Virgin Tanking BRD in a Bikini

Did that title get your attention or what?

I finally completed dual-speccing my paladin, Dedeamona (Lightninghoof-US hordeside), into her Protection spec.  She’s been Holy since level 10, so this was a pretty big deal.  I selected my talents, using a spec shamelessly pulled from Wowhead.  I rebuilt her toolbars for her new identity.   I bought my glyphs, supplemented my random tanking items I already had with pieces from the auction house, and queued up for a dungeon!  She was level 58, and I had no desire to struggle with a DK for aggro on my first run, so I queued very specifically for BRD.  I figured that I’d out-level it a bit, and that my gear was plenty sufficient for it, so hopefully it would be a good place to try out pally tanking for the first time and learn what the heck I was doing.  I fully expected that the group would fall apart and not finish, because that’s what happened every other time I’ve run BRD in the past.  That’s right, you heard me.  I’ve never completed BRD before. No one in my pugs ever knew how their way through the damn thing.  So I clicked in for my instant queue fully expecting that things would fall apart in about an hour. 

Well, wasn’t I shocked when I had not one, but two people in my pug who knew what they were doing!  So we kept going.  And going.  AND GOING!  DAMN THAT IS A LONG DUNGEON!!!!!!!!

Ahem. Forgive me.  Moving on.

Three hours later we finally took down Emperor Dagran Thaurissan.  I was so tired, but I was thrilled.  I finally beat that place.  And now I don’t ever want to do it again, unless I’m going in with friends.

But I tanked it!  That’s right, on her virgin tankadin run, Desdeamona tanked BRD all the way through.  I didn’t do a half bad job, if I do say so myself!  I did however make the #1 “Pally Tank Newb Mistake” of all time.  That’s right, I forgot to turn on Righteous Fury for about the first 30 minutes.  And I gotta tell you, that was a rough 30 minutes.  I wasn’t holding aggro on anything for more than a few seconds.  Once I realized my mistake and clicked the freakin’ button, suddenly things weren’t so difficult anymore.  

I didn’t find a single upgrade from the whole run, so I guess her scabbed together gear wasn’t as bad as I thought.  I have to say, I absolutely love her chest piece right now.  And I was afraid when I equipped her first plate chest piece that it wasn’t going to be pretty.  Check out this bad girl!  Princess Leia, eat your heart out!  

 

That’s right.  That bikini top there is freakin’ PLATE MAIL! 

I love blood Elves.  Yep, I do.

And I love tanking. 

That is all.

-Razorstorm

Obeying the Muse

Recently I accepted an offer from Windsoar over at JadedAlt where she is playing Muse to any of her blogging friends.  She gave each of us a different subject/question to address. What I thought was so cool was how she kept managing to come up with good questions that were all so specific to each blogger.  Here was my mission, should I choose to accept it (which, obviously, I do, though perhaps not as promptly as I should have).

/cast Muse

So, I know you play several toons, and they’re in the around the 40-60 range (if nothing’s changed ) How did you NOT get hit with the leveling bug? How do you choose which toon to play, and what makes you trade them in for the next alt? Do you and the missus have a specific duo? What do you enjoy doing in-game together?

Ok, that was mean–answer the ones you want and ignore the rest! I got a little carried away ^^

 

I am, indeed, an altaholic.  Here I am, playing for over a year, and still, I have no 80’s.  In fact, I have several characters all stuck right around the same point.  Two points, actually.  Looking through my alts on various servers it would appear that I tend to get stuck right around either level 12 and level 40.  Let’s look at the notables from my roster

Rayzorstorm- Argent Dawn- Feral Druid 50 (yay!)

Desdeamona- Lightninghoof- Holy Paladin 45

Morgaunt- Uldaman- Protection Warrior 40 (yay!)

Mykale- Cenarius- Frost Mage 45

After these guys I have a ton of toons that are all right about level 10-12, though I think there are two that managed to make it into the 20’s.  Among them are two hunters, two warlocks, a rogue, 2 priests, another paladin, another warrior, and 3 shamans.

