Bishamel has hit 18 and is paused there briefly while I do some other things. I’ll do a full update at 20. Suffice to say that prot paladinning is awesome, and holy crap does HoR do some serious damage at that level. I pull crap in the Ghostlands with it and it’s half dead almost immediately.

Mounts from Zul’Gurub

Valnoth confirmed yesterday that Zul’Gurub is gone as a raid instance in Cataclysm. This makes me sad – I love Zul’Gurub, and not just because of the mounts I can’t get to drop! – but if you want something from there, better get to farmin’. ZG’s lockout resets every 3 days, so you can be in there pretty often compared to other raids. Keep in mind it’s not just mounts – you’ll probably also want to get The Deadliest Catch by fishing up Gahz’ranka and Hero of the Zandalar Tribe by grinding to exalted with the Zandalar Tribe while you’re at it. (Full clears of Zul’Gurub – even ones where you don’t kill much of the trash – yield a few thousand rep. You’ll also want to kill trash for coins and bijous. Zandalar Tribe is super-easy to grind to exalted these days.)

So yeah, this is your last shot at the Swift Zulian Tiger (and its achievement) and the Swift Razzashi Raptor (also with an achievement). I ran a full solo clear last night. I’ve also decided to keep a small collection of Zul’Gurub weapons – so many of the items in there are absolutely awesome looking, and so many of the designs and models weren’t re-used (or were re-used in Outland).

Who’s ready to start farming?!

Builders League United

My guild, <Builders League United> (or BLU for short) has a few new people in it. It’s kind of comforting, having the general chatter of a small friendly guild again. If you’re interested in seeing what we’re about, and possibly raiding with a small-schedule 10-man Horde-side raiding guild in Cataclysm, I highly recommend checking our site, especially the BLU policies and "What is BLU?" pages. We totally have a bank tab and a tabard, just like those other guys in the Guild Recruitment channel.

Loopholes for silly pirates

So it turns out that those of us working on Insane in the Membrane and trying to grind up our goblin rep after sacrificing it in the name of pirate rep have a small loophole I just now got around to finding – we are not stuck solely freeing Knot Thimblejack or grinding on endless pirates and nomads. After some careful (fingers-crossed, bated breath) experimentation last night, I found that – barring the repeatable "reconciliation turn-in quests" that were made solely to raise goblin rep with one city and lower Bloodsail Buccaneer rep – it seems like as long as Booty Bay isn’t the primary rep recipient, you can safely do quests for Gadgetzan, Ratchet, and Everlook questgivers without lowering your pirate reputation (and earning spillover reputation with all the goblin cities, as well). The best part about this is that since I chose to get IitM on my death knight, he’s done basically none of the goblin quests scattered throughout old-world Azeroth. Time to see the sights before the sights go away, and work on my title!

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Mounts, loopholes, BLU, and a CYOA update

Which puts me in a bit of a bind, since technically I’m still an officer member of a 25-man raiding guild on the Alliance side on my Death Knight, but I can’t raid 25s because they’re on the weekend, I can’t really raid 10s for two more weeks because I’m going to be working basically until raid start time (and after that I’m going to want to fall over dead into bed, and the raids are a bit too late for that), and frankly the idea of logging in to throw myself at Arthas in 10s during the week kind of makes me want to not log in at all.

Hence why I put myself as tentative for the next two weeks of raids. I even feel bad about doing that; Caffeine has had a bit of a top-level shakeup lately, and I can’t help but feel I’m somewhat abandoning the new GM and other officers… but I can’t even bring myself to log in.

This weekend, for instance, I:

• went to a used bookstore (and bought $36 worth of paperbacks)
• played Persona 3 Portable, Dragon Quest IX, and Team Fortress 2
• watched Warehouse 13 (thank God it’s back)
• thought about logging into WoW, then didn’t

I didn’t really get that end-of-expansion burnout thing at the end of TBC, but by God, I’m feeling it now.

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A touch of burnout

Phase 1: Got this down to a science by the end of the night.

Transition Phase 1: Also went well. Watching people get flung off by Ice Spheres during one of our wipes cracked me up, though.

Phase 2: Well, we’ve got the next few weeks to work on this. Our raid lockout is being extended until the Lich King is dead. Don’t expect much interesting out of me in the meantime.

