Elkagorasa the Casual

Reading through my various blogs that I frequent, I happen upon the Shared Topic concept a few times. Intrigued by this idea, I thought I'd participate this time. The idea that Pieces proposes: If you had the chance to start all over again in WoW, but your char is already level 80, or level 1 depending on if you like to level or not :>. What class would you pick? What race? What faction? Why would you pick that class/race/faction? And most of all what would you plan to do with it? Raid, PvP or just hang out in Dalaran? Class/Race/Faction - Class - Considering I've really enjoyed PVP as of late, I'd like to play a more durable character, but at the same time, the variety of a warlock is fun. Faction: Horde - I have always loved the misfit feel of the horde.The Alliance has always seemed goody-two-shoes to me; maybe it is just stereotyping from my friends. Race: Undead - There's something about this race that is intriguing. It's the unfortunate, plagued

It's a non-supported, could-get-you-banned, cosmetic only, so only you see it patch. The cool thing, is it give you GREEN FIRE. Aphroditi has figured out how to turn your fire green in-game and on most of your key icons. I don't think I am going to apply this patch, simply as I've recently gone back to Affliction and immolate isn't even on the top-10 keys any longer.

Shopping the other day and saw this battle axe. I am guessing that this vendor does not realize that warlocks cannot equip axes. Against our nature (I guess). I was saddened when I first learned that they were going to let Orc's run with Axe's, but then well not Warlocks (still). Of course, that doesn't stop any RL warlocks from equipping this weapon. While it may not have epic DPS, it may help ward off alliance NPCs equipping a Nerf maurader two handed sword.

The Call to Auction podcast is having a contest at 730PM Eastern on 3/28 (this weekend). First person to successfully open a trade window with Faeghelis will get the 20k gold. You must be lvl 3 or lower, must be tagged pvp. OK, so if you were going to attempt this contest, what race, class combo would you try? Rogue for stealth, druid for stam? Would you send BOA PVP gear to this toon? I guess the bigger question, is the US $25 for a server transfer, worth 20,000 WOW Gold to you? Of course, unless you are already on Onyxia-US.

Ok, to be honest, I am not sure if it's a patch problem, or simply me messing with my key bindings in bartender4. Lately when I am in a really intense PVP fight, I am spamming Shift+MouseWheelUp (Shadowflame), MWDown (Fear) and Alt+MWD (howl of terror). It seems about 10% of the time, I get the PVP Info screen popping up and twice yesterday, I get a dreaded button bar flip. Bar 1 and Bar 2 flip places. No longer is shadowbolt on key 1, but my healy potions. The only way I've figured to get my key order back is to logout and log-backin; a simple ReloadUI is not fixing it. Going to have to research if this is a bug, or assigning too many things to the shift/alt mouse wheel.

This weekend was a really, really quiet guild weekend online. None of my usual suspects logged on, and I was able to log-on earlier than typical (9PM local). So, this gave me a ton of time to PVP (after my daily pug of course). I have come to the conclusion that PVP is basically raiding for the casual player. You get to do something with a large group of people. It often takes a coordinated effort to complete the task and if you're not, you'll die. When you complete that task, you will get some sort of reward, typically honor , which can be used to get gear upgrades. This weekend, I played with a new PVP talent build. I was looking to decrease my Fear cast time and increase my stamina. What I came up with is this ( 56/15/0 ). Looking back at the build, I think I am going to take the 2 points out of Improved Curse of Agony and push them over to a pet, considering this build ( 53/15/0 ) but need to decide on how to spend my last 3 points (Dark Pact + Improved Felhunter or Imp

I was just reading through the 3.3.3 patch notes posted here and noticed a few items that I haven't seen mentioned before. No more farming mounts - The Holiday Bosses and Battleground queues will be converted into a model similar to the RDF. Randomly get one of the BG, you win you get big spoils.  Goodbye PVP Daily .- Get equivalent to the PVP daily if you win ( 30 Honorable Kills worth of additional Honor currency and 25 Arena points ). Second time, get honor equivalent to 15 HK. Raids of 5 people per side . I can't imagine the length of time to complete Isle of Conquest or Strand of Ancients when all 5 people are completely spread apart. Maybe it will contain five 5-man groups? hCOS will have a skip functionality, like TOC, to allow you to skip the jibber-jab said at the beginning (assuming your party has completed it at least once). Yipee, ran Culling last night and had to wait the 4 minutes from start to finish just "Arthas Roleplay". A second fishin

