Monday is for the desperate.

It seems to be a theme every Monday night. The desperate people are trying to get their Naxx, Vault, and OS in before the Tuesday reset. The guildless, the undergeared, the lazy, the procrastinators... basically the opposite of what you'd find on Tuesday afternoon's groups for doing raids. You don't want to wait until the last minute to get these done whatever the reason.

This being said, Failsauce had not done either naxx 10 or 25. What gives? Well the 10-man naxx for her guild Chaotic was scheduled for Friday night but was then rescheduled for Monday. No big deal, I was told by the GM that Failsauce would "probably" be able to go, but would only get loot if any of the "mains" that were going didn't need it. Sounded just fine to me, at this point anyone who was a main was unlikely to need much from 10-man naxx.

I show up 15 minutes prior to invites and start hovering outside of the giant necropolis, patiently waiting. I mention on vent that I was hoping that Failsauce was going to get a spot when an officer spoke up "I don't really want to be running other people's alts through, gearing them up." ??? Wanker. I reminded the GM with a tell that I was there and waiting. Start time +10 minutes go past, no word, nothing. I ask again about it and get "We need ranged DPS." Which I guess meant I didn't have a spot. No biggie, but being as this was Monday it wasn't looking too promising for getting in another group. Oh yeah, the GM was running the raid with his fresh 80 paladin alt. Funny, I didn't hear the officer complain about it.

I remain on vent to hear how things are going. The other (holy) paladin is having extreme connection problems. Disconnected nearly 10 times in the first wing. Eventually he didn't return. After they were unsuccessful filling his spot, I spoke up.. "Failsauce still isn't saved.. I could join you for some more DPS". I got no response. Nothing. Then someone spoke up "I guess we'll just do this with 9 then." !!!11!!!ONE!1! WHAT?? They would rather go shorthanded then have my alt go? WTF!?!

So now I'm steamed. I look around for a spot in another raid with no luck. I speak up in vent once in a while between battles but nobody seems to acknowledge anything I say. Is this some sort of prank? I leave the vent server and rejoin just in case something is bugged. Still nobody seems to respond to anything I say. Oh well.. assholes!!

I run some instances, and by the time I'm done with those the guild raid is nearly finished. A couple wipes on KT but they finally get it done. Post-raid chatter fills vent. One guy is asking where to get the cooking recipe for Northern Stew. I mention, "You get it from a quest. Go to the cooking trainer in either BT or HF". Someone else says "You just get it from the cooking trainer." Hmm if this was a prank they certainly are being very disciplined about pretending not to be able to hear me. I continue to respond to conversation, hoping someone will slip up and respond to something, anything I say. No luck. What the heck? Something must be wrong. I completely shut down vent, rejoin the server, and I still apparently can't be heard.

Then I noticed the red light on my headset. It had been muted.

/facepalm

Alts in a different guild

"GET OVER HERE!" is the classic catchphrase Scorpion would say as he pulled his victim close with his roped kunai. Last night Failsauce felt the same tug from the guild master after she left Chaotic to return to her previous guild.

Failsauce: /gquit. "You have been invited to the guild Asylum.. accept? -yes-"

GM's Alt: "?"

Failsauce: "Ahh don't worry I'm just taking this alt out to rejoin her old guild. Amb said Chaotic had too many DKs and that she probably would not ever see any raid time."

GM's Alt: "This is Amb."

*pause*

Failsauce: "Ok, so just to be clear, Hornlove is staying in Chaotic."

GM's Alt: "We don't like having player's alts in different guilds."

Failsauce: "Oh, um, no raid nights would be missed or anything.. this is more or less for off-nights when I want to play the DK."

GM's Alt: "Officer A, Officer B, and myself have discussed it and decided it is not a good idea and would only create conflict."

Failsauce: "Hmm. So you want my alt to remain guildless even tho she's never going to raid with Chaotic?"

GM's Alt: "A lot of guilds feel this way."

Failsauce: Ok, I just wanted to be clear on that.
Failsauce: /g Don't ask guys.. =(
Failsauce: /gquit. "You have been invited to the guild Chaotic.. accept? -yes-"
*Failsauce feels like shit*

I really feel like an ass right about now. I've been a solo player for most of the time playing WoW. Before BC I was in a MC raiding guild, and in Asylum for a couple months. I have a lot to learn about being in guilds I guess.

