New WoW Armory
Yes, I still suck at keeping this up-to-date. But, eh, what do ya do?
First; I’ve had some inquiries about my Mage UI and I haven’t gotten back to you. I apologize. I’ve since changed it so the version you saw previously is no longer available. I’ll re-post my new UI when I get an opportunity and I’ll just upload what you’d need if you’d like to use it. Not sure when that’ll be, but hopefully within the next week.
So, the WoW Armory has gotten a nice little update (something other sites have had for quite some time). I’ll just post what is new as it’s easier to see than it’ll take to put into words. :p
Slacker!
Yes, that’s me: Slacker! I really suck at keeping up with a blog. It’s a good thing nobody pays me to do this, otherwise I’d never get paid.
What to catch up on….
I tried out Aion because I thought it would be a fun and new distraction; it was for about 16 levels. I should write up a separate entry for it sometime. Needless to say; I didn’t enjoy it past level 16.
I then decided to purchase ‘Batman: Arkham Asylum’ which is a lot of fun. I’m taking my time and only playing it here and there. I want to get my money’s worth out of it. So far, though, it is a lot of fun. It deserves its own entry, as well.
I gave Champions Online a try over the Halloween Free Play Weekend. They should have called it the Free Download and Only Play for a Short Time Weekend. I never even reached level 2 and decided it wasn’t for me.
So where does that take us? Right back to my good old mainstay; WoW. I have 3 level 80’s now; Mage, Hunter, & Death Knight. My latest venture is tanking on my DK. It’s been interesting and fun to learn. So far we’ve only been knocking around lowbie bosses in Northrend. Once enough people in my, ultra, casual guild are high enough level we’ll start tackling Heroics, but regular instances are fine for now to help some people bang out some quests.
And, since I’ve been concentrating on WoW, again, it may be time to revisit the MODs & UI stuff. Not too much has changed, but a few MODs are looking to get switched out. We’ll see how it goes.
Thanks for stopping by! Hopefully I’ll get some entries done, soon, for Aion and Batman.
Champions Online
I haven’t heard a lot of great things about this game. I know a few people that went into the Open Beta (I could have but didn’t realize I had a key…oops), but nothing amazing for reviews.
Then last night I was checking out the CO forums and noticed there were some big changes for release day; no specifics but some people seemed rather upset about the changes. The gist of what I got was that players got nerfed to the point that they couldn’t even beat something their own level and that mobs even of a lower level were kicking their asses.
I’ll have to keep looking into it, I guess.
Altitis (again) & A New Signature Generator
Altitis
So, yes, altitis has struck again! argh!! Honestly, I don’t mind as much this time around. I can’t raid or do heroics anymore; I simply don’t have the time. Being a (relatively) new dad my priorities have shifted (with good reason). My daughter comes before WoW and any other online stuff; so playtime has diminished as has any other online stuff. And with that diminished time means focusing on other areas of my WoW-time.
Thus, altitis is back! My mage, Flasch, is 80 and upgraded enough to do some heroics and raiding, but those upgrades just make dailies go faster. My death knight, Kaellon, is 80 and not heavy in the gear department so I just tear stuff up here and there. My hunter, Kavik, is nearing 78 and currently involved in the beginnings of the Argent Tournament and a few other dailies. So, when the daily grind gets to be too much…I have to turn to an alt. I still have my lil retnoob, Vargis, on Grizzly Hills. He is currently stuck at 30; I got the mount and shelved him. :p
The other altitis stuff deals with my quest for more lore from the Alliance angle. I am a pretty die-hard Horde player, but I’ve recently become more and more interested in the lore of Warcraft. I even purchased Arthas: Rise of the Lich King recently and have really been enjoying the storyline. So, I’m getting a bit hooked on the lore and will likely purchase a few more of the books. I don’t anticipate playing the original Warcraft games (no time!), so the books are the best I’m going to get. Coupling the books with sites like WoWWiki.com will fill in the gaps for me.
So, my quest for more Alliance lore lead to my other Retnoob, a druid, and a warlock. They’re all under 15 and don’t count for much, yet, but aids in a bit of the lore research…for now. And, really, the warlock is pretty much just for the mount. My first ever WoW toon was an Undead Warlock and he only got to 26 and that was back when you didn’t get a mount until 40; so, the new lock is my reward to myself so I can have that mount I should have gotten back then and at level 20. :p Leveling has been fun and breezy since I only spend about an hour a night, at most, on any of the alts. Lessens the grind feeling, I think.