First off, I love the Dungeon Finder tool. I haven't ran so many dungeons or gotten so many Triumph badges ever. In the past few months, I've purchased almost a complete PVP set completely with Triumph badges. Sure, it's only i231 level gear, when most my pve set is working towards i245+, but at this point it's (virtually free). No my problem is, well, I am a warlock and all I can do is DPS. (for some reason healthstones and drain life don't qualify me for healer status) Typical queue times are on average 10-15 minutes per dungeon. That's not too bad, except that I can't dual queue any longer. No more putting my name in 3 locations (pvp, raid and dungeon queues) and see who offers first. To top it off, I've seen Heroic Gundrak 22 times since you started tracking this. I am absolutely tired of this dungeon. I'd like some variety. I'd like something new. So my suggestion: Make the cooldowns a little longer (20 hrs)? This would have the posit

Through a link on another site, I found Kripparian's videos on YouTube . Right before Christmas last year, he posted a video of him soloing Flame Leviathan in Ulduar. Basic strategy he used is pre-staging 4 vehicles, two demolishers on opposite corners, a motorcycle in one corner and a seige vehicle in the opposite corner. Attack with demolisher 1, fight until demolisher explodes, hop on motorcycle, race across to opposite demolisher and start distance shots. He died seconds before leviathan died, but had the siege vehicle to start pounding him if necessary. While there, check out his video on making 20,000 gold an hour. His market is reselling cut gems, but has addons and various tricks to get there. Yes, 20,000 is possible, if you have the mats that he had on-hand.

This fortune cookie message is what I was greeted with while logging into Elk this evening, after transfering 15,000g to him from my bank toon.  Hmm, premonition of his next purchase ? Introducing Mojodishu and Drix Blackwrench , my two newest traveling companions. Drix appears to come from a bit of a shady past, but Mojodishu just appears to be a troll trying to make it in the world. What I'd love to see is a portion of their proceeds, back into my pocket. Use my vendor, I get 10% of the sale (AH tax sort of thing). Now that I am back down to 3000g on my toons, it's time to get back into gem flipping. According to Kripparian , today is the day to post them up!

Fuubaar has some excellent ideas to spice up those daily heroics. Go check out: So, you're bored, what do you do? Heroics Edition Tonight, I think I am going to equip my easter flowers and give everyone bunny ears.

The first time I fought Deconstructor in Ulduar, I was surprised by the whiny little kid voice coming off this boss. It throws a tantrum, it stomps around, it even sits and pouts. Now in 3.3.3 (probably a purchasable pet like lil'kt), we'll see a lil'xt . I just wish these pets would (like the Calico cat + Stinker), they'd interact when put close together.

Last week, my playing on the auction house had netted me a little over 14,000 gold. Yipee! Gem sales are paying off nicely for me. Last night I got a 5x proc on the Cardinal Ruby , and they are selling for 180g on my server, so I am hoping for some nice income this week. Not bad from farmed eternals and a drop off Occulus " bag ". Either way, the mechano-hog is dominating my thoughts. Yes, I want my warlock to have a hog. Looking at the mats required for creating one, I am looking at immediately 12,500g out of pocket just for the basics, then it will require 12 titansteel bars (or 36 titanium bars and 12x3 eternals). Luckily I have 2 engineers in guild that have the pattern and it looks like titansteel no longer has a cool-down. I am going to have to spend a few days in Wintergrasp farming eternals so that I can have them. Hmm, per a comment on the hog parts vendor, they can be farmed from Ulduar bosses . Can hope that the weekly raid is Ulduar this week.. :)  (with a

This is going to make me consider changing my affliction spell rotation (and talent build ), so that I can start using Dark Pact instead of Life Tap.  Warlocks Dark Pact now has a 100 yards range (up from 30 yards) and ignores the line of sight.

