WoW

Meet The Girls: Arysh #WoW #WorldofWarcraft

stargrace August 22, 2012 1Comment

Arysh is my Dwarven Shaman, enhancement (melee dps) for the most part, restoration (healer) as her off spec. Playing a melee shaman is a LOT of fun, although you’ll hear it referred to as easy mode quite often because it’s a lot of casting unleash elements. Unlike Velours I’ve never had much luck when it comes to playing Arysh. She does have the two BiS (best in slot) raid finder weapons but it was not exactly luck that I won them. See they’re flagged as shaman / rogue only, and there were no rogues in the raid nor were there any shaman dps besides myself. There were some healers, but I have a role bonus. Aside from the awesome weapons she has two pieces of LFRaid set gear, and the rest is valor / twilight instance stuff that I’ve picked up.

Arysh works on jewel crafting and inscription, which may seem like an odd combination but I have other characters who are able to provide her with the materials required (like the paladin, who provides herbs).

Her story is quite simple. She was found left in a room at the local Inn of Ironforge. She has no idea who her parents were or why they left her but to be honest she never spends any time thinking about that. She’s constantly energetic and upbeat, and doesn’t regret a single moment in her life. She was raised by the Innkeeper and his wife who had 6 children, and her upbringing was filled with love, laughter, and a whole lot of noise. She spent a lot of time in the Mystic Ward of Ironforge, and when she was in her late teens she began developing her skills as a shaman. She’s one of the most loyal people you’ll ever meet, and one of the first people who will rush out to battle swinging her axes to defend a scored friend.

Meet The Girls: Velours #WoW #WorldofWarcraft

stargrace August 21, 2012 0Comment

I love my characters in every game that I play, and I have a LOT of characters. They all come with their own story and history, along with ‘memories’ of when I’ve played them. I decided I’d go through and introduce a few of them (my ‘mains’) starting backwards from creation. First up, Velours, who is a human paladin, and the last ‘main’ I created. I say main but I don’t really have any one character I play more than the others, I gave up settling on one ages ago.

Velours is a retribution paladin most of the time (that’s a DPS spec) and her off spec is holy (healer). I actually leveled her up as protection, thinking I wanted to learn how to tank. See when I play a game I pride myself on learning as much about it as I can, and the only thing I’ve never been comfortable with in WoW is tanking. It’s just not in my nature to be a leader that way. So after months of trying to convince myself that tanking was what I wanted to do, I gave in and went back to what I’m comfortable doing.

Alchemy is her craft, and it’s come in handy. I’ve enjoyed making trinkets for her to use that don’t cost me an arm and a leg, and in fact tonight took her on her first two Cataclysm raids via the LFRaid finder. I happily walked away with a new pair of pants and gloves, which is already more raid gear than my warlock and shaman have acquired. While gear is NOT everything, obtaining new pretties IS a lot of fun, and it made me giggle and excited that my brand new 85 had managed to win. I won’t lie, her DPS is abysmal, but with MOP just around the corner I was hoping no one would grief me too badly over it. So far, so good.

As far as a back story, Velours grew up in a house just outside the gates of Stormwind. Her father always wanted a son, but Velours’ mother was unable to grant him that one wish. No matter how many times they tried (or how many years) she just wasn’t able to provide him with any more children after Velours. When she came of age and her parents started discussing her future (which involved her being married off and a lot of little babies thumping around) Velours decided to move to Stormwind proper, and enlist in with the Knights. There she found the home she had been looking for almost all of her life, though it certainly didn’t come easily and she was teased mercilessly. She ignored the comments she would get while walking to the temple and instead focused on her training. After years of practice it paid off.

P.S. I don’t think her sword is nearly big enough.

Baradin’s Wardens and Other Factions #WoW #WorldofWarcraft

stargrace August 19, 2012 0Comment

The next WoW expansion is sneaking up on us, and preparations have already been taking place. With the pre-panda-patch that is going live on the 28th also comes the transition of currency, all of your valor will be downgraded to justice, and conquest to honor. The gear that used to be sold for valor will be sold for justice (and same with conquest). There will be no new tier of gear introduced until September when MOP goes live, so it’s going to be a bit of a waiting game. The pvp season will also end and I have to admit I did very poorly this run. I still managed to snag myself a few pieces at least but I missed a lot of AV weekends (my favorite).