Things I've learned over the last few days:

1. When joining a new guild, take your time to get to know them a little bit first. Spend some time on vent and see if you are going to enjoy yourself there.
2. When joining a new guild, do not bring any of your alts at first. In fact, don't even mention you have alts. (or just find out ahead of time what their policy is on alts)
3. No matter what, it seems that when other people get involved, there will end up being some kind of drama eventually.

Hopefully this is the last of my Adventures in Guilding type posts for a while. Moar WoW, less drama.

I'd rather be fishing...

No updates on the weekend but certainly a lot of WoW was played. The daily fishing quest in Shat yielded a nice new pet for Hornlove:

Failsauce had some Outland fishing luck too. While trying to fish up the Weather Beaten Journal in the hour leading up to the weekly Fishing Contest she pulled up Mr. Pinchy! And with her first wish, a pet was granted...

Just thought I'd share my good fortune and remind everyone there are still some reasons to continue fishing in Outland. One last note, the fishing quests have become "un-nerfed".. which is to say, you won't get your quest fish on the 1st cast anymore. Something changed in the recent patch to make it so you are likely to have to cast 10 times or so to get what you're looking for.

Gorilladin ... check!

I finally stopped killing the poor gorilla long enough to tame him. Of course I wouldn't have had to sit in a stinky cave for 3 days if I had been more careful. Horn hasn't seen much of the new patch yet so I don't have much to say about it. I do think some people are overreacting a bit tho.

Failsauce did get a little taste of 3.0.8. I respecced/reglyphed her to match Skeleton Jack's build. I'm also still adjusting to using keyboard macros for the rotations. It's a bit clunky now but I'm sure I'll be kicking ass once I get the hang of it. At some point I'll get her into a tanking role.. I guess I just wanted to first see how badly this patch is going to affect my hunter. So far I haven't seen much of a problem with 3.0.8 for a DPS DK... at least where unholy is concerned. They did a number on our Gargoyle, but everything else seems pretty much the same. They did make the ghoul's Gnaw autocast by default. Which is good for me.. since I never used it before, at it works really well! *embarrassed look*

Oh, and those 1200 Relic of Ulduars I had sitting on Horn's bank.. they became suddenly useful when they stopped being Souldbound and started being turn-ins for Sons of Hodir rep. Most of these went to getting Failsauce Revered with them, and the rest sold for a ton of gold on the AH. Super!

And of course, I've been waiting for Fish Feast for over a month. I gots some fishin' to do!

What's in a name?

Rilgon Arcsinh at Stabilized Effort Scope was kind enough to not only add me to his Blogroll but also made a post about doing so asking people to come check it out. One of the comments left on his post said:

"Call me petty or maybe I spend too much time on Rp servers, but one look at those character names and I sort of zoned out and closed the window.

Failsauce? Seriously?"

So it got me thinking, how much importance do you place on your character's names on WoW?

For me, going back to Ultima Online, I've always named my characters based on this criteria:

1. No Permutations/numbers. Yeah, I could have named my main RiffRafff or R1ffRaff but that would have bugged me every time I saw him.

2. Easy to spell/type. My friend's first character on Warsong I still have a hard time spelling. Asylynn? Ayslnn? bah screw it.

3. Something that may reflect the character's makeup in some aspect. IMHO, Failsauce was a good name for a Gnome DK (the worst choice for DK race). Twobitpunk seemed appropriate for my rogue, and last I checked it was also unique.

4. In the case of a crafter, I'd want a name that looks good/funny/interesting on the maker's mark. My main crafter on UO made armor and weapons with the "crafted by Little Girl" mark. They actually sold pretty well to other players.