Signature Generator
My last signature generator entry was a while back and since then I tried another one and have, I think, settled on my new favorite. I’m not a huge fan of screen real estate being eaten up by huge signatures on the few forums I frequent, so I wanted to find a good signature generator that created nice, easy to read, and informative, images.
My new favorite is ToonSig. Surf over, sign-up, and start banging out some nice looking signatures. They have a lot of good backgrounds for your signature, allow for some custom text, and the regular stat type entries (only two of these though). The regular name, level, guild, are put on each signature. Server, stats, professions, etc., are selectable. Go check’em out; I’d be willing to be that you’ll like what you see.
Here are the few that I’ve made for my regularly played toons…
Thanks for reading! See you next entry…whenever that happens to be… :p
Rawr
I’ve always tried to use something like RatingBuster to be sure that I am maximizing gear on my toons. However, no matter how much time I’ve spent on the armory/forums/using mods I continued to have issues getting my Unbuffed Spellpower on my Mage up to a good level.
The other night I got passed over for a Naxx run (much to my own honesty, though) because my gear wasn’t up to snuff. Admittedly I was still in my Spellfire gear that I crafted for raiding at 70; but I hadn’t found good replacements, yet. So, after getting passed over for Naxx (I told them I didn’t want them to ahve to carry me) I took a look at my gear, again, and dropped some gold and did a few quests and crafted/was rewarded with some upgraded gear. However, my spellpower actually dropped a bit while other stats went up.
grrrrrrr…
So, I downloaded Rawr and spent some time tweaking. I re-gemmed some stuff, picked up another ring, and replaced the staff I had with a dagger/off-hand…boom… about a 40% increase in spellpower.
Rawr lets you grab your Armory info so that it can help you optimize your gear. You can swap gear around, add enchants, gems, etc., and you can watch your stats move up/down as you do the optimizing by hand or let the tool do it for you.
I have to take a closer look at it tonight because even though I’m wearing almost exactly what it suggested for optimzing my toon, my stats are off a bit. Overall, though; great tool.
LFM – Dedicated Casual Players
Does anyone have a higher level Horde toon just languishing somewhere? Or maybe you’re just tired of the server that you’re on? Sick of the guild that you’re in leaving you out of instance runs?
Are you willing and able to be a Dedicated Casual player on a different server?
Just what the hell does ‘Dedicated Casual’ player mean? You play a toon or 50 across a few servers but you’re willing and able to play on another server with that high level toon on a semi-regular basis.
<Missing Image> on Grizzly Hills [Horde] would love to have you join the ranks. We’re at a point where we have several dedicated casual players in the guild, but it would be great to have several more so that we can round out upcoming instance runs. Any class, any role, just the willingness and ability to play with us without the pressure of “zOMG why aren’t you raid ready (five hours before the raid)!!”
If we’re going to do an instance run it is likely to be on a Friday/Saturday/Sunday; from 9pm Central to whenever. Probably earlier on actual weekend days depending on who is around.
If you consider transferring don’t do it thinking, “zOMG! We’ll run Heroics all of the time for phat lootz!” That is not what <Missing Image> is about. I’m serious when I say that we’re casual. Although, we’re dedicated about it. Several of us are logged in several nights a week and play for several hours at a time. We all have RL stuff going on, too.
This is more of a “Hey, if you like to play, but aren’t all loot crazy and don’t expect to run an instance every night that you play” inquiry/post.
We have a great bunch of people in the guild that occasionally log in to play here and there, but I know that a few of us that play just a little more on Grizzly Hills (more of a home server for us) are looking to expand our options. If this sounds like fun for you come on over; we’d love to have you in the guild.
I can’t stress enough that for running an instance or two, that the schedule needs to mesh with all of us; if you play much later in the evening or earlier during the day (or what have you) we probably won’t be a good fit for you. But, if the schedule I mentioned earlier sounds like it might work for you…log on, hang out a bit, see how we work, and maybe transfer that toon over or power level another one.
If you’re interested or have questions; contact me at Second Survivor or SLU. Or, make a new toon and do a: /who missing image and ask for an invite and we can chat in /gchat about stuff.