In the mean time I’ve been working on achievements. I finally hit exalted with Tol Barad and the Baradin Wardens, which allowed me to purchase their companion, a cute little sea gull. I’m a few tokens short from picking up the mount, but when I have dailies available I’ll be working on getting more.

I’ve also been working on my Netherwing faction, eventually I can get some pretty neat dragon looking mounts. So far I’m only honored, and I defeated Captain Skyshatter which was a lot of fun but also VERY frustrating. It’s a race you participate in (a number of them) and the NPC flies around the sky dropping bombs or skulls or rocks at you that stun you (or damage you, or kill you etc). It took me a few tries but eventually I got there.

The guild is still moving along, we’re all basically waiting for MOP to come out and working on alts and old achievements in the mean time. I’m at 505 archaeology and am hoping to get it to 525 later on today. That will be the last profession I need to cap before the expansion goes live. Next I’ll start tracking down tradeskill recipes for tailoring and enchanting, I own most of them but there are still a few I would like to collect.

Still no mounts from the two Burning Crusade instances I run daily, but with a 4% and 1.8% chance at dropping, I don’t expect to see either of them for quite some time.

As always, happy gaming, no matter where you find yourself!

A Night of Pure (Guild) Win #WoW

stargrace August 13, 2012 2Comments

The members of Dragon Flight had a really exciting weekend, and it was loads of fun. Yes, the entire guild consists of three members, but that didn’t stop us (that being said, if you happen to play Alliance on Argent Dawn and need a home, let me know).

Our first goal was to reach level 6. For anyone who has a small guild, you know what a feat this is. Most guild experience comes from players leveling up and completing quest, other experience comes from doing dungeons / raids and pvp together as a guild team. In order for these to count as ‘guild team’ events, you have to have a specific number of people who make up the total group. For dungeons, this is 3/5 members. I’m not sure how many you need for raids, but it’s more than 3. We ended up doing three heroic twilight dungeons and with one more turn in we were 6. This grants members of the guild a 10% bonus to experience which is really handy to have.

Later on in the evening we decided we would work on old achievements, in specific raid achievements. Our first stop was Blackwing Lair to defeat Nefarian. This is typically a 40 person raid, but we had very few issues – well, that is to say we had very few issues once we decided to read a few walk throughs. See, the first boss (a room filled with eggs) we didn’t read up on anything and we just charged in and instantly wiped because we were fighting the boss. Turns out what you’re supposed to do is take control of the boss, kill eggs around the room, and deal with 42 adds (keep them away / off of the boss because he’s not supposed to die). It was crazy fun.

I forgot to mention that before Blackwing Lair, we decided to attempt an achievement called “Besting the Black Dragonflight” – basically you need to kill Sartharion the Onyx Guardian along with three twilight drakes still alive. The reward for this achievement is a title “of the nightfall” – along with a mount that drops in the loot rewards (and extra loot). We tried this achievement over and over until we found a combination that worked. Bloodgrip and I (on my shaman, bloodgrip is a paladin) were DPS and Toargo tanked the encounter. No heals aside from my shaman totem. Our challenge was to keep alive after Sartharion hit 20% health, which is when he enrages. It took a few tries, but we did it. I won the mount and eagerly added it to my collection. Achievements like this always make me really happy and excited, the fact that I could share it with my guild mates was even better. We might be small, but we don’t let that stop us.

To balance out the rest of the evening, after doing one vanilla WoW raid, and a Lich King Raid, we headed to Burning Crusade and defeated Magtheridon and Gruul the Dragonkiller. The main reason for doing these zones is not only earning fun achievements, but also appearance gear. I walked away with a beautiful set for my priest, and Bloodgrip won most of his paladin set (which he apparently won’t be wearing, as the bright purple is a bit too much for him). Even Toargo earned some neat pieces, shoulders and a shield with wonderful graphics.

It may not have been the most ‘progressive’ of nights, after all we weren’t doing things like Dragon Soul (the latest round of raids) or anything that requires a super amount of coordination or attention, but it was still one of the most fun nights I’ve had in game, and I think everyone else had a great time too.

As always, happy gaming, no matter where you find yourself!