I've never been one to get that immersed in MMO's. Even with P&P D&D my character names were not stuff like Brock Ironbeard or Willow the Nymph. I understand there are more strict naming policies on the RP servers, which is totally fine. I really do enjoy roleplaying in online RPGs beleive it or not. Still, I still would not pick Tolkien-type names on an RP server. /shrug

Pre-Raid DK Tanking Gear list

It's not a new thread, but it was stickied and has gathered many positive replies. I'm talking about the DK preraid Itemization for Tanks: a gear guide, written by Ragnarok on the official Blizzard forums. I'm going to summarize what's been said there. The goal is to get enough Defense Rating on your gear to become uncritable. (For the DK this means you need 540 defense skill, or a total of 689 defense rating.) Without sacrificing that, get as much stamina and strength in the gear as you can. Here are the items to achieve this as suggested by Ragnarok:

Head: Ground Tremor Helm, Drops in Gundrak(H).
--> enchant with: Arcanum of the Stalwart Protector (Argent Crusade-Revered)
Neck: Chained Military Gorget, 25 Emblems of Heroism in Dalaran
Shoulder: Iron Dwarf Smith Pauldrons, Drops in Halls of Lightning(H)
-->enchant with: Greater Inscription of the Pinnacle (Sons of Hodir - Exalted)
Back: Cloak of Peaceful Resolutions, 20g from Wyrmrest Accord at Honored.
-->enchant with: Enchant Cloak - Titanweave
Chest: Breastplate of the Solemn Council, 52g from Wyrmrest Accord at Revered.
-->enchant with: Enchant Chest - Greater Defense
Wrist: Bindings of Dark Will, Drops in CoT: Stratholme(H)
-->enchant with: Enchant Bracer - Fortitude
Hands: Gauntlets of Vigilance, Reward from The Reckoning in Storm Peaks
-->enchant with: Enchant Gloves - Armsman
Waist: Waistguard of the Risen Knight, BOE Drop in Drak'Tharon Keep(N)
-->Add a belt buckle, throw in a +16 STR (or something else if you like).
Legs: Daunting Legplates, Crafted by Blacksmithing (sells for 30g on my server)
-->enchant with: Frosthide Leg Armor
Feet: Sabatons of Draconic Vigor, 37g from Wyrmrest Accord at Revered
-->enchant with: Enchant Boots - Greater Fortitude
Ring 1: Gal'darah's Signet, Drops in Gundrak(N)
Ring 2: Dragonflight Great-Ring, Drops in Nexus(N)
Trinket 1: Essence of Gossamer, Drops in Azjol-Nerub(N)
Trinket 2: Seal of the Pantheon, Drops in Halls of Lightning(N)
Weapon: Titansteel Destroyer, Crafted by Blacksmithing.
-->(as of next patch) Put the +25 Defense runeforge on.
Relic: Sigil of Haunted Dreams, 15 Emblem of Heroism in Dalaran

So now I have something to shoot for, I'll have a suggestion for an instance to go when someone asks "where do we want to go now?" Will keep this updated with Failsauce's progress towards becoming uncritable.

Where's the beef?

I posted an introduction to myself and this blog on Blog Azeroth, a site that tracks WoW-related blogs. Since this is really the only place so far I've linked the blog, if you are reading this chances are you came from there. Oh and I was excited to see what I thought was my first comment but it ended up being just another one from the bot "Gooooooooood girl" or whatever it is advertising FullTiltPoker. /pout

In an attempt to help me gain focus here, it was suggested to me that I write about Failsauce and her quest to become a useful tank. I thought that was a good idea and will certainly do that. I've much to learn about how to play a tank correctly, and I beleive the Death Knight may be one of the more challenging classes to do it with.

Hornlove did not find herself going to any 25-man raids last night (booo!). But my guild did have scheduled a 10-man Obsidian Sanctim and 10-man Vault. Both of these raids went off without a hitch! Nothing fell for Horn but I was glad to see everything go so smoothly. It's always a bit tricky when you schedule a guild raid for the Vault, as it's not certain your faction will have control of Wintergrasp.

