Elkagorasa the Casual

Just a short note to point out that this blog's "name" no longer is two lines long. "Elk the Casual" is a bit more well, casual. :) Still going to focus on my lock lore, but just wanted a more link friendly name. Some day, I'll actually explain how I came up with this lock's name .

Fel Fire has a great quick guide on setting up various addons to help play the AH for profit and fame.

With the 3.3 patch, which appears to be coming VERY SOON . We are about to see some changes to achievements . Brewmaster is going to remove most of the drinking and drunken stupidity. Valentines is going to have some changes, looks like maybe removing the headache of collecting the card, gift packs! The largest impact to me will be the change to Proof of Demise becoming a Feat of Strength. ATM, I am only one of the dailies away from complete ( Proof of Demise: Anub'arak ). Hopefully, I can complete this one tonight!! :) I was lucky enough to find a good group last night to complete the Occulus regular achievement and get Timear Forsees completed.

Go get your 5x Unique Mohawk Grenades. He's in Senjin Village at ( 52.4, 70.7 ). Has a little tent and a white sabercat mount. If you believe in him, he'll give you the grenades.

The WoW Trading Card Game people are doing a drawing for 25 loot cards. Of the prizes they are offering is a X-51 Nether Rocket X-TREME . Go try your luck at that OH SO HARD quiz to get your entry... wait, never mind... less people that enter, more for ME!! /cackle

Check out Fulguralis' write-up on how a warlock can help win the Faction Champions portion of the TOC fight.

This weekend I decided to restart playing my death knight . A few months ago, I had made it all the way through the starting area quests and successfully separated from Arthas control. At level 58, I did the Hallow's Eve trick or treating (DK + all flight old world flight paths = ftw) and got this toon to 59. When this was completed, I parked my dk in the Thrallmar inn. When I started back up again this weekend, I found the Hellfire Peninsula a bit too easy. There definitely something nice about running a toon who can wear plate instead of squishy clothy gear. With that, I packed up my gear and mounted up for Zangamarsh. Things I've forgotten playing an 80 Warlock: Mithril Spurs and Riding Crop still work till 70. If you can survive Shadowmoon valley , you can buy a flying mount at 60 (now).  OR get the DK mount for sale in your starting area for 100g. Oh yeah, I missed out on that. Buy the BOA gear ( PVE & PVP ). At 40 Emblems each, for the chest and shoulder

Looking over at MMO Champion , they have posted some of the new i251 weapons available in the new Icecrown Citadel 5-man instances. This new sword really makes my lock excited. I'll lose my blue gem slot, so my meta might not work, but I think I can find another way to activate it.

Might consider revising my gemming based on the flowchart posted over at MC. Check it out here .

This evening, I logged on to check my auction house deals, and on a whim decided to see how much a Relic of Ulduar was going for. Much to my delight, the relic was selling for approximately 1g a piece. Little napkin math, I needed 600 relics to finish my trip to exalted with the hodir. Considering I just made 600g by selling stuff on the auction house, I wasn't too worried about spending the gold. So, 600g, and 180 clicks later, I found I was 600 relics + 5 dailies + 30 more relics short, but now I am exalted and have shiny new shoulder enchants on my t9 shoulders. Glad to be done.

This lock has always been on the lookout for easy source of gold. Our economy here in Azeroth, or more specifically Dalaran, relies on the constant flow of gold. Sure, I am not one to brag (much) about my bling, but money has been coming easier now that I have started referring to Lil Sparky's Workshop . Lil Sparky has made it very easy to calculate my actual profit on a crafted item, using actual local data. My auctioneer data is fed into a chart comparing the various epic crafted items; showing a grand total to make, and grand total for the mats. On my server, I can see that the Majestic Zircon gem is selling for approximately 150g, but mats are only 45g. That's a 300% margin on the one gem. I just need to check each day, and craft the gem, stack them til Saturday for the best market. Guaranteed sale typically within a few hours.

Blizzard has just released to new pets. These pets can be purchased from the Blizzard store for $10/each. Love it! No endless grinding for random drops for two cool looking pets. Check them out with your Battlenet enabled account here . I purchased both. Once purchased, they arrive in your in-game mail. I understand that they're also BOA, so they can be passed around to all your alts. The panderan monk bows and stretches. I haven't seen him do anything else. Lil'KT is supposed to attack other critters. We'll see. :) Oh, to top it all off, half the purchase price of the Kung Fu Panda is donated to Make A Wish. Good for you, good for the kids.