I understand the phenomenon of bailing on toons in the teens.  It makes sense.  You decide to roll a new race/class combo just to see how you like it, and then you go back to your main.  But why do I consistently get stuck around the 40’s?  There are a couple of reasons for this, I think.

First, my four higher toons were each the first that I rolled on each of those four servers.  I originally started on Dawnbringer with my wife because we really didn’t know what the hell we were doing.  Rayzorstorm is dedicated to leveling with her warlock, Lahruna.  He is restricted to staying within two levels of her, or I get in trouble.  We really love questing as a duo.  Each time I’ve started on a new server, it’s been to play with different friends from real life, except the change from Dawnbringer to Argent Dawn with Rayzorstorm, which was to join SAN.  The problem with this plan is that I still don’t get to play with any of these RL friends because they’re all raiding.  So I go on leveling.  First I rolled Mykale on Cenarius, then Morgaunt on Uldaman, and then most recently Desdeamona on Lightninghoof.  I’ve been most involved with Des and Rayzor lately, though Morgaunt saw some good action this last week.  I haven’t touched Mykale in a while, mostly due to a conscious effort to be a little more focused.   

I think I tend to get stuck around the 40’s because leveling really starts to slow down around there.  Previous to this you stay in a zone for about 8 levels, and the content naturally leads you on to the next step.  Once you hit this point, though, the world starts feeling very big, and quests seem to involve more and more running around, which takes forever.  I think there’s also a tendency to start feeling lost around this point because there isn’t a place that you’re supposed to be, because the world is supposed to start feeling wide and open.  Add to this that professions really start to get harder at this point and you really start to slow down.  It makes it really easy, for me at least, to get distracted by the idea of trying something new.

Windsoar asked if I get the leveling bug.  I live for the leveling bug.  When the story is clear and driven, I dive in.  But as things get more diffused, and especially if they get grindy, I get bored and switch over to another toon for a few levels. I don’t believe in power-leveling with the aid of higher level friends, because I actually want to see and experience the world.  If I could stay focused on any of these characters longer, I’d be a lot further along.  I’ve sort of decided to leave Mykale in the dust for a while, partially because it’s so much easier leveling with my tanks, or my holy pally, due to the quick LFD queues and survivability.  And more importantly, I get much more social interaction on all of my other realms than I do on Cenarius.  I’ve recently begun to understand how important an active g-chat is to my enjoyment of the game.

Well, I think I’ve rambled on this subject for long enough.  I hope you were a-muse-d!

-Razorstorm

The Fall of the Baroness

I made a post recently about Desdeamona’s attempt to be the Silk Baroness of Lightninghoof. I realized that I hadn’t followed through on my promise to report my results. 

Result: Failure. 

It turned out that despite how many stacks of silk I bought, and I bought a lot of silk, as soon as I left the AH someone would put up some more.  It wasn’t long before there was enough lower priced silk to push my stacks a long ways down the roster.  While I may have had the money to take over the market, I simply didn’t have the time.   I would’ve had to sit  there checking in every 15 minutes to keep buying up the new stacks.  I left it alone and went adventuring. 

When I came back 48 hours later, my mailbox was full of expired silk.  When I say full I mean full, as in so full the system couldn’t deliver all of it because my mailbox was completely jammed with stacks of silk.  Sure, I made some gold from a few stacks that did sell, but I was swamped in stacks of silk that hadn’t sold.  I guess I could’ve turned right around and put them back on the auction house, but I just didn’t have the will after sifting through all that silk. 

Lesson learned: Don’t tangle with a monstrous market like silk.  this strategy would probably work fine on a smaller market, and one person might succeed in controlling the price, but it would take steady dedication.