Failsauce then joined some guildies for Heroics as DK-DPS. Since her gear is fairly weak at this point, many chances for upgrades are to be had. We started with Gundrak. I had on my DK-tanking-gear laundry-list (I'll get to this list in a future post) an item I wanted from here: The Ground Tremor Helm. This did not fall for me but I did win a roll on the Offering of Sacrifice! It was some tanking gear, even though it wasn't on my list. After that we headed to Halls of Lightning where I nabbed The General's Steel Girdle for the DPS-set. Before heading to bed I nabbed a Cloak of Bloodied Waters from the AH and had a Spiked Titansteel Helm made. DPS is looking up! Still a long road to travel for proper tanking gear. More on that later...

Monday was Meh

Not much happened yesterday Logged on Hornlove to try and get some Heroics in, but nobody needed DPS. For 30-40 minutes I kept watching the "LF Tank [insert Heroic here]" scroll by on the LFM channel.

I got bored of waiting. Logged on Failsauce (DK), half-jokingly typed "/4 Tank LF Heroic!" to see what kind of spam I'd get. Well the smart people asked "What's your HP?" or "What's your DEF?". My poorly-geared fresh 80 replied with "22k", "550 def rating" and got the expected results "nm".

One group decided to take me on, shooting for heroic Gundrak. I explained as we entered that my gear was not that great and we should take it slow. There were no objections. We entered via the Snake side. I pleaded with them to start on the other side so we could do the kiting technique on this boss, but I could not convince them. A couple quick wipes and it was over. Oh well, did I expect anything different? All I really accomplished is helping to reinforce the notion that there are a lot of bad DK's out there.

Besides gear I need to really learn how to play as a tank. It's a lot harder than it looks. I'm not sure heroic Gundrak is where I should be starting either. At least there should be some juicy 25-man raids to bang out tonight!

Epic Failsauce!

Doing a metric ass-ton of Heroics with Hornlove for the day should have been enough for me, but when the group finally broke up, I still had some play in me. Failsauce had rest exp until 80, so might as well do the Sons of Hodir quest line to try and close the gap.

Don't look down!

Doing this quest line again was pretty fun. The quests are really well done in this zone, like all of Northrend. The Epic quest Drakkensryd was *WAY* easier with a death knight (compared with doing it as a hunter). Its really cool how you help build the different parts of Dun Niffelem, watching the city change as you progress. I think everyone likes this phasing scheme, making you feel like you're changing the world as you play.

Place nice, boys!

I was cruisin' along so quickly, I almost missed the big moment...

There was a brief fireworks display outside a mailbox in Dalaran. =D

In before the nerf

Sure it was burst damage for 1 boss, but it was a heroic boss and 4k DPS! Enjoying it while I can before hunters get blasted with the nerf stick next patch. Not much going on today. No guild naxx this weekend. Spent some time getting Failsauce's cooking and fishing over 350 so she can at least start doing the Dalaran Cooking Quests. More Northern Spices is always good.

The end of Winter Veil

Winter's Veil is over in a couple hours, did you get the Merrymaker title? Not me! Maybe next year. I did cram some Fishing and Cooking on Failsauce, which was time consuming.

Hornlove did find her way into a couple 25-man PUGs which were successful but no hunter loot was to be had! There was much hunter-hate to go around, however, when the raid was wiped by an inadvertant pull by one of the other Hunters in the group. Was fun in any case.

A busy New Years Eve!

No parties this New Years Eve for me. Instead some WoW. At least I got some stuff done. Well, in the way you get stuff done in the game, and not in real-life ;)


For Hornlove, the grind of dalies is over with Sons of Hodir, arguably one of the most important reputations in Wrath of the Lich King. Being exalted with them gives her the option to use use The Greater Inscription of the Axe on shoulders. (Still trying to figure out how to show those cool WowHead desciptions by just hovering the mouse over the link).

Earlier in the day I jumped into an Azjol-Nerub Heroic PUG but Hornlove's Crossbow skill was only 330 or so. I had just replaced my bullets with arrows the night before to start using the Drake Mounted Crossbow. I was worried that my misses would be often and obvious, but it didn't take too long for me to get the Weapon skill maxxed, somewhere around the 2nd boss.

Ninja-weapon training in Heroic PUGs 4tw =)

Later in the day our guild ran a bunch of Heroics, Nexus being the last one. The Final boss was nice enough to drop this for Hornlove:


Whew! Quite a lot for one day, and one post! *stares at bed*