Got on to run the Heroic daily, and found a pug with 2 other guildies, Baeloc and Carnichan . Sounded like a messed up run before I got there as the first tank dc'd. Once we got a competent tank at the helm, here's what he did. Take the second boss into the inn on the second floor, stop all dps, wait 2 minutes then kill him there. Go back and wait for Arthas, then clear mobs to back door. Once Arthas opens the staircase, the tank and healer rounded up all the zombies by the front door, while we waited at the back door. Along come a huge chain of slow moving zombies, the tank runs into the next zone and grabs a chain (up to first construct) and we AOE them all down at once. Compared to a timed run for the drake, this was absolutely the opposite. Slooow. Took us almost an hour after the two tank deaths. Note: Don't forget to talk to Arthas. If you do forget at the start of a zone, be together when you ask him to continue on. All the zombies spawn immediately when you talk to

A guildie last night just achieved Exalted status with the Horde Expedition and was looking to who's tabard they should Champion first? When I started championing the different factions, I started with Knights of the Ebon Blade , because they had an item that I wanted as an upgrade the quartermaster sold. Unfortunately, by the time I reached exalted, I had already found a better upgrade by doing heroics. That's why I suggest that the first tabard you start wearing is not for the gear, but for the vendor savings. I am always in Dalaran; my hearth is set there. I do my repairs, I pickup reagents, I buy food and drink there. Heck, I even bought my final 2 mounts for the Leading the Cavalry achievement there. By reaching exalted with the Kirin Tor , I have saved myself a lot of gold for all these items. In addition to the vendor discounts (20% at Exalted, 15% at revered, 10% at honored). I purchased the Armored Brown Bear at Honored for 750g, if I waited until Exalted, I could

I am tired of turning off the phase shift of my Imp to only have him turn it back on every 30 seconds. I found this on Warlocks Den : So, here is a simple guide to ensure you get the most out of the interaction between your raid composition and your Imp: 1. Summon your Imp before the raid starts casting their buffs. 2. Right-click on Phase Shift in the Pet Action Bar, or open your Spellbook, click on the "Demon" tab and right-click on Phase Shift. This disables auto-cast. Auto-cast is clearly visible as a little dots of light circling around the border of the spell. Fire Bolt, Fire Shield and Blood Pact should be on auto-cast. 3. Click on Phase Shift. This removes Phase Shift from your Imp. 4. Ask for appropriate buffs on your Imp if any are missing. Don't be shy about it! Blessing of Might and Horn of Winter are not appropriate buffs. Woohoo!! At level-80, I don't worry about this pet. He doesn't aggro very much, so I don't need to hide him. He's free to

The other night I was running a chain heroics with a PUG. The organizer was another destruction lock , with similar if slightly-inferior gear. On Wow-Heroes , he has about a 90point deficit on score. So, why was he reliably doing better DPS than me in hCOS and hVH ? One major difference was in his spell cycle, but what else? Spell cycle consisted of: started with COA and Corruption and sometimes Immolate. Felt like they were on there almost instantaneously. Shadowflame target Conflagerate Incinerate spam No AOE except for Shadowfury . Life tap glyph. talented into Intensity and Backlash , while I went with the more raid friendly SL and ISL . To respond, I am trying a few different things. Shadowflame target(s) when I start fight. This is an instant cast, when followed with Conflagrate , it can trigger Backdraft . Use the haste and no GCD to cast Immolate. Macro to cast Corruption and COA. This isn't working as nicely as hoped on boss fights as COA has a longer cool down than

I told a guildie that I was only 10 badges from upgraded shoulders . Not part of my Tier-9 pieces, but still a very nice upgrade. Checking the vendors in Dalaran, I didn't see any Warlock Tier shoulders there. He pointed out, that I could purchase my T9 piece from the vendor at the Argent Tourney. Now, which way do I go? Wowhead comparison with i245 working towards, i232 (tier) and current I have the Tier-9 gloves from VOA (and currently have the 30 Triumph badges), so the Gul'dan piece is tempting, plus the set bonus of pet crit increased is tempting. Update: After reviewing the PAWN scales, I found that the Tier piece was actually rated higher for non-hit warlock dps, versus the non-tier piece. I plunked down the 30 Triumph tokens and spent a portion of last night getting them enchanted and gemmed (with a Runed Cardinal Ruby). Hodir, I need your rep please.