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Defile is the opposite of love

Raiding

Progress in ICC continues apace; we steadily progress every week in 10-man, making it to either Valithria, Sindragosa, or the Lich King himself on night 1. Caffeine can easily field two 10-man teams during the week (truthfully, I bet we could do 3, but 2 is working for now), with my tank being able to attend one. My rogue has now poked his nose into ICC as well, showing up in an alt and "leftovers" run on Sunday night. Assassination is still fun – I have a weird love for daggers – but I think I need to keep toying with my spec some more. And the spreadsheets! Oh, how I love the spreadsheets. My raid leader pointed me at these when I was griping about my low DPS.

Anyway, ICC. ICC-10 is almost through the Lich King (it’ll only be a week or two more til one of our teams gets him down, I figure), ICC-25 is working on stuff as well, though sadly I can’t attend the 25-man raids most weeks due to the raids being on Friday and Saturday, which are designated for spending time with my girlfriend when she’s not busy studying for the Praxis II. I’m signed up for this weekend’s, though, so maybe I’ll get Festergut’s blood and finish off Shadow’s Edge. That’s right – after four weeks of buying absolutely nothing but the necessities, I have 25 Primordial Saronites. Well, four weeks of nothing but necessities, plus I bought several with Frost emblems, plus Thalois was nice enough to just give me one (thanks Thal!).

Honestly, there’s not a lot more to say. I have been noticing an influx of new DK tanks, though, and I’m going to recommend you go to Pwnwear and check out the contest and forums – especially the forums! – there. It’ll set you on the right track to redeeming our class-wide reputation again.

Guild

Still enjoying my tenure in Caffeine. I was asked to become an officer a week or so ago, and so I did. Huzzah! Looking forward to helping the guild move forward through Wrath and beyond.   Also hoping our next tabard design has a muffin on it. If I win, you’ve all been warned.

Non-WoW

Yeah, that’s right, I do non-WoW stuff. Sometimes I even blog about it. Sometimes I blog about it on other blogs. Surprise!

• I’ve been playing a few games here and there, including 3D Dot Game Heroes and Super Street Fighter IV. I’ve come to the conclusion I really need to invest in a good fightstick for SSFIV.
• I actually have two other blogs, sort of. If you need your daily fix of my non-WoW stuff, check out Midboss (which could be nearly anything) and iDevice (which is about my iPad, which is on the truck for delivery as I write this. Glee!). Oh, and I write – sometimes – for Polygamerous, which you should really check out. Mostly the Morning Quickies segment. I’m not on the podcast, though, but that’s probably for the best because I don’t talk much when I’m on podcasts unless I’m one-on-one, as anyone who heard me on the Twisted Nether roundtables can attest.
• I’m also shopping for a couch. It doesn’t get more exciting than that, loyal readers.

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Small pieces (of posts), loosely joined (into one post)

I’ve been trying for it for a while now, but I just had a feeling, you know? I was in the pit, pummelin’ some warbears, and it suddenly popped into my head: today’s the day. And lo and behold, I got the bear. Huzzah! And yes, that’s the handle of a Cryptmaker peeking over my shoulder there. She’s a beaut, ain’t she? Doesn’t clip my cape horribly, either, like the other two weapons I own. Seriously, Ramaladni’s Blade of Culling looks like it’s stuck halfway into my back, though this might just be a problem with some dwarf models (it does the same thing when I’m in an iron dwarf disguise, but not when I’m in a dark iron dwarf disguise).

As for the other pic mentioned in the title -

It was a good weekend on the auction house, too. Just need nine more Primordial Saronites and Festergut’s Acidic Blood and I, too, can get harassed by Arthas whenever I like. It’ll be like old times – I haven’t had ol’ Lichy baby whisperin’ in my ear since I left Acherus.

Oh, and about that video. Got an email from Lionsface Entertainment announcing a WoW hip-hop single and video, "Fail," by Blood Type. Ordinarily I’m not very impressed by these (there’s only so many times I can take blood elves bragging about their epeen, though there are a few standouts, and I’ll admit to having a few on my iPod), but the production value on this one is above par, and the two vocalists can… you know… actually rap.

Anyway, without further ado, here’s the vid:

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Two pics and a video

Didja miss me?

I took my mom out to Savannah, GA for a few days for the Mother’s Day holiday; we saw various historical sites, visited the beach, survived two layovers in Atlanta, and climbed 178 steps inside a lighthouse. Fun!

Now I’m back; looks like some classes got juicy new alpha leak information, while the rest of us are stewing waiting patiently. Such is life!

Also, Caffeine downed the Blood Queen. Hooray!

