Elkagorasa the Casual

Reading through comments on Killing 'em Softly on reforging, someone suggested using the AskMrRobot.com . After reviewing this site, I am really excited about it. Why do I want to Ask Mr Robot?  First blush, Mr Robot provides you a breakdown of your current gear, what gems and enchants each item has and if you've reforged it. At the top, you get an overall gear score for this build. My first impression was Wow-Heroes, without the " you could be running " information or MaxDPS with more functionality. Now looking a little closer. In your gear column, note those red arrows. These are items that you could still upgrade (based on the filter at bottom you selected). For example, if I select the filter to NOT include Darkmoon Cards , the Witching Hourglass turns into the BIS pre-raiding trinket. There are 6 different filter options (rep, money, archaeology, darkmoon cards, BOE World drops and random drops) and 3 levels of gear (pre-raid, raiding and raiding heroics)

Dear Blizzard, Last year, I tried and tried to get the vile fumigator's mask . What a great role-play piece. It was irritating, it was crazy, it was AGGRAVATING. This year, I get the Toxic Wasteling AND 2 MASKS? I can't auction them. I can't wear 2 helms. It's not even i300+, so I don't even want to use it in a regular dungeon. Don't give me two, give me valor points PLEASE! Sincerely, Elk, warlock without a love rocket.

not Ish and his Wish Dish I am looking for an addon. I want an addon that will track my wish dish list. You know, that list of items that you can pickup at vendors, or the auction house. Stuff that would be fun, or useful later on. Stuff that I blog about here, but don't actually have. Here is what I want this addon to do: When I visit a vendor, say a quartermaster or the AH, I can right-click an item and add it to my wishlist; tracking a virtually infinite list of items.  I'd like at least categories for the different body parts (head, shoulders, etc.) so that I can find items on my list quickly. Allow linking to that item, so that I can reference it in chat, or via Pawn. Have a column that shows me the pawn scale value for the item. (Scale chosen on an Options page). Allow me to prioritize the list so that I can set the weapon upgrade before the boots then change it when I get the weapon drop.  Have items lower in priority when I get a better upgrade (or maybe dr

Last night after introducing some guild members to the holiday bosses, we decided to run a dungeon. Considering they just reached a 330 gear score, they weren't quite ready to take on their first heroics (at least at 11PM). So, being they just came back to the game for Cataclysm, we decided to run COT:Culling of Stratholme for a free bronze drake. 5 levels made this dungeon a piece of cake for a warrior, shadow priest and warlock, like myself. We flew through this dungeon in no time, and they picked up their achievements . Unfortunately, it was the bronze drake we were after and we didn't run it Heroic. Rinse, reset to heroic, repeat. Tank actually died on this round, when overwhelmed by scourge, luckily I was able to finish off the mobs and the priest res'd the warrior, still finishing in time for the drake. The best surprise!? Nope, not 2 drakes. The best part was that we got a guild achievement for this Wrath heroic instance. So, 3 is the perfect number for a her

There's an interesting topic posted up on Twisted Nether for this week: What do you do when a normally good guild mate performs poorly or behaves badly? Your rock solid tank comes to raid ungemmed, your master mage dips down into pre-cata dps numbers several nights in a row or your best healer can't seem to keep from going OOM 2 minutes into any fight. What do you do? WoW is about the players. The people behind the keyboards, tapping the keys, and screaming into vent. When a player shows up for a raid unprepared, I see a few potential issues: /cry no more gold for enchants. Player is (financially) broke. The player knows they need gems, enchants and upgrades, but simply cannot afford to purchase them. New players are often the biggest culprit. They've misspent their quest gold on pets, or buying an upgrade something that may drop better in the raid or an even better tailored item (/wave). Training the guild members to ask for help is often necessary. They don

This last week has been absolute PVP fail for me. I've tried numerous times this week to participate in the random battleground. Each time, it states ">10 minute queue", but then after 20 minutes, it still hasn't dropped. this can't be normal... :( I am thinking it's just me as a DPS on Malfurion, otherwise there'd be more griping. Maybe everyone in my battlegroup is now running guild/premade groups? Ah, well, back to grinding the Chemical Brothers for my hot rocket. Today, I got into the Call To Arms fight almost immediately, but the random battleground still is FOREVER.

I am a fairly avid reader of Darth Solo's blog Wow Alone . He has great gold making ideas, pet acquistions and locations and his experiences leveling, well, solo. As a more casual player, I can sometimes relate to his experiences and draw from them. This last year he's taken on trying to complete the Long Strange Trip achievement, which forces group play, which he has taken in stride. His latest project is BankAlt.com . This site is a great quick reference for anyone wanting to build, create or enchant items. As he put's it: BankAlt is a World of Warcraft database for professions and recipes which helps you determine the materials needed to craft a certain recipe. However, it can drill deep into all the sub-mats and sub-sub-mats and... you get the idea. As a result, it calculates the total number of base components - or raw materials - that you will need in order to craft your recipe. As you may know, I have a similar project to this going on, but Darth's is so

Nah, I am not referring to the Imp vs Succubus debate; let them fight that out on EJ or the forums. I am referring to the non-combat pets. The other night, I ran the holiday boss and was lucky enough to pickup a Toxic Wasteling . I had not read up on this little guy, but he's absolutely cool with regards to the Critter Killer guild achievement. Summon the wasteling, and you get a blob of green goo following you around. As you encounter critters, this guy will pounce on them and eat them. As he does, he grows from small (think frog) to about the size of a regular mob. Large << Small After I saw this happening to the chickens in the center of town, I spent the next hour trying out different critters and trying to judge range.  This pet is indiscriminate.  He will eat rats, cats, beetles, snakes, moths and mechanical chickens.  This pet is short-sited. He will only eat critters that are roughly within 10 yards. This pet will leap on critters when you run by. I was mo

