Hunter Pet envy: Arcturis, the Spirit Best Bear

Ah bears are my Hunter's favorite beast pets. If only Blizzard would give them a knock-back or knock-down attack...

My Hunter's current bear pet has been her tank since level 11 (currently level 75), when she tamed Bjorn in Dun Morogh. Bjorn was the only low level white-skinned bear, until level 54 when you could tame the bear in Winterspring. (almost typed Wintergrasp!)

But this new looking bear is to die for...

My Hunter has been camping his one and only known spawn spot together with the rest of the server, in the hope of getting lucky and taming this magnificent monster...

RL interruption

Work dropped an interruption in my gaming the past couple of days, but I atleast did 1 random heroic to get the quest rewards.

Last night I got DTK as my random heroic. I was once again the Paladin tank, DK, Mage, Elemental Shammie was DPS and a Shammie healer. We Breezed through the dungeon. The lowest DPS was clocked at 4K DPS... eep. Which my characters were that well geared. :D

But it was tough keeping multi-mob agro when all hell broke lose during a fight. I unfortunately took one for the team on King Dread the big dino (darn fears). But nothing serious, as he was at 1% health left.

But I am seeing very similar interaction as what other bloggers are noticing. People see hello, check if everyone is ready, and then nothing until the last boss is down for a "thanks for the run". Done.

If you are new to heroics, and do not know the tactic/strategies for each - you are going to be in trouble...

Holy 3.3 Happiness!

/huge big HUG to Blizzard!

The new Looking for Group/Instance tool is amazing. I tried it for 3 random dungeons last night (before doing all 3 new 5mans in sequence). And it just WORKED.

I used my paladin, flagged her for both tank and heals, and waited.... less than 5 seconds for a group to form.

1st instance was Halls of Stone, no big deal, except for some reason after we downed the Maiden-boss, our instance ID reset itself, and we were told this is not our instance and ported out. :(

Next up, was a Heroic ToC. What was funny here, we had a mage die during the 2nd boss, and when he ran in - he was in a reset instance... We had to use our lock to summon him to get him into our instance.

Last run, AZN. Had an amazing 3 DPS members, blew through the instance in just over 15minutes - with me as healer and a DK as tank.

The new 5mans was interesting. We started a guild group, but healer had to go, so we hit LFG and found a great Shammie healer that has ran it before. The instances are not long, couple of trash , run to the boss and take them down. The gauntlet, fight where Frostmourne rested, and the chase by Arthas was some unique encounters in my mind.

Total upgrades for the night, 3 tank items, 2 heal and 3 DPS (not that I use them). Used my badges to upgrade my tank necklace.

Then flew to the Sons of Hodir and Argent Crusade quartermasters to buy the BOA shoulder and head enchants for my DK and Druid tanks.

I am so amazed by this patch - made my playstyle fun again!

RL Post: I hate being locked into a vendor

Over the past weekend, I upgraded our entire AV cabinet. It started with our 10year old TV degrading - having this big green corner in the screen.

So upgrade to a new HDTV, which meant upgrade Tivo to HD, as well as our cheapo DVD player to Blu-ray.

No problem so far.

But when I started put the Ticvo and Blu-Ray player onto my wireless network... I could not get the %^&%@#&% devices to recognize my USB wireless network card...

After how many reboots, firmware updates... nothing.

I dug into their manuals, read the entire sections on wireless networking, troubleshooting, etc. Could not get it to work.

The Tivo unit say on wireless adapter: "If you prefer wireless networking, the TiVo wireless adapter is all you need for any TiVo DVR."
Mmmm

Put a call to Tivo.. Yep, the Tivo unit is locked down to ONLY recognize the Tivo branded USB network adapter and nothing else.. WTF? Is it seriously that complicated to get a LINUX based dedicated device to be compatible with an open network specification?

The Blu-Ray player was even better: "Wireless Ready ( Wireless Lan Adapter not included)".

Ok... So why is my USB network adapter not being recognized?

Aha! From their How to connect Wirelessly guide: "Samsung Wireless USB Adapter WIS09ABGN.
IMPORTANT: Only the Samsung WIS09ABGN Wireless USB adapter may be used."

WTF people? Its an open network communication protocol. Its like Electricity from the wall adapter!

Why the hell do I need to buy your $15 more expensive, but feature-void product to get your dumb-ass product on my wireless network?

sulk

I get the branded products, but are planning on running a couple of 100' Cat cables through my roof, to connect to the devices.

color my one very unhappy customer.