The dungeon finder tool, takes advantage of the already existing battlegroup (aka closely related server farms). For kicks, I clicked on my battle group on the WowArmory and found a blue post by Nethaera. The following realms are all a part of the Shadowburn Battlegroup (List subject to change): Agamaggan- PvP Azshara- PvP Baelgun- Normal Dark Iron- PvP Detheroc- PvP Emerald Dream- RP-PvP Greymane- Normal Kalecgos- PvP Lightninghoof- RP-PvP Maelstrom- RP-PvP Malfurion- Normal Moonrunner- Normal Nazjatar- PvP Sargeras- PvP Staghelm- Normal Twisting Nether- RP-PvP Ursin- PvP Wildhammer- PvP  I find it interesting that most my heroic dungeons are run with PVP players. Of 18 realms, 5 are NOT PVP (including mine Malfurion). This puts a bit of a different light on the 5-man groups that I have joined. Now I am going to pay a bit more attention though. Have you noticed any consistencies with your groupings? My 5mans are typically: Healer = Shaman Tank = Pally

The last weekend was an Isle of Conquest PVP holiday. Isle of Conquest is the new battlegrounds introduced with the 3.3 patch to Warcraft. This zone is resource race like Alterac Valley. As you grab various resources, you get different advantages. Own the dock, get catapults and Glaive Throwers (like a boomerang sword - unfortunately the only vehicle I didn't get to drive ). Own the oil refinery, you get resouces (not sure if to build and power vehicles). Own the Hangar and you get a gunship that you can fire down upon your enemy base from above (ICC style). The catapults are NOT like those in Wintergrasp, they are more like the demolisher's in Ulduar. You jump into the catapult and hit #1, and it will launch you into the air. Launch yourself into the air near the enemy base and you'll land inside . The alliance was loving this trick, because they would land on top our base then fire down arrow volleys from above. Worked wonderfully when they'd kill us rez'ing in

Wow.com has a few 3d models data-mined from the PTR build. One is a celestial horse, that looks like it's made from a constelation, pegasus-style.  This, unfortunately, doesn't look like a very scary warlock mount, but darn-it, those pallys (the warlock's goody-two shoes cousin) could take this one for a spin. On the other hand, this would be extremely cool as just a regular mount, especially if it could have the 310% flight. Found this video of a orc warlock flying around on this mount:  

It appears that this druid has captured himself a cat mount and is bringing it home for dinner.

This evening, I ran my first successful Eye of the Storm. My previous luck has been to die a bunch of times, then the horde would eventually lose miserably. Basic idea (afaik): Find and then take over enemy post (one in each corner) until you get the flag. Once you get flag, you run to the center with it (don't mount up) Defend yourself and the flag until it claims that base as yours. As you own a base, you get resources associated with that base. Winner is decided by the first team to reach 1600 resources. More bases owned = quicker you win. As the place you turn in the captured flag is in the middle of the map, there was always a ton of action there. Nice because as a clothy, I had lots of backup (sometimes) and someone to root/cc the mobs attacking me  from behind. Defending a base is a cheap way to participate, at least as long as you maintain the base. :) Succy was still my favorite pet in this. Again she seduced an attacking enemy, long enough for me to get off a d

Last night, testing out my new PVP gear, I participated in the SOA holiday to earn double honor. If you haven't tried this battleground out, here's what I understand of it: The battlegrounds consists of a fortress and a harbor. Two boats arrive at the harbor with the opposing faction. When they leave the boats, they can mount wintergrasp style demolition vehicles and/or pick up seaforium bombs. Your team can either mount artillery guns or run to front.  The goal is to take the rune beyond the 3rd wall.(hmm, sounds like a mini-wintergrasp, except) You start with a count up timer. I believe the attacking team gets 10 minutes to successfully capture the rune. If they do, you flip sides, and then have that long to take the rune back.  Last night, during my last attempt (it was 12am local), the alliance took 9m 20sec to capture the rune. That gave us a ton of time to do better.I believe our final time was around the 5 minute mark, as I didn't get the 4 minute achievement.