Last night, I got into a pugged Grim Batol. The best kind of pug where someone explains things, doesn't get mad when you die; everyone learns, everyone wins. It was super sweet! I have to give thanks the tank, TheDrip on Dethecus (first Tank I've seen with 215k health!). This was a nice way to see the dungeon considering there was NO WAY I was pulling aggro accidentally off him. It was also a very odd group, with TheDrip, 2 warriors, a rogue, druid healer and myself. No ranged dps but myself. Not until after a wipe or two on Erudax when the rogue dc'd, and we rolled a mage. Just the extra DPS we needed. As my first full clear of the dungeon, there was a number of new fights here. Here are my basic notes: Throngus -  stand back for most of his fight. Has a nasty 'sky is falling' aoe. Stand underneath when he equips shield (which shoots flames!) Dharga - caster that shoots shadow bolts, but also jumps on dragon rather quickly. Breaths fire cone, RUN! Causes fir

I am really excited about the new guild achievements and their associated loot. Here Blizzard has made it nice and easy for guilds of basically any size to pick up some interesting items, just for working together. After reading Poneria last week talk about how her guild finished the fishing achievement, it got me thinking about the various guild achievements that are easily obtainable (i.e. low hanging fruit!!) just by doing what we already do. Here are a few guild achievements that I am working towards: Critter Kill Squad - This achievement is simple enough. As you run around, target and kill various critters you pass by. Kill 50,000 critters and get a nifty armadillo pet (announcer voice) now with more animation (end announcer voice). I use an instant cast spell ( fel flame ) and firing it off as I run around. In the achievement comments, they mention 2 tricks to simplify. 1) run as a raid group, aoe gets 1 point for everyone in the group. 2) run certain areas (see this comme

Looking through my current gear, my next biggest upgrade is my main-hand weapon . There appear to be two (or maybe 3) options available without raiding. Modgud's Blade (normal and heroic versions) Elementium Spellblade (crafted) Modgud's blade drops off the first boss in Grim Batol, General Umbriss . The Spellblade, which has slightly better stats than the Heroic weapon, but has EXPENSIVE price tag (3 chaos orbs + 6 truegold bars + 3 Elementium bars). Considering I just sold a Truegold bar on the AH for 800g, that puts this weapon to have an estimated 5000g starting price. The 20% (or 8% in heroic) drop rate of Modgud's sounds much more cost effective. As I mentioned Umbriss is the first boss in Grim Batol. From the entrance, you face several groups of mixed trash (humans, dragonkin, fellpuppys and elementals), following catwalks down to him. (see my pretty blue line above?). In our festive little party, we had a restro shaman (earthbind and hex), pally, boomkin (

Last night, I logged in long enough to run a few battlegrounds amidst completing a few dailies. One of my battlegrounds was the old Wintergrasp. ( What a sad state of affairs that is nowadays, 3 horde attackers vs 3 alliance defenders . I had to kill npcs to get my 10 kills for a catapult ). When done, I hopped into the portal to Dalaran and explored the now ghost town. Patchwerk is the raid daily.. Hmm. The fishing daily is the severed arm recovery. No new clothes for sale at the point vendors there.. Bored, I hearthed back home. As I worked through both the cooking and fishing dailies around Orgrimmar I realized that Blizzard has been making our life a little simpler. No longer need to fly across the map to fish up arms, or fish from specific zones. Everything is within 30 seconds of the capitol city. No longer needed the dreaded SPICE . Of course, after the first few levels, you have enough Dalaran cooking credits to buy it constantly. No longer need a cooking pot in your inve

This is a public service announcement.  Look at the calendar. See, it's already February. Time sure has flown between release of Cataclysm and now. Have you noticed that your calendar mentions something on Monday the 14th? Mine does. In my house, the 14th has a special relationship with my loved ones. If I ignore that relationship, my game play severely suffers. So don't use to influence your loved ones. It only leads to then . If you want your loved ones to stay , may I suggest a little Romance . Things you might want to consider: So keep this in mind. Your RL is more important than WoW and an unhappy home is 0 DPS (and maybe a whole in the wall).

As I am working on gathering Valor badges points for my Tier gear, I am running through my daily random Heroic. Through this I am getting to meet a lot of other late night players. Unfortunately at midnight PST (playing on a Central server), you get a wide mix of players, ranging from extreme raiders to those fresh out-of-greens.  Labels - As Poneria mentioned, we tend to love labeling players. "Wrath Baby", "Casual", "NOOB" all derogatory labels that are only used to say "I am better than you!". If you're playing a pug, you need my dps. I need the heroic for points. Let's get along. Keep using labels like that, and I'll see that we wipe and/or you'll be finding a replacement. Having the leader ask if my fear is glyphed. I suppose if I ran in all PVP gear, that would make sense, but nope, only my shoes contain any resilience. I am here for the dungeon, why shouldn't I be prepared? I am not a Wrath Baby .  ;-) Impati

Today I ran my first time through the Gilneas  battleground. This is a 10 man battleground new with Cataclysm that looks like something from Grizzly Hills (or I guess the Worgen starting area). It features 3 resources to control (AB style) and the first team to 2000 wins. The easy strategy for this BG is to maintain control of 2 resources the longest. Simply send 5 people to two different locations and defend. No running around, no dashing to the third and try to control all three. Personally I liked the Lighthouse and Mine. You start on the boat (upper right of map) and run out on dock, wait for the bell then race to the flag at the mine. 5 others head over the hillside to the lighthouse. Speaking of PVP, there's a chair bugged in the Hall of Legends . Try sitting in one of the largest throne chairs, and you'll find yourself transported to the inside of the building. Great if the city is being attacked and you're still tagged PVP. Lastly, the Warlock PVP set look