WoW

Trying to get Better

stargrace March 7, 2015 0Comment

In any game I play, I like to know that I am playing my character well. I like to find the optimal builds, wear the right combination of gear, hit the keys in the right order. For some people, that’s just not fun and I can completely understand it, but that’s how I have fun, and I work at it. It would be nice if people could understand that how I decide to play the game has no baring on how they play the game, and that we can each enjoy things our own way.

I’ve been working on my priest as of late, in specific her shadow spec. For some reason I find it very difficult to break through the 12-13k dps range, though I can’t seem to figure out if it’s due to gear or due to my rotation. Right now she’s at 644 ilevel, which isn’t that high. I haven’t had the patience to go blood farming, so only one piece of gear has been upgraded. Plus I know she’s using the cheaper gems and enchants. Still, I want to be better and continue to strive for it.

I haven’t managed to level another character to 100 yet besides my priests. I have a few sitting at level 92 (mostly for garrison reasons) but mindlessly grinding has never been my forte. Probably the reason my pet battle building is also still only level 2, and my fishing shack. I’m hoping to work on both of those over the weekend.

Meanwhile I’m also trying to complete the final two raids that I haven’t participated in yet. That includes Slagworks, and The Black Forge. Unfortunately RNG absolutely hates me, so my chances of actually walking away with loot have been slim to none. I know eventually I’ll reach a point where it all just comes together, other shadow priests are pulling in some insane numbers. For myself, so far, it has been a struggle.

As always, happy gaming this weekend! No matter where you find yourself.

Two down, Ten to Go

stargrace February 27, 2015 0Comment

I took some time yesterday to run through the raid zones required for Raiding with Leashes III – and managed to get 2 out of the 12 new pets. I was hoping for better odds, but RNG has never been a friend of mine in any game that I play, so it didn’t really come as any great surprise. The zones are easily solo-able by players level 100, and they don’t take a great deal of time to complete, but they are annoying to navigate if you’re not used to them. They also drop a LOT of junk loot, so you’re going to want to have some extra bag space.

I also did my weekly run through Dragon Soul, which is great for coin. Coin that I really needed because I spent absolutely every penny I had this week on the money sink that is known as heirloom gear. 6.1 added tokens to upgrade your heirloom gear, as well as a few more pieces. Most cost gold, the tokens cost gold, and if you collect 36 pieces of heirloom you unlock a mount that a level 1 character can use.

There has been some debate on the forums about this because “how dare you make the game even easier! Just giving away free mounts at level 1!” but an important thing to remember is that these mounts are not just given out to brand new characters. If you have heirloom gear chances are you have a main already leveled up, and this gear is for an alternate character. I have no problem with letting veteran gamers level through content faster than new players because it will keep them interested in playing in the long run. Of course it’s also your absolute choice whether or not to use this mount, no one is obligated to.

So my collection is at 40 pieces now, mostly upgraded, unlocked the mount – and then realized that I don’t really have many alts who can take advantage of it. Sure I do have a handful of level 90 characters, but it has been a while since I created a new character. That of course meant it was time.

I created a mage, rogue, and warrior, three classes that I don’t currently have a 90+ version of. I’ve actually never played a mage at all, for whatever reason. Whether or not I’ll get anywhere with these characters I have no idea, but the option is there.

Meanwhile I’m still playing (and having a blast) EVE Online, still taking care of my horses and crops in Wurm Online, still piddling in FFXIV and a handful of other single player games on steam, Wii U, 3DS, and PS4. It’s a good time to be a gamer.

Raiding with leashes III?

stargrace February 26, 2015 0Comment

It looks like I’ll be spending a bit of time in Black Temple, Hyjal Summit, and the Sunwell in order to collect a new round of pets. Right now I’m up to 507 unique pets, and rank #255 for Area 52. Of course now I have 12 more to go out and try to collect. I still haven’t unlocked the T3 garrison, needing to complete 150 pet battles in Draenor. Right now I’m at 70. I’ve slowly been working on getting more pets to level 25, though that was made a lot easier when I received a stone this week that let  me instantly boost a single pet directly to 25 (thank you 6.1).  My pet of choice was tied between the Pandarian Water Spirit, and Chrominius, but eventually I settled on the water spirit. Both come in handy for a lot of fights.

With my battle tokens what I tend to do is purchase the random bag that lets you grant 1 level to a specific pet family. Then I sort my collection by that family, and boost the first pet (or a specific one if I have one in mind) that is closest to 25. This has worked out pretty well so far, and I have a nice robust collection of level 25 pets now. The problem is the more difficult fights require a very specific team in order to defeat them, so it’s important for me to level those up too.

Right now I’m working on leveling pets to 25 outside of the horde garrison, there’s lots of encounters, and I’ll slowly be able to make my way to 150 pet battles. I’m using an unlikely team, the unborn val’kyr (need to get her to 25), along with chrominius, and my one level 25 on the team, lil’xt (has a bonus to most of the pets in this area). It’s slow going, but not too intense and I’m able to do these battles between other things, which I enjoy.

As always happy gaming no matter where you find yourself!

How to Fix PetBattle Teams for 6.1

stargrace February 25, 2015 6Comments

If like me, you were sad to see that PetBattle Teams was no longer working after 6.1 deployed yesterday (and this is an AddOn that I highly recommend if you’re into pet battles at all) you can find a fix here:

To fix this for 6.1:

1. Open Interface\AddOns\PetBattleTeams\modules\GUI\GUI.lua
2. Search and replace (ctrl+f or search/replace with your text editor) every “Blizzard_PetJournal” with “Blizzard_Collections”

There are 5 of them in the file.  Make sure “Blizzard_Collections” is capitalized like that and that the _ is an underscore and not a hyphen.

Trying to Focus

stargrace February 14, 2015 0Comment

I’m still having a lot of fun in World of Warcraft, but I’m finding it difficult to focus and decide what I want to work on. There’s still just so much to do. I enjoy working on achievements, but I also enjoy running dungeons and raiding. Then there’s my garrison, and working the menagerie and my fishing shack to level 3. Then there’s crafting, I still need 15 points in tailoring to reach 700. That’s just my main character, I still don’t even have any other characters at level 100 yet, and I have a lot of them (im)patiently waiting at level 90 for a bit of action.

What’s a girl to do?

I’ve been running the Valentines daily instance but so far the mount hasn’t dropped for me – or anyone else in my instance runs. I knew it was rare, but I don’t think I figured on just how rare it is. I did manage to pick up the new pet that’s available this year, along with the toy that goes in your toy box (am I the only one who giggles every time I say that?) but I don’t really have much more use for the tokens so the instance is all I tend to do.

I’ve also been trying to figure out which spec to focus on. I’m a disc / shadow priest, and I seem to spend equal times between both these days. It’s frustrating to gear up for each, especially when they each have their own enchant requirements. For now I’m thinking of swapping my PVP set of gear into my DPS set, so I can at least enchant it with DPS enchants, and keep my heal gear with heal enchants.

I’ve also been thinking of leveling a warrior up and trying tanking in an experiment. I’d like to do a weekly post where I talk about my encounters as a tank, and invite friends along for the crazy ride while I learn how to play. I could invite people from my friends list to run instances with me since it’s cross server, and hopefully it would go a bit better than a complete pug where people would grow frustrated with my antics. Why punish myself this way? Well, it’s just something I have always wanted to learn. Something I’ve talked about on this blog before in fact. We’ll see if it goes anywhere.

I hope everyone has a fantastic weekend, and happy gaming, no matter where you find yourself!