netherwing dailies (a set that I never got to do on Queklain… yet), I raised two weapon skills to 400 (two-handed swords and the aforementioned vaguely-referenced unarmed, which, yes, I only did for the achievement and the other achievement), and - this is the one I’m proud of - soloed Battle of the Crimson Watch. It was actually pretty easy, as long as I

• didn’t panic

• bandaged between the second and third fight

• didn’t let the third round’s mobs get behind me

• remembered that I have time to eat back to full health before the last enemy

• popped every defensive cooldown I have on the final boss

• replaced Obliterates with Death Strikes in my rotation on the final boss, because even though he’s level 72 he hits like a truck

A’dal gave me a Green Trophy Tabard of the Illidari, which I replaced with the purple one. If you’re looking to do the same thing, destroy yours (honest, this is how it works!) then go to any tabard vendor (at least in the major old-world cities; your mileage may vary elsewhere) and they should offer conversation options to replace your trophy tabard of the Illidari.

Oh, and last but not least, I started a widdle bitty baby druid. My cousin has recently decided to roll on Feathermoon, and since she doesn’t have a Horde character to transfer over, she’s rolled up a new tauren shaman - so I said I’d roll a tauren druid to keep her company, and I did! Nearly to level 10, so he’ll probably get a link soon in my armory links. I have to admit I’m having a lot of fun, even at level 9 - I haven’t played a druid since back when I was an utterly clueless nubcake, and WoW was actually hard. But… that’s a story for another post, right?

From Icecrown with love.

TSF is back on the airwaves, and spending most of tonight knocking out Winter Veil achievements.

I’m taking a short break here for the holidays. It’s been an eventful year so far, and I’m going to be spending a great big chunk of what’s left of it visiting with family. Unfortunately, this means no WoW, which probably means no blogging for me unless I think of something really, really interesting to write about while I’m gone. (Don’t hold your breath.) So be good little Alliance and Horde, and be sure and open your presents when Greatfather Winter lets you do so.

So long, folks! The Stoppable Force will return on the 30th of December.

It’s been a long time… okay, not that long. So what’ve I been doing? Well, I installed a little widget on my blog that shows my five most recent achievements, so you can keep track of those, at least!

Obviously, Zulfon dinged 80, as the previous post indicated. I ran an instance and was feeling sort of underwhelmed with her damage, plus I really didn’t feel like trying to do pet management on a class where keeping track of the pet is problematic at times (both for me and for the UI, apparently - there were a number of times where I showed up as the ghoul’s pet, or one or both of us wouldn’t show up at all, etc.) so I decided to go back to the spec I’d started with, Frost (17/54/0). Much better. I’m keeping pace with much better geared melee DPS, and even hanging with some BM hunters.

I’ve started running more heroics to get gear and badges, and started leveling mining and blacksmithing again. Both are in a respectable mid-200 range, and Zulfon’s technically a Master Axesmith. I was a little disappointed; I know there used to be a quest to get it, or so I thought, but now the NPC just teaches it to you (and in fact says you formerly had it…). Oh well. Disappointment aside, tradeskills are well on their way.

And as for the Feast of Winter Veil? Working on it! I helped feed Great-father Winter, and have the quests to go rescue Metzen and recover the stolen treats. Power-leveling cooking and unlocking Ogri’la are on my to-do list, as well!