Arthas arrives

Patch 3.3 lands today.

What will I do? My plan is to alternate between gearing up a tank and a healer. Since you need 210 emblems to buy the ilvl 232 set completely.

My plan (at the momenent):
Paladin - tank
Priest - heals
DK - tank
Druid - Heals
Druid - tank
Shaman - heals
Paladin - heals
Priest - DPS
DK - DPS
Shaman - DPS

That should keep me busy until the next Xpack - Cataclysm.

In between the heroics, I plan to utilize the Raid tool as well to get some 10/25man raid gear as well, which should cut down on my need to run heroics.

I am looking forward to it.

Gear and its inflation in WOW

Recently read this article and it got me thinking how much easier it has become to gear a character.

In Vanilla WOW, you had to run the same end-game 5man instances a LOT, before you had the minimum gear to even consider raiding.

Now, all you need is a bit of patience. Do your heroic dailies, TOC and crafted a couple of epics - BOOM! raid-ready in 2-3 weeks.

I think its an excellent design decision by Blizzard to let everyone keep up, but slightly behind the best of the best of gear. It makes the gear-reset with each major content patch much easier to accommodate by casual and non-raid players.

DK tank hits 540 Defense

Well that was surprisingly fast...

Just yesterday I was reviewing the list of items I need to get to 540 defense to become crit-immune for raid bosses, and today my Death Knight is there.

First, thanks to my friend Kevin for spotting I did not have the tank chest piece from Wyrmrest. That was a quick purchase and enchant to boost my defense rating.

Then I visited the Emblem vendors and picked up a new tanking sigil with my Conquest emblems. This put the Dk at over 500 Defense, but not close to 540 I need for raid bosses.

I joined a guild run on the daily Heroic - Halls of Stone, and then tanked a PUG for the daily normal dungeon Halls of Lightning.

The HOL run is healed by an raid geared paladin (who just switched to Holy-spec), and my 1st time tanking an instance with the DK. But we had a couple of deaths of the lvl 78 Shaman, but noone else.

My critical analysis of my tanking performance: fair to good. I did not rush off without the healer having mana. I grabbed agro when adds were running all over the place, and did not allow mobs to get behind me were I could not parry or dodge their attacks.

And I was reward with the tanking trinket of Loken at the end! That pushed my over the 540 defense rating. I could swap out my defense necklace, for my higher item level DPS necklace, and still be crit immune. I won the need roll with a 1!

But the DK is now ready for any heroic. Her health and armor is nice and high, and her defense skill is where it needs to be. After patch 3.3 (when I hope Titansteel's prices drop), I plan to get the titansteel tank gear (neck, ring, helm and boots for DK, and ring + neck for Druid).
Defense: 540
Dodge: 19.60%
Parry: 12.92%

For my Druid, I joined 1 Wintergrasp offensive game, and we won and I collected 3 badges. Under 20 badges to go for her new tanking helm.

Also had a long chat on the way home with my friend Doug on his plans for the holiday season in the game.

Dk tank pre-raid gear

With my DK in tank spec, and the best "tank" gear her DPS set allows, I started collecting all the true tank gear I could get my hands on easily.

Using this EJ list I got all the reputation gear, as well as non-epic gear purchased, gemmed and enchanted. And landed with just over 500 defense. Mmmm :(

Need 40 more to get defense capped to be un-critable by bosses. I'll need to run some heroics for badges, and hit HOL for the trinket!

On a related note, my Druid is doing every effort to join the Wintergrasp battles each time they occur, to get 40 badges she needs for her tank head piece.

A DK tank rises to the challenge

With my Druid's tank and heal sets close to where I want it to be, I last night got dual-spec for my Death Knight and made her into a Unholy-tank (for multi-mob agro generation). Since my primary DPS spec is a Blood single target spec, I could continue to use that on easy bosses (while in Frost presence).

My Druid has not tanked a heroic yet. I'm waiting for one of the easy heroics to be the daily to give it a try.

For my DK, it was shocking to see how little tank gear I had. I have a good weapon, and 1 tank ring - everything else is DPS. So I hit the Auction house as well as the guild bank, and got some late 70s blues to help get close to the 540 defense rating (sitting at 450 at the moment).

I also got the new set of glyps, but not sure if my minor glyphs are the right ones. Will have to play the DK a bit as a tank tog et a better feel for it.

My my Druid last night I did Vault of Archeron raid for the first time. Had a solid raid and we took down all 3 bosses. I got 1 heal upgrade, so I was happy.