Put your feet up Dirky!

Published by WowDad on July 31, 2008 in General and PvP. 1 Comment

Well my prior post may have given it away slightly but if not, I’ve decided to have a rest from raiding for a while. Not sure how long just yet but for several reasons I am putting it to one side for a while.

I think the following post I made yesterday on my guilds website will explain it better:-

Well guys, you may have noticed I’ve not been raiding over the past 2 weeks or so. I’m here to explain my absence and more.

I suppose basicaly it comes down to time, or lack of it at present. I’ve not had enough free time really to be able to spend 3 or 4 hours twice a week raiding. Also my son Bbcone has practically given up playing WoW (more details of this on my blog) this has had an effect on me in an odd way, hard to describe.

There were often times when he would be at my side when I was raiding, which was fun but for the past couple of months he hasn’t done this and it’s not been the same really. As I say it’s a hard feeling to describe.
In a way its made it harder to justify with ‘her who must be obeyed’. As now it’s seen as a pastime that only *I* take part in and not the two of us. It’s a game the two of us have played for 2 or 3 years together.

I’m not giving up WoW totally, just taking a break from raiding, I hope that ok? and I can stay in the guild?

I’m going to spec for PvP which is something I can just do for 20 or 30 mins when I get chance. To me raiding is kind of a commitment and also requires reading up on new boss tactics, wathing the videos etc and this is something I cant get my head round at present, so I would feel if I wasn’t giving 100% to the raid then I would be letting it down, not my style.

So for the time please don’t invite me to raids as I would politely have to turn you down, which I don’t want to have to do.

Thanks to all you guys who have been so great to me since I joined last November. Many thanks to Darkpact for being a great CL, hope this is ok with you m8.

cheerio for now,
D

So there we have it. The guild, And His Imaginary Friend have really been fantastic and I’ve enjoyed my time with them and hope to do so in the future too. They have some great members and are very friendly and always willing to help. They are progressing well and I’m proud to have seen 99% of their progression in 25 man raids. The guild is now in the top 10 guilds on our realm, Laughing Skull EU, which I think for a non hard-core raiding guild is excellent going. I wish them well and I’m sure I’ll be back to some raiding at some point in the future.

This does not mean I won’t update the blog either, just not perhaps with I got my final peice of Tier 5 loot last night type posts…..

Dad, cancel my WoW subscription if you want…….

Published by WowDad on July 26, 2008 in General. 0 Comments

Well, knock me down with a feather, I never thought I’d hear my 12 year old Son utter those words but utter them he did last week. It came as a bit of a shock but I’d seen it coming over the preceding few weeks I guess.

There was a time when he would get up in a morning, extra early to do his daily quests, then he would come home from school and jump straight on the PC (or my Mac) to continue with some more quests. Or he’d be running some instance on one of his alts he liked to keep leveling. I’d smile when I saw him in Scarlet Monestery over and over and over again!

Then he moved more to the PvP (Player versus Player) side of things on his level 70 mage Bbcone earlier this year. It was hard for him to get in a decent raiding guild with many of the raids going on late in to the night, so PvP seemed a better thing for him to be doing. He’d be in some battleground or other for hours on end or playing arena games. Then along came the Arena Tournement Realms and he wanted us both to subscribe to that so we could play together.

We did this and for a while we would play together, he stopped logging on his mage on Laughing Skull and only logged to play the Arena realms. Maybe 2 months or so ago he would only play for 30 mins after getting in from school then he was off out with his friends playing football or on their bikes.
The weather was nicer and the night lighter so this was a good thing. Then the playing stopped all together, he’d come in from school, go on MSN for 10 mins or Bebo and then be off out playing.

I think he’s just got to the stage where the game has become boring for him and he has done so much with it, kind of ‘Warcraft Overload’ I’d call it. So there we are that brings you a little news from Dirky HQ. It also leads on to my next post sometime soon about my WoW feelings……..

watch this space.

Tier 7 Paladin

Published by WowDad on July 13, 2008 in General. 0 Comments

Tier 7 Paladin gear by Cameron age 8.Well hot off the presses, and specially for Gimpy I bring you the new Tier 7 Paladin gear as we will see in Wrath of the Litch King, Enjoy.

New Tier 7 Hunter gear unveiled.

Published by WowDad on July 10, 2008 in Uncategorized. 0 Comments

Tier 7 Hunter gear by Cameron Age 810th July 2008, Lancaster UK.
Blizzard today announces the new upcoming Tier 7 loot for Wrath of the Litch King. Here is an exclusive picture hot off the presses of the new gear.
Click the image to see it in more detail.
When we get any news or new images of the Tier 8 gear we will be sure to bring it to you here first.

New gear!

Published by WowDad on July 9, 2008 in PvP. 0 Comments

Well I managed to get the remaining few Warsong Gulch marks I needed and got a few extra honor to-boot. So I made my way to Orgrimmar to purchase my shiny new PvP gear.

I was able to buy:-
[Vindicator's Band of Dominance]
[Vindicator's Band of Subjugation]
[Merciless Gladiator's Dreadweave Leggings]
[Merciless Gladiator's Dreadweave Robe]
[Merciless Gladiator's Dreadweave Mantle]

With the above gear I have about +600 more health points and +50 more resilience than  I did before purchasing it. Not a huge amount but I have a few more items to purchase yet for which I only need honor and Alterac Valley marks. I also have not put any enchants on it or added gems yet.

BOGOF Weekend again.

