Guess what i'm posting about?

It's NOT RealID! I'm sure all of you are sick of hearing about it, and I am as well. Everything that needs to be said has been said, so I refuse to beat that dead horse anymore.

On to the fun stuff that's been going on in-game. I've been playing the living hell out of my druid. I've been doing heroics on him, gathering frost badges (not fast enough by the way), doing more heroics, doing a few raid bosses INCLUDING my first foray into ICC with him just last night! I was nervous about going into ICC as a tank for the first time, but I thought to myself "I know the first few fights pretty well. Shouldn't be too much of a problem." ... Well.. When I zoned into ICC.....

Sorry to interrupt.. Everyone worried about real names in forums for WoW and SC2... Your worries can now subside. Blizzard WAS listening. Now then, back to our regularly scheduled blog post, already in progress.

When I zoned into ICC a little notice popped up. "This raid is already active 9/12 bosses killed.."......... wait what? Is this still on 25 man? *checks raid difficulty* Hmm.. Nope... *clicks vent* "Uhm.. Guys... we're 9/12 down?" "Yep" "WTF.. no one told me? I've only ever done 8 bosses, NOT including Putricide, Sindragosa or Arthas.. i'm not GEARED for this" "Bah, you'll be fine" "*dead air..../panic*".

Now.. I'd done Valithria Dreamwalker before, but never successfully, and NEVER while tanking. Hell, I wasn't entirely sure HOW to tank that encounter. Turn out it was a lot like tanking a heroic. Mostly pick-up mobs as they come at you. Stay away from "Blazing" something-or-others and then let the healers do their thing.. Congrats! You just 1-shot Dreamwalker! "*buh*".. "Now on to Sindragosa".. "buh... */panic again*"


Sindragosa, for those of you who don't know is a BITCH. She's hard. We got her down to 6% and died.. /facepalm. "DAMMMITTTTTTTTTTTTT!!!!" I'm not going to go into the specifics of the encounter, but suffice it to say, I felt like I Wasn't pulling my weight properly as an offtank, despite assurances from the MT, and the rest of the raid, to the contrary.

I meant to get a few screenshots, but I was too preoccupied with not sucking at OTing Sindy and making sure I didn't accidently iceblock the raid. Woof.. That isn't a screenshot I took.. I found it with my google-fu. >.> Anyway.. That's all for now. Thanks for bearing with me through the long absence. Real life got in the way and was tanking my ass against a wall for a while.

And then there were 7...

So, i'm starting to think "once a week" is going to become my sort of posting schedule for my blog. I might post more often, but if I haven't posted once a week, I start to feel like i'm neglecting my readers, so here I am. Don't get me wrong though, it's not like i'm posting out of guilt, I actually probably will have a lot to say once I start going.


My druid hit 80 a three or four days ago. That's both good and bad as far as i'm concerned. Good because, yay I finally have an 80 that's worth tanking with (because gearing another tank class around the defense cap is painful at the least). Bad because, omfg, I have yet ANOTHER 80.. That makes 7 folks. Mage, 2 pallies, DK, hunter, warlock, and now druid. In all fairness, only a couple of them are raid-worthy, the mage and the hunter. I quit raiding on my mage back in ulduar, and my hunter has been my main raider since I picked it back up a couple months ago. I am working on gearing my druid up because I like the idea of tanking, but like I said last week, tanking on him is kind of a pain in the arse. It's getting better with the more gear I get, but seriously, pugging into random heroics and seeing "... of the Ashen Verdict" and "... the Kingslayer" just tells me right offhand that i'm going to have trouble with aggro at some points. If any of you want to keep track, I have a wow-heroes gearscore of 2050. It would be a little higher but i've been skimping on gems until I get better gear for a lot of slots. I DID, however, just last night pick up a ilvl245 crafted chestpiece. Gathering the mats for that was kind of a pain in the ass because it's a lot of heavy borean leathers, and a lot of arctic fur (which are best recieved via... more heavy borean letters). The "Knightbane Carapace". I'm still using a crappy ring, two crappy trinkets, crappy boots and a modest headpiece. The rest is at least ilvl 200 epics. I think the trinkets are going to be the hardest to upgrade because one is a low drop rate from normal-mode ToC5 man and the other is a 60 frost emblem purchase. I may have to settle with a battlemaster's trinket or something instead. Actually, Ick and Krick in heroic Pit of Saron drop a better, pve oriented version of a battlemaster's trinket that I could probably try to farm, but GOD I hate tanking that place. The ring should be a pretty easy upgrade, just 35 triumph emblems. My other ring is the relentless gladiator's ring. Lots of stam, and a good amount of hit as well... Good times. I don't normally advocate pvp gear in a pve setting, but for bear druids the rules are far more flexible in that respect. Resilience doesn't hurt us in any way, and a couple of the items actually offer hit rating, and they always have lots of stam (like my ring), and those are kind of the bread and butter of bear tanking. Expertise is also insidiously helpful, but that comes in droves on gear anyway... Hell, i'm already over the soft cap by a modest amount.

