Catching up

Hiredgun, Hornlove, and Failsauce have been working on getting their gear caught up. All three of them were in mostly Naxx-25 items when I resumed play, and most of that has been replaced by Tier-9 thanks to the Triumph badges from heroic dungeons.

Hiredgun also was able to get the Felglacier Bolter, which came only about 30 minutes after he scored the True-Aim Long Rifle. For a short while the Dwarf hunter was happy to be using a gun again. He really didn't want to go back to a bow, despite the upgrade in DPS. He'll survive.

Hornlove, who would rather have a bow anyways, has not recieved any such upgrade to her weapon during this new campaign. Still rockin the Arrowsong until something drops. Keep runnin the Pit of Sauron girl!

Both hunters are now specced as per Elitist Jerks suggestion for maximum dps as well as having a Wolf pet. Their gear is not good enough to switch to MM yet, but they're getting there.

Failsauce has been somewhat neglected. I did spend some triumph on T9 head, gloves, and a sigil for DPS. After a viewer of my justin.tv stream commented something like "why don't you tank yourself if you are always complaining about the tanks you pug with", I then decided to bite the bullet and make a tank spec. Failsauce had already been carrying around tank gear (more than a few blues, but 540+ defense worthy). Her very first heroic tanking was... Forge of Souls. Wow. Way to throw the gnome into the fire! I'll talk about this in another post, it was fun.

Well that's about it. Just wanted to give an update on my characters, nothing exciting. I'm hoping to get things ramped up to the point where I can do some raiding again soon.

Altaholic, really?

Hi, I'm Riff. I play World of Warcraft and I'm an altaholic.

Or am I? Just because I have about 25 characters at level 60+ now does that mean I'm an altaholic? Perhaps I just wanted to make the most of the Recruit-a-friend benefeits while the accounts were linked and active. Maybe I just wanted a priest or two for those insta-queues into the LFD.

Perhaps I'm just in denial, and really have turned into an altaholic. It may be why I haven't posted in the last few weeks despite playing WoW almost every day. In any case, I do have a new 80 to announce.

Prinnyraid hit 80 more than a couple weeks ago, at which point she got busy doing Heroics non-stop until completely geared with T9 as well as some of the ICC-5 gear. Having all DPS until now, I never thought I'd be able to level a priest up because of the slow killing. Instance boosting from friends and the new LFD solved that. Now I'm having a good time with the healing role.

Slumpbuster (another priest) had RAF levels granted and is now level 60. I will take her to 80 at some point. Why another priest? For one thing she's on my "main" account and could heal for characters on Prinnyraid's account. And did I mention the whole insta-queue thing with the LFDs?

Some other works in progress are Gratzdude (Tank Pally, yes I realize it's a horrible name.. I rushed it), a 5-man Shaman team, 5-man druid team, and 4 new hunters to go with Hornlove or Hiredgun for a hunter team. Because I had so many levels to grant, I also made a 60 rogue, another 60 shaman, and a 60 mage which I'll get to 80 someday.

But no, there isn't a problem. I can stop making alts anytime I like. Really I can.

Fail tank is Fail.

This is probably not news to most of you, but having a good tank makes a world of difference. I've noticed this especially when leveling my Priest though the 60's using the Looking-for-dungeon tool for the BC instances. Many of the players using this tool (especially in this level) have probably never done an instance, or are at least using an unfamiliar character class.

When that unfamiliar class is a tank, look out. Agrro control? Ha! Paying attention to party health/mana before pulling? Not likely. What should be a walk in the park through these BC instances turns into lots of frustration. Here's an excerpt from one DK tank who kept telling the group how good he was (until some of us mentioned that he was not). Perhaps I should have brought up his lack of DnD use (at all) earlier...


As a healer it's probably most obvious to me when a tank is failing. Usually it means I'm healing myself more than the tank. Maybe I can learn enough by watching the bad ones compared with the good ones so that when I play the tank myself I won't be terribad from the start.

As a side-thought, DK's in general seem to be enjoying the Looking-for-dungeon option. Often they won't find a role in a normal pug. The skill level of these players varies widely. Some will death-grip mobs away from the tank and soak up tons of healing, others will play so well you hardly even know they're there.

Prinnyraid is closing in on doing Northrend instances. Looking forward to it!

Like a virgin

3.3 is out and so far has been well received. One of the most popular new features is the "Looking for Dungeon" feature which makes it so much easier for groups to get formed to any level of instance. Although this is a mixed bag of blessings, most of it is quite good.

I decide to try and do my first instance as a healer (Prinnyraid/level 63 disc. priest). Armed with healbot, I actually had a lot of confidence that I'd be able to do my job well. (to be honest, with healbot, a monkey could do a good job). The LFD interface enabled, my role defined, I just now have wait for a gr... POOF instantly I'm in a group, transported inside Blood Furnace along with 4 other eager adventurers. The group consists of myself, a mage, a pally, a death knight, and a melee shaman. I also just realize that I've never done Blood Furnace before.