Published by WowDad on July 8, 2008 in PvP. 0 Comments

Dirky?s Honor
Yes thats right, last weekend saw my favorite honor ‘grinding’ time come round again, buy-one-get-one-free time in Alterac Valley. I had just over 30,000 honor at the start of the weekend, when it had finished yesterday I had managed to notch up 63,472 honor, from fairly casual play over the 4 day long weekend.
I’m looking at getting the following to start with:-

[Merciless Gladiator's Dreadweave Leggings]
[Merciless Gladiator's Dreadweave Robe]
[Merciless Gladiator's Dreadweave Mantle]

However I’m going to need some extra Warsong Gulch marks as I only have 13 and need 30 for the legs, it might take me as long to get the extra 17 marks I need as it did to get the 35,000 honor I got this weekend!

Guilds First Tier 6 Boss down!

Published by WowDad on July 3, 2008 in Mount Hyjal. 2 Comments

AzgalorLast night I managed to login about 10pm when the guild were just getting ready to have another crack at the 4th boss in Mount Hyjal, Azgalor. We’d tried to get Azgalor down before the reset but were low on Warlocks that night. (’locks are needed to put a soulstone on party members just before they die.) They had done well and cleared the first 3 bosses, I was grateful to get an invite just as I was completing a couple of daily quests.

Like all MH bosses you have to deal with wave after wave of nasty mobs, these mobs are the hardest so far and need nuking as quick as possible. Once these are clear, or actually even if they are not, in comes the big guy.
He’s kinda like a really pissed version of Magtheridon and has a huuuge big chopper and nasty tail. Every so often he does a AoE silence (which I believe is resistable with shadow resistance buff and gear - think neck piece from BT attunement quest), he also does nasty rain of fire which will kill a clothie Warlock such as myself in 2 or 3 ticks, so get out quick, though his most annoying ability is a Doom debuf he does.
This is a random debuf put on a player which basically kills them stone dead in 10 seconds. During this 10 seconds they need to have a soulstone put on them by a nice friendly warlock, so they can die and ressurect themselves. See warlocks are good for something else, not just healthstones and summoning!

Anyway you need to run to where the off-tanks & Thrall are and die near them, because when you die a nasty doomguard will be summoned on that spot! These can then be killed and kept tanked by this group. Meanwhile everybody else goes full out on the boss.

I think we only lost about 4 people and he soon went down! He dropped 3 pieces of Tier 6 gloves and some epic pants if I recall. Our illustrious  guild leader Incog was first to get the Tier 6 gloves and the right honorable Darkpact - Warlock class leader got another. On the whole a great night.

Stuff that I wants….

Published by WowDad on July 1, 2008 in General, Serpentshrine Cavern and Tempest Keep. 0 Comments

We were asked last night after raiding BT and MH (more of that later) what loot/gear we still needed from SSC and Tempest Keep.
Here is my wish list for TK and SSC….
From Solarian:-
[Wand of the Forgotten Star]

From VR:-
[Cowl of the Grand Engineer] (only seen this drop once? who got it?)

From Hydross:-
[Boots of the Shifting Nightmare] (maybe)

From Morogrim:-
[Pendant of the Lost Ages]

From Fathom-Lord Karathress:-
[Sextant of Unstable Currents]

From Leotheras the Blind:-
[Fang of the Leviathan]

From Lurker:-
[The Seal of Danzalar] for pvp.

From Lady Vashj:-
[Vestments of the Sea-Witch]
[Hood of the Corruptor] (4th T5 piece)
[Ring of Endless Coils]

The guild performed really well this reset, we managed to take our first proper steps in to Black Temple and take down 3 new bosses, an excellent achievement
I’m sure you will agree. The guild leader Incog, runs a tight ship I can tell you.
As we are now 3 out of 5 down in Mount Hyjal and 3 out of 9 down in Black Temple, it’s likely I may pick up some better gear from these two tier 6 raids than the SSC and TK tier 5 raids above.I think we could do a lot worse than learn the Lady Vashj encounter some more and start to get SSC on farm status.
A lot of the guild would then start to get 4 pieces of their Tier 5 set and the bonus that goes with it.

Level 1 twink.

Published by WowDad on June 29, 2008 in Uncategorized. 0 Comments

Just for fun I decided to create a level 1 character with good gear and enchants, whilst still remaining at level 1. I decided upon an orc rogue, due to melee classes making better level 1 ‘twinks’ and an orc as I thought the racial ability of Blood Fury would be nice. I actually did not put the best possible enchants on my rogues gear as I wanted to keep the cost down a little, as it worked out I spent over 250 gold on enchants etc! I’ve ended up with 735 health and 18% crit chance.
I’ve been able to duel level 12 horde’s and beat them just about. Anything below level 10 goes down  very quick, I duelled a level 8 this evening when I took the screenshot showing the health, I beat him in 3 shots - 2 x sinister strikes and 1 x eviscerate!

I put fiery enchant on my sword and even took a trip to westfall (assisted by my warlock Dirky and my son Bbcone) to get the [Red Defias Mask] , which drops off the Defias mobs in this area, eventually! It does not give any stats but looks cool. However by the end of this trip I was about 5 bars of reaching level 2 !.

Doom Lord Kazzak down.

Published by WowDad on June 3, 2008 in Uncategorized. 0 Comments

Last night was not really a regular raid, we decided to attempt a world boss. We gathered in Hellfire Peninsula for Doom Lord Kazzak who hangs about just over the hill at the back of Thrallmar.
Once we cleared the mobs which are all over this area now due to the daily quests which are popular here we started the encounter. The whole thing from start to finish lasts less than 2 minutes. If you dont manage to take him down in this time the enrages become too hard too survive, if any members die he heals himself for 150,000 hp!

We had a few failed attempts, one got kind of messy due to the mobs respawning after about 30 seconds! In my opinion this detracts from the encounter and makes it messy. I think this was a bad area for Blizzard to put all these mobs and daily quests. Anyway he eventually went down for what was the guilds first kill. I got 2 badges of justice, nothing else of interest dropped for Dirky :(