Wow, got off on quite a tangent there. Anyway, if any up-and-coming tanky bears are looking for a good list of items to gear up with, there's a great one here with a lot of pretty easily obtainable gear to get you on your way... It's what i'm using.

In non-druidic wow-related news, my hunter's ICC 25 group hit the bricks again on sunday, bringing down 7 bosses, with number 7 being the Blood Prince Council. Man, I feel like I should research that fight some more, cause I just feel so lost in there. I mean we one-shot them, and I didn't die, so I must not have been doing that badly, but holy crap it was just an ugly fight. After downing the San'layn, we went to take a turn at reviving Valithria Dreamwalker. We weren't quite successful with her, and after our one attempt we had people who had to leave (which they had informed us of ahead of time, so it's not like they bailed at the first sign of trouble.). After a pretty satisfying night of raiding, that was all the action my hunter saw aside from a few dailies to get some more money. I tend to underestimate how much money I might spend, and that's probably to my detriment... i'm pretty much always broke on my characters, but I always have enough money to repair and get my flasks and what not, so I suppose i'm not doing that badly.

Anyway... I'm considering taking my druid to another guild because my current guild, as much as I love them, has no room for tanks. I haven't decided for certain yet, but it's something shambling in the back of my head. Horde or alliance, i'm willing to switch up... we'll just have to see at this point. It depends on a LOT of factors though, before I sink real money into a faction/server change though.. I'd want to get to know the group i'd be running with and so forth... PLUS, i've never raid tanked, so they'd have to be a little patient with me while I learn the ropes, because raid tanking is different than 5-man tanking. SO.. All that having been said, if your guild might be looking for something of that nature, feel free to drop me a line on twitter or email me at Achloryn@hordereview.com. Until next week guys..

Holy hell what a week..

Sorry guys, it's been a LONG week (or 11 days) which has kept me from posting. I appreciate your patience with me.

So, first thing's first. I continue to manage to not piss off the owner of hordereview.com... in fact he thinks i'm making some killer posts there for beginning hunters. If you feel like checking it out, go to hordereview.com, lol. Secondly, if you ever listen to the All Things Azeroth podcast, and you managed to listen to the newest episode (Which was recorded yesterday, so I dont think it's live yet) then you may have heard a rare treat... I recorded an intro for a contest they're running, and it was played live yesterday. The contest is, in essence, for a guest hosting spot on their 200th episode (which is in 3 more weeks). SO.. There's a possibility that yours truly will be a guest host with Medros and Shade on ATA's illustrious 200th episode.

Alright, now that i'm done tooting my own horn, let me tell you a bit about my week in WoW.. I've kind of set my pally on the shelf for a bit. I think she's 45 right now, but i've been playing my druid who is now level 78. I recently respecced my druid's off-spec to feral, and used a metric S--- TON of leather to make him the Eviscerator's set (Which, incidently, is great for tanking because it's a lot of stam, and a lot of attack power...) I've picked up a couple rings and a necklace that are good for tanking, but tanking on him is a little more tough than you might think. Why is that? Because i'm still adjusting to the rage mechanic. Battling rage starvation is kind of a pain in the ass, but i'm working on it. My first random tanking gig took place in Halls of Stone, and I think I did a pretty good job. No one died, and everyone said I did alright, so yay for that. I was battling for aggro with the ret pally a few times, but he was really good dps for a pre-80.... and he also didn't seem to want to wait long for me to build threat.. No problem, he was well geared and any beating he took didn't hurt him too much. I was thrilled at this group having gone so well for me never having tanked on a druid before. Woo!

Outside of WoW, but still related, i've been playing Warcraft 3 a lot lately. Man, i'd forgotten how FUN that game is, and also how damn FRUSTRATING it can be. Right now i'm in the undead campaign (not in The Frozen Throne, just original WC3). One of the (unanimously decided) most DIFFICULT missions in the game... I'm going to quote how I worded it on twitter last night. "Protect Kel'thuzad for 30 minutes while we throw a whole fucking map at you, so he can summon Archimonde to go hump the World Tree". If you don't get the reference about Archi and the world tree then you NEED TO WATCH THIS VIDEO.

Alright, that's enough babbling for me today. Thanks for bearing with me through my lack of posting.