Raiding, a new alt, and more.

I’ve been fairly busy recently, haven’t had much time for blogging.

RL-wise, I’ve been searching for a job (and have now found one!), as well as going to my friends’ graduation stuffs. (I have a lot of friends in this year’s graduating class from my former high school ).

In game? Lots has been happening. Ulduar-wise, we’ve downed Auriaya on 25, and Hodir on 10 – although we seem to be stuck in a rut currently, I have confidence that we’ll pull out of it. I finally got my enchanting to 450 on Vel, too, so that’s really nice to finally be done with.

Finished my 500th tracked daily quest yesterday, too – I’m sure I’m over 1000 total from all of the Shattered Sun stuff, but that’s okay =) still have a lot of achievement points, and I’m happy with that. Something like 5350 now.

I’ve also been working on my paladin’s Blacksmithing and Inscription. I really want to make it easier to defense-cap so I can put some itemization into Expertise/avoidance, and professions seem to be the current easiest path. That said, it’s really hard to level Blacksmithing without a miner, so I’ve been leveling my DK so it’ll be easier to farm for my paladin. Lots of effort, but I’m not losing gold this way. (And when Thorium is 35g/stack, it’s worth it to do it my way!)

I’ve also started a new alt – a shaman.. I’m doing recruit a friend with a friend of mine, and we went from 1 to 10 today (I’ll be going resto to healbot with). I’m dual-boxing, so I can run us through to 60 in a couple days, and then we can start new toons. I’m rather excited, and perfectly willing to pay the account transfer fees once we’re done.

Position in Queue:

That’s right, I went and tried to get a BlizzCon ticket today.

First off, I’d like to say that Blizzard did an amazing job – the server was up without any noticeable lag. This may have been helped by their taking Armory offline to aid in computing, but even so, this was great.

Secondly, I got a ticket. I am SO stoked for this – it’ll be my first year going. Any readers have an experience they’d like to share about it?

Another PvP post!

I may be about to make a very, very silly decision.

I’ve been doing some research on specs for PVP, and the only one I can find information on is deep Frost – which is a great spec, but I’ve never played it before (Any hints? I certainly could use them). That said, I’m stilll going to spec out of my current 53/7/11 (which I changed from 64/7/0 for Icy Veins) and toss my points into 20/0/51. It might take me a few weeks to get used to it, I don’t know, but it’s certainly worth a try in my 5’s team.

Even so, I think I’ll probably still go Arcane for 2’s – it has more burst potential, and Arcane/Arcane was crazy while I was playing it. My 2’s partner is taking a break right now, but I can’t wait to get back to that, especially with my new Arcane build.

The Paladin…

has hit 80. She’s specced Prot, so I went ahead and got all of the Titansteel pieces in addition to the Jewelcrafting crafted ring/necklace. Combined with the heroics I ran (almost all of them, actually), I also hit 540 defense – so am hoping to tank some raids this week. Rather excited. My health is still a bit low, but my threat seems okay, and I’m uncrittable/uncrushable, which counts for a lot.

I’ve also decided not to get dual-spec for her – or if I do, to stick another Prot build in there, possibly one that includes Improved Hammer of Justice. I don’t want to do anything but tank on this toon – if I want to heal, I’ll bring my druid, and if I want to DPS, I’ll bring my mage. Why do something with the paladin that I know I have no idea how to play?

New DPS numbers for Vel

Took the mage into Naxx tonight for the guild run. Didn’t get any loot but that’s no big deal. I’m more excited about the new DPS numbers I’m putting out – 5900.8 on Patchwerk (far and away topping the charts), 6600 or so on Thaddius (not bad, considering we were short 3 people), and well over 6k (can’t remember exactly) on Loatheb.

These are easily the best numbers I’ve seen to date – rather exciting for me, too, as it means 6k dps (in a straight tank-and-spank fight) is within striking distance. I’d be really happy to see that happen sometime soon, but it may take some lucky crits to get it done – we’ll have to see. =)

I also got my paladin to 77 today – planning to hit 80 and start heroics this weekend, which is really exciting for me. I’ve already started stockpiling mats for the crafted epics at 80 so I can skip most of the regular L80 instances and go straight to heroics. Also picked up Inscription, but haven’t started leveling it yet.

Ding 75, again.

As you may be aware, I’ve been leveling my paladin Veliniya recently. Now, at less than a week /played, she’s already at level 75 – I fully expect to have her at 80 in the next week or so.

I’m leveling her as Prot, and while it may not be the fastest option, it’s almost impossible for me to die. Plus, it gives me a free ticket into a bunch of instance groups! I’ve been doing a lot of instances with my friend Cendres’s priest, which is rather fun.

I think what drew me to tanking in the first place was the sheer number of buttons to press; to compare, my mage has 3 spells for his DPS rotation (Frostfire Bolt, Living Bomb, and Pyroblast), 1 of which is simply spammed (FFB), whereas my paladin has 7 cooldowns to balance (Shield of Righteousness, Judgment of Wisdom, Holy Shield, Hammer of the Righteous, Avenger’s Shield, Exorcism, Consecrate), plus Divine Plea, plus Holy Wrath if I’m fighting Undead or Demon targets. As you can imagine, this makes for quite the rotation – but at the same time, it’s a lot more involving than playing my mage. I can’t wait to get her into heroics/raids and start gearing up; instead of falling by the wayside as my druid has, I expect that I’ll be playing my paladin for a good long while.

As for her professions, I’m at 114/150 Blacksmithing, but haven’t learned a second profession. What’d be good for a protadin? Jewelcrafting, maybe?

Ulduar progression

Cloudy Day’s been doing crazy well in Ulduar so far. Two weeks ago, we only downed Flame Leviathan; last week, we finished off everything up to and including Iron C0uncil…and now, we’ve killed Kologarn with another night left to raid this week. At this rate, we’ll be up to Yoggie in what, two weeks? =)

Not only have we been doing well as a guild, I’ve been gearing my mage a bit too. So far, I’ve gotten the T8.5 gloves, some new shoulders from 25-man Ulduar, and Firesoul from 10-man Ulduar and am respeccing deep Fire. Really looking forward to doing that again.

After debating with myself, I’ve decided to close access to the videos to protect bandwidth; I had to move them to a new server because a spammer had downloaded one video about 15000 times. Therefore, unfortunately, no more publicly available kill videos or strategy guides.

This semester’s finals are coming up in a couple of weeks, so I’ll again be AFK from blogging, just like last semester.