-Razorstorm

Desdeamona the Silk Baron(ess)

Desdeamona (Holy Pally 42 Lightninghoof) is my wealthiest toon. Keep in mind that this is all relative, considering that I have no 80’s. She has made this gold via selling the ore from her mining, and from periodic stints of aggressively playing the auction house. I don’t have the will to play the AH all the time, as is required to be trully awesome at it, but about one day a week or so I jump in and have some fun. Sunday was such a day. I signed on to Des to realize that I had several stacks of various ores that needed to be put up in the AH, along with a bunch of silk.

I’m not super sophisticated about this. I don’t use Auctioneer or anything like that (though I’m starting to think I should). In fact, I’m using the method developed by my beautiful wife, Laruna. We know that we basically reinvented the wheel, here, but we did reinvent it on our own, which makes us awfully proud of ourselves.

One of these Auction House days begins when I go to put something up for auction and realize that some idiot, or often several idiots, has put up some amount of whatever I wanted to sell for well below what the market is willing to pay. I’m not sure why, maybe it’s because I’m working on an MBA, but I don’t just find this irritating, I find it offensive. I proceed to buy up every piece or stack of said item that is below the price I want to set, and put them all back on at that price. This has never failed to net me a tidy profit, but also has the side benefit of making me feel very powerful, like some kingpin from the industrial revolution. Now, I know that the misguided souls who put up the underpriced goods still got what they wanted, but that doesn’t bother me in the slightest. The important thing is that I make some amount of profit and get to have the joy that comes from controlling a market, if only for a day.

So yesterday I started pulling the above stunt on the silk market. It wasn’t long into buying up the underpriced silk that I started feeling like I’d bought off more than I could chew. There was just so much of it, and I swear more was popping up between my brief walks from the auctioneer to the mailbox and back. I started having second thoughts, but I wasn’t about to back down now! So I spent much more than I was really comfortable with, but eventually my conquest was complete. Unfortunately I had to sign off and leave the market to its own devices. I have thus terrible feeling that much of that silk will come back to me after it expires, undercut by a day’s worth of cheaper postings. The lesson I’m taking away from this is to not try to do a hostile take-over of a larger market like silk unless I can sign in several times throughout the day to reinforce my stranglehold.

I’ll give a report in a few days about whether or not most of that silk comes back to me unsold. I’m okay if some does, but hopefully only a small amount. Regardless, it was pretty fun, and for a day Desdeamona got to be the Baroness of Silk.

Wrapping up Arathi!

Last night I was casually running around the Arathi Highlands on Desdaemona, who is currently level 41. I finished up a decent quest string involving gathering different pieces of sigils to ultimately end up opening the tomb of the dead Stromgarde king, Thoras Trollbane, and taking his sword back to a troll in Hammerfall. Apparently the trolls are not very fond of said king, since he drove out the trolls from their home. While this was a not a difficult quest string, it was entertaining cutting my way through swaths of human militia over several visits. The juicy lore didn’t really come into play until close to the end of the quest. Des has now cleaned out her quest log for Arathi and Hillsbrad, so I need to decide where to continue leveling her. I have made some forays into Dustwallow Marsh, and I do have some quests over there, but I’m wondering if there are any good places to level a Horde toon through their 40’s in Eastern Kingdoms? Any suggestions anyone?

-Razorstorm

Welcome to the WoW Storm!

Here is my first post.  I plan this blog to be all about my exploration of my favorite game, World of Warcraft.  I am looking at the game from the perspective of being a fairly new player (just over a year) who has no level 80’s.  There’s a ton of content that I will be seeing for the first time.  I greatly enjoy taking in the lore of the world, and discovering the abilities of my classes.  I play several toons, primarily a Night Elf Druid (Darrien- Dawnbringer), a Blood Elf Holy Paladin (Desdaemona- Lightninghoof), a Night Elf Warrior (Morgaunt- Uldaman) and a Human Frost Mage (Mykale- Cenarius).  All of these toons are currently mid level, 40-50 ish.  I plan on posting about my experiences discovering the world of Azeroth, as well as my musings from my constantly growing blogroll.

-Razorstorm