I’m looking forward to returning to full-time raiding this week. Looks like I’ll be able to do both 10s and 25s this week; really need to find a way to get my hands on 18 more Primordial Saronites, so I have a valid excuse for wanting Festergut and Rotface’s blood. Semi-related: is it just me, or are the quests to finish Shadowmourne – the infusions – much, much easier as a DK MT or OT? It’s just kind of funny, that’s all. Anyway, Saronites. Maybe someone I know has 20,000 gold sitting around.

…

/weep

So how’s your week going so far? Anything interesting on your schedule?

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I’m back like Ragnaros

That, I found, is Blizzard’s official terminology for it in the activity log: Valithria Dreamwalker rescues. Good to know, we’d been wondering what to call it. Wiped out all of Lower Spire + Plagueworks (including one-shotting Putricide) in the first 90 minutes last night, then went over and 2-shot Valithria, a fight we hadn’t seen before (in no small part thanks to the druid on the right there walking us through it – he’s Dantesparda, one of our many many new people; we suddenly have a full and lively guild at almost all times, it’s so awesome), then went over and pummeled the Princes into the pavement despite the entire East Coast suddenly disconnecting and taking a big chunk of our guild with it – and leaving the ones that could get back on with enormous lag. I think whatever happened, it was even affecting the Midwest – you can see my latency is at 516ms there. It jumped from 96 to 516 at some point prior to Valithria and stayed there last night, and was still there this morning in fact.

Also, another Fine Moment in Caffeine Raiding™, brought to you by Aelrict.

I love these folks.

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Enormous dragons rescued: 1/1 (Quest Complete)

10man raiding never really felt like raiding an instance for 10 players. Instead, we were traipsing through 25 player content that was lobotomized for us.

It isn’t easy being a strict(ish) 10 man guild in Lich King. Our raid comp is nowhere near ideal (no shaman, for instance), and without the gear 25 man raiders use to carry themselves through 10man content we have to use some extremely weird strategies to defeat bosses sometimes. We’ve had to use Death Knights to juggle kinetic bombs and tank the shadow bolting boss, for instance.

Hi, I’m a DK who tanks Prince Keleseth. Ever try to heal Festergut with two shamans and a druid? It gets a little hairy sometimes.

Anyway, point is, 10man raiding never really was 10man raiding. It was 25man raiding with less players and worse loot.

Amen. Also see Rilgon here.

Right now, in the scope of raiding in Wrath, that means running Icecrown 10 Heroic every week for shots at the couple of BIS items there (primarily Heroic Whispering Fanged Skull, but Heroic Stakethrower is a marked DPS gain, and a great hold-over until Fal’inrush) and increased Emblem of Frost income (less important now, but was VERY important in the start of ICC). When ToC was end-game content, this meant running ToC25 (for DV), ToGC25 (for H-DV and all the other 258s), ToC10 (for Emblems of Triumph), and ToGC10 (for those mother fucking leather gloves). And you know what? I did it, because my peers did it, and I had to do it to perform to the standards placed upon me by my guild, as we were pushing into difficult content and everyone had to bring their best game.

You know what this change means to someone like me? I don’t have to do that shit ever again.

Tangentially related, the flip side has been true for 10-man raiders, as well – the unspoken pressure is there, if you’re more than a casual raiding guild or a "strict 10" guild, to do 25s in your offtime or else you’re hurting the guild. I’m pretty tired of that bullshit, and I won’t be sad to see it go.

(Pic unrelated, but Peter is adorable. Peter is modern 25-day raiders; Cone of Shame Cat is in strict 10s. The wrapper is a trinket.)

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Cata raid stuff

Things have been rather sparse or, at best, fluffy around here lately. Why? Nib said it better than me. I just plain don’t have a thing to talk about because I haven’t done anything new in weeks. Breezing through the first six bosses or smashing against Putricide and, well, supposedly the Princes are on farm, but our luck hates them – we’ve gotten bitten two weeks in a row with the known bug where they summon important parts of the fight in the hallway instead of in their room; last week, it was Dark Nuclei, and I got by because I learned when to look for them, but now Valanar’s started summoning beach balls in the hallway. Add some attendance concerns on top of all that and it’s just become a weekly grind of breeze -> facesmash -> repair -> breeze -> facesmash -> repair. Tried to do Ulduar hardmodes on a raid night and 6 people signed up; did ToGC-10 for a little while, at least, and ran into the wall that is Faction Champs. I pretty much only log onto my DK for the facesmash repetitions; I need frost badges badly – 180+ of them – but I can’t even bring myself to do the dailies anymore.

In short, I’m halfway between frustrated and bored. Maybe I just need a week off or something.