Things start off ok but I soon notice all 3 melee classes are going from full health to 40% in a heartbeat. Still unaware of Prayer of Healing (yes, noob healer) I scramble to do the whack-a-mole using healbot. It's hectic but nobody dies. I find out from a friend that what's going on is all of the melee are standing on mines and that's why so much damage is being taken. Doesn't seem to bother them tho, they just keep taking massive amounts of damage doing the same thing over and over. I keep healing my ass off. This continues until we get to the big floaty eye-thing behind the door with the giant lever in front of it. Nobody pulls the lever and we're standing there for a good while.

It's becoming quite obvious that perhaps nobody in this group has done this instance before. Someone finally pulls the lever.. and orcs start charging the group from their cages. After the first wave, I'm the primary target of these orcs as my healing efforts from previous waves is giving me the healing aggro. The rest of the group seems oblivious to this fact as I'm 1/2 dead each wave before the rest of them start attacking. During the final wave it was too much and I die. At the time I thought this might have been normal, but after seeing it done with a proper group later, I now look back and realize how fail this group was. With the short dirt nap behind me, the rest of the instance went well enough and we completed it with without incident.

My pally friend (lvl 66) joined me and we went on to do many more dungeons, having quite a good time. The new LFD is quite good, and one of the best features Blizzard has implemented. It definitely will get people to start instancing who haven't done it before, which is a good thing.

This also makes me look back on how I played the game when Burning Crusade came out. I basically just quested to 69 or so, then farmed the hell out of Legion Hold demons in Shadowmoon Valley. It was a profitable and relatively quickly way to 70.. but I did miss out on all of the instances BC had to offer. Now looks like a good time to revisit them.

Right now everyone's checking out the new Ice Crown 5-mans and raids. I notice that some people (BBB, Larisa, and others) have gone into them not wanting to know exactly how to do the fights. No guides read up before-hand, no PTR practice fights. Just figure out the stuff on your own and have a good time. Sure you'll wipe a few more times but experiencing the fights without having your hand held telling you what to do is good fun. There will be plenty of time to mindlessly run this stuff while waiting for Cataclysm. =)

They pulled me back in

It's safe to come back now, I believe. This blog has been inactive so long it's surely been removed by any blog rolls that once had it listed. I was gone from WoW for about 6 months, now back with vengeance. Got suckered into multiboxing, opening up 4 more accounts for such nonsense, and cracked open 2 more WoTLK Collector Editions. (The battle chests being on sale for $20 each didn't hurt, along with Recruit-a-friend boons.. thanks Blizzard)

I haven't done any of the recent content yet (not since before Ulduar was released). So my gear is mostly Naxx-25 stuff. The 3 level-80's are Hornlove (hunter), HiredGun (hunter), and Failsauce (Death Knight) all on the Cenarius server. The only thing I've done with these characters since returning is allocate talents and do the fishing and cooking quests. I need to do some research on the content I missed before jumping into some Ulduar group. Oh, and as reported.. Failsauce finally got the Chef title which had eluded her forever.

That doesn't sound too exciting so far but I have been doing some other stuff in WoW. A few of my friends from Justin.tv have decided to roll on/transfer to Cenarius so we could play together. In turn, I leveled up some new characters using the Recruit-a-friend. So far I've got these new level 60+ guys to mess around with now:

Prinnyraid, Discipline Priest
Senile, Fire Mage
Asspuncher, Enhancement Shaman
Failbiscuit, Blood DK (multibox?)
Failstorm, Blood DK (multibox?)

I also have a 5-man shaman team being worked on slowly, they're up to level 25 or so. That will take a back-seat to getting my friend's character to 80 and running some heroics. I've been dual-boxing the priest and mage with decent success, questing through Hellfire Penninsula, and now Zangamarsh quests. It's a little clunky so far, as I'm very new to multiboxing, but so far they are both almost level 63.

In any case, that's what I've been doing during my 2 weeks back in WoW. Now with some friends to play with again, I'll probably stick around for a bit. =)

Chef Failsauce

Well it was inevitable, Failsauce was going to get the Chef title sooner or later. Not much else to comment on here, just thought I'd post it. 3.3 is out today and all hell is about to break loose.


Watch live video from Point of No Escape on Justin.tv

Whatcha been doing?

Hello, it's been a while!

I recently have been logging into WoW thanks to the 7-day freebie Blizzard sent me and a refer-a-friend which started me on a second account. I've been leveling a priest with my wow friend and we're almost to level 60 which should happen tonight. Not bad for 1 day, 18 hours played. The RAF deal is really a fast way to level. It's unclear now if I'm back in wow now or not. Time will tell!

Since I've posted last I've been busy with other games:

Eve Online (11-boxing)
PS3 Minna No Golf 5 (once in a while)
Aion (Really fun to start out, got old before the 2nd month was done)
Borderlands
Torchlight
Dragon Age Origins
Plants vs Zombies
Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2

All fine and dandy. I've also snagged many of the deals over the Thanksgiving day weekend from Steam. Looking forward to playing some of those.

So just wanted to say Hi! I'll probably make some more WoW related posts soon.