Thank you for your time (especially if you read all of that),
- Kavik
aka Flasch/Kaellon on Grizzly Hills
Argent Tournament & More
Quite the lull in activity since my last post, but I hadn’t had much going on online due to RL stuff.
But, now I’ve got the WoW bug again! I completely spaced about the Argent Tournament until recently. I started doing the quests with my Death Knight, Kaellon, and decided I should start with my Mage, Flasch, as well. I was burnt out on leveling Flasch in the typical sense and was at the beginning portion of level 79 when I started him on the Argent Tournament.
In the course of running both toons through the A.T. I ended up leveling Flasch right to 80 doing the dailies.
It’s fun, earning some nice gold, plus a few fun achievements. Plus, after saving up enough Champion Badges I’ll get a few nice things for both Flasch and Kaellon. And, some new titles for each of them.
I need to work a bit more on Kaellon’s Reputation with Silvermoon, Orgrimmar, Thunder Bluff, and Trolls, though. Once he gets the Champion Title for Undercity he’ll earn the Exalted Champion, as well, but I slacked quite a bit on his Exalted Rep with the 
other major Horde cities. The Champion Writ’s will help a bit, but it’s only 250 per writ; so, that’s going to take a bit that way. I’ll need to find some time to work on the lower level quests for those factions to get up more. All but TB are in Revered so hopefully it won’t take too long.
All-in-all; I’m really glad that I got into doing the Argent Tournament quests because it made getting Flasch to 80 in that home stretch that much easier and fun. The jousting quests are great and come in handy for a couple other dailies in Icecrown, as well. I see a number of folks grouping up to do the Icecrown Bone Commander dailie, but with doing the Valiant and Champion dailies I am able to solo the Elite Commander for the daily. It’s fun, a bit of a challenge, but is a good test of patience and skill.
Get out to Icecrown as soon as you can get your Cold Weather flying and get in on the tournament; you won’t regret it.
WoW Signatures
I never seem to be happy with signatures for WoW. I find one I like here…then I find one there…
So, here is a style I’m trying out from Magelo:
Retnoob Fever
I fell into a bit of a rut with my Death Knight and Mage on my main server. So, I did something I had sworn not to do again…make a new toon that would require me to go through all of the same damn quests that I’ve done too many times to count.
I once made a Paladin back when The Burning Crusade expansion allowed for Paladins on the Horde side; thus my first Belf Pally was born. He got all of the way to the amazing level of…. 15. I quickly grew bored with him and he languished in Alt-Hell.
Fast forward to about a week ago…
I made an Alliance Paladin on a server with the sole purpose to help a friend level her druid. Somehow I managed to quickly outlevel her druid; so I figured I should let him sit until she catches up. I was apparently enjoying playing a Retnoob too much so I promptly logged on to my main server and created my new Belf Retnoob.
Let me just say this; Paladins suck until you hit about level 20 to 22. Somewhere in there I suddenly started having way more fun. Now, keep in mind that I can gear my lil retnoob up (having an 80 and 77 for older “brothers” helps in the gear situation, plus a friend that doesn’t mind helping me out, too), so being better geared than most for the leveling helps immensely.
So, here I sit with my new Retnoob and I’m wondering just how far I’ll take him. After making and leveling my first DK to 80 I’ve learned to love melee again. Don’t get me wrong, I really like my Mage, but there’s just something about getting in there and slashing or bashing on something. The Mage will get to 80 eventually, but for now I’m going to have fun playing my Retnoob…even if it means going through all of the same damn content again; for the fiftieth time.
Death Knight Addiction
So, yes, I have a bit of an addiction when it comes to Death Knights. I just enjoy the blend of talents for the class. I decided to just take a quiet break in WoW this evening and I created a DK on a different server from my normal ones. And, I made a Human….yes, yes…an Alliance. I want to test the benefit that humans get from the sword specialization. Plus, it’s fun to play without any type of quest assistance MODs these days; as I don’t know the Alliance quests. I’m still in the DK starting area (I have to sleep at some point) but once I am out it should be an interesting experience.
Here’s to keeping WoW fun by trying something…kinda…different.
Oh, and yes, I cut out the server & toon names. Knock-around toons don’t get recognition.