A few days ago, Dechion mentioned the idea of "throwing everything up and keeping what sticks." (I bet now the pic of some sticky hand things makes sense.) Twice now, I’ve basically gone through an entire expansion with a single alt – granted, in TBC, it was an abbreviated amount of time, as I joined just before 2.3.2. After TBC, I immediately switched my main to a DK with no hesitation; my warlock languishes at 73, where – let’s be honest – she probably isn’t going to move up from anytime soon. I’m starting to think I might change again, because my DK is starting to lose his stickiness.

So who’s sticky?

• My warlock? When the class changes came out and I realized how much they were going to buff my favorite spec, I went demo on her again, only to find that, well, the urge to stick to her wasn’t there. I throw the pet at the mobs, I throw the magic, and the magic is gone. Leveling her would be hell for leather. Has completely lost her sticky, much like an old toy.
• My death knight? WotLK was a rollercoaster of a time to be a death knight. Overpowered, underpowered, middle of the road, one-and-only flavor-of-the-month specs, other specs utterly nerfed into oblivion for entire patch levels. It’s a little mentally exhausting. Plus I switched roles and I did it fairly thoroughly. Hell, I barely remember how to DPS anymore. Is my DK losing his sticky? Maybe.
• My rogue? You’ve never met a bigger failrogue than me. I really need to just use this guy to farm junkboxes for my DK’s insanity. Not sticky.
• My warrior? I don’t level this toon much, but when I do, it’s always a fun time. As a DK tank I’m a little envious of all the fun buttons warriors have to push (Vampiric Blood just isn’t all that appealing when I could be Thunder-Clapping or Shockwaving or Last-Standing or Shield-Walling or Devastating or, or, or…). The announcement of an alternative to Titan’s Grip is also nice – I admit I’m a fan of single-handed weapons, but they’d need a serious boost to keep up with the stat boosts alone from TG right now. However, with my warrior, it’s just finding the urge to level her. In short, she’s sticky, but not enough yet.
• My hunter? I want to get into my hunter, I really do. I have many hunter blogs in my RSS reader. I just can’t summon up the mojo to level her past 45. Unsticky.
• My shaman? I was leveling my shaman pretty consistently for a while; come hell or high water, I was determined to get him out of Outlands. And out I got him, and now he’s parked at 68 in Valiance Keep, where I keep telling myself I’m going to take that resto spec and go heal some instances. I really do keep telling myself that. Inconsistent stickiness.
• My priest? My priest has been my little side project for a while now. I really only mention her at any length to Tart, who is my pocket advice priest. ("Oh, God, where do I put these talent points?!") And as you can probably surmise from her Discipline spec, I’ve been leveling her almost solely through instances. It’s not entirely instances, of course – whenever she reaches a new level, I gather every newly-available dungeon quest available for the dungeons in my queue list, and usually can gain a level or two from those – but she’s only level 20 (on the verge of dinging 21). She’s got a long way to go to even be considered a main, even moreso than my warrior. But the important part is that she’s fun. It may be just because of the complete change in role – Brynhild is only for healing, at least for now – but I like that healing rush, the feeling of keeping a group alive against odds that they probably shouldn’t have lived through (like three underleveled DPS and me taking on VanCleef because we’d waited 20 minutes for no tank). But right now, Brynhild is very sticky. Those twirly red braids may as well be made of glue.
• An alt I don’t have yet? At this point, if I don’t have an alt of some class, I’m probably waiting on Cataclysm. I fully intend to level a worgen druid or mage, which is the main reason I don’t have either of those. As for paladins, well. I’d love to have a paladin, and if I could get one past level 15 without getting utterly sick and tired of him, I probably would by now. Maybe once 4.0 hits and new baby paladins have a button to push, I’ll look into it, but right now, paladins bore me senseless to try and level.

The dilemma is: if I focus entirely on one alt, I risk burnout on that alt (see also: DK, warlock, shaman), but if I don’t focus on that alt, I’m an incredibly slow leveler. At least in my opinion. I know plenty of people whose progress feels like they’re speed demons, and I figure I’m the slow one. Or is this all pointless wankery – do I just stick with my DK? I mean, he is my only 80, my primary source of cash and heirlooms, and my only actively raiding toon. And no one can deny that we need all the tanks we can get – but I’m looking to maximize my fun here, as well as provide something useful to my guild.

It’s a set of questions that I don’t have any easy answers to. If anyone else is going through the same thing, I’d appreciate any insights you have.

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Keeping what sticks

I love this job sometimes.

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The downside to raiding with bloggers…