A day in the life of the Grinning Geek.
Posts tagged World of Warcraft
The Gaming Geek
Mar 23rd
So, what about games Jesse? What have you been playing?
I am glad you asked, made up imaginary italics question giver! I’ve been focusing my time over three games. First, of course, is World of Warcraft. We continue to press on in Icecrown, despite a week off for vacation. We’ve downed Rotface and Festergut, which I am pretty pleased by. Putricide is of course proving to be difficult, but we’ll get him. I admit a lot of these fights frustrate me, because for various reasons I’m not really getting to tank. I am kiting, aggro swapping, or AOE stunning zombie chow most of the time. Still, I got my Boots of Kingly Upheavel and my T-10 helmet before vacation so I can’t complain. I’ve been running stuff on Hightower during the week to get frost emblems, which I use to purchase primordial saronite for Tyrolos. It was this method that got me those boots, and hopefully will get me the Pillars of Might. Those are some hot tanking pants, and I’d rather have them than the T-10 Paladin pants, aka the War Skirt.
I am incredibly excited for Cataclysm, even if I think we’ve still got 6+ months til it’s release. I mean, we don’t even have a beta yet. Still, it’s been good to focus on Tyrolos and getting him achievements, gear, etc. I’m a handful of mounts away from my 100 mount achievement, which is awesome. I’ve been doing some light PVP on him, though I hate battleground PVPing anything other than AV as a tank. Even Isle of Conquest isn’t much fun on a tank. I admit, the survivability is nice – but I can’t nuke people down fast enough. And against a spell caster or anything else that can keep me at range, I am owned. (Sometimes I PVP as holy, which I admit, is a whole lot more fun.) Mostly I just want the honor kills, so I can eventually get the 100,000 honor kill title.
I’ve also been working on Tyrolos’ reputations. I missed Burning Crusade on him, so I am working on their dungeon reps, plus the Violet Eye from Kara. I’d love to get the reps out of Hyjal and Black Temple, but that might be asking too much. 
I’m also working on the Thorium Brotherhood, Hydraxian Waterlords, and Zandalar tribe. I know, do I know how to party or what?
Aside from WoW, I’ve also been putting in some time in Star Trek Online. I enjoy this game, but it’s experience is much different than WoW. Cryptic seems to reward grouping, while Blizzard often feels like they punish it. There doesn’t seem to be a massive XP drain if you have a higher level friend come with you, they just scale the encounter to having a high level with you. In fact, the game is a million times more fun (and more rewarding in skill points) if you do everything in a group. So I like that aspect to it. However, with no real end game I am not sure how long it’ll hold my attention. We’ll see – I’m already a Rear Admiral, but there is some content I’ve not cleared yet.
Finally, as I referenced in an earlier post I am playing Magic: The Gathering again. This time is different, because I am not a poor 15 year old, hunkered down in the hallways of my high school at lunch trying to play a game on the gritty dirty floor. This time I have money and a house to play in and friends who play, some of which are very attractive and female. (Another radical departure from the last time I played). I really do enjoy this game, and I like deck building. I find I enjoy big multi-player games more than just one on one, but I do enjoy building decks for both. Diana and I bought a box of M10 last week to fill in some of the gaps in our commons and uncommons, and I was able to build some awesome stuff. I want to play more, so people should move closer to play with me. We can start the Grinning Geek Tournament!
Greetings and Salutations
Dec 14th
Going over to the parents house for dinner tonight. Tamales and Tostadas and other deliciousness will abound. I had a really quiet weekend, spent most of it dinking around in patch 3.3. I’ve picked up a ton of new gear for my Paladin, in truth the only non-raid upgrades I am interested now drop in the new 5-man’s on heroic. I am dying to get back in to ToC-10 and give it a whirl, I feel like I am ready to just smash some of this content and I am being held back. People should be around this week though, so hopefully we can get down on some raiding.
It rained a bit this weekend and was generally overcast both Saturday and Sunday. It’s interesting to me how much more addicted to sunlight I am now that I live in Phoenix again. When it’s cold and rainy, all motivation to leave the house is completely lost. I just want to sit on the couch. Speaking of which, Diana and I are catching up on Season 5 of Lost. Holy crap is it getting good.
Anywho, just a quick update before I go wake Diana from her nap and we get prepared to head out tonight. Enjoy guys!
-J
Guild Holiday
Dec 11th
So, one of my earlier posts mentioned the Guild Holiday. What is the Guild Holiday, you may be asking yourself? Well, let me explain. As a tradition started a month or two ago, those who are available log in to WoW, get on Teamspeak, and we just generally celebrate that it’s Friday. Often time there is the consumption of much libation, and in fact the selection of these drinks is often discussed all week. Either way, when Friday night rolls around we find some kind of activity that we can all do and we hit it. Usually it’s old world raids, like AQ-20 or AQ40, sometimes we hit BC raids like Kara or ZA (tonight’s selection), sometimes we PVP, we’ve gone on a killing spree from Westfall, through Goldshire, Darkshire, and Red Ridge… and sometimes we get too drunk and just run in circles around Dalaran in a giant line of mammoths.
Either way, I look forward to it all week. Tonight is that night, so let’s all raise a drink and enjoy our Friday night!
Patch 3.3, A Storm, & Work
Dec 10th
First, let me start off today’s post with my feelings on patch 3.3. In the last 36 hours, that is since patch 3.3 went live and the realms were playable, I’ve ground through enough badges to buy my tier 9 gloves and legs. This is pretty incredible, and Blizzard is really working to open up the end game to everybody, a fact I do appreciate. Now, admittedly, the value of epics, and tier pieces in general is dropping faster than a …thing.. which drops fast, but I think that’s okay. The reason I say this, is because of Icecrown. If all of these “free” epics get me and my friends geared well enough to get in to Icecrown, well, there’s our reward. We’ll get t10 and high iLevel gear in there, and the nubs will still be rocking iLevel 219 and 232 gear. So there you go. Raiders will still have slightly better gear. But for a guild like mine, that got to the raid game only 2-3 months ago, the ability to fast forward through 6 months of grinding a specific raid to try and get everyone their obscure drops is much appreciated.
So far, the new LFG dungeon feature works like a breeze. Admittedly, being a tank I suspect I have an easier time finding a group than a DPS may, but I am really enjoying it. I enter it, I get in to an instance, we do our job, and we’re out. Wham bam. We ran the new instances last night on heroic, and that was pretty cool. I got a new tanking axe that looks pretty awesome. I still need a new shield. The idea of entering Icecrown, wearing an iLevel 200, one step up from Blue shield drives me insane. But, enough WoW rambling, how bout that storm eh?
We got hit pretty hard Monday night with a storm. Well, all day Monday and in to the night. (Which added quite the sense of urgency to repairing my broken window, let me tell you. Good thing I did too – the winds picked up so bad Monday night it’d have blown the cracked window in had I not.) We got a good amount of rain which is still keeping the dust down. The wind sucked, it blew over my hybiscus, but I think I’ve saved him. I admit, I don’t like winter storms as much as I love a good monsoon. The warmth of a monsoon makes it feel much more alive. Winter storms seem to almost draw energy out, it was so cold and damp on Tuesday morning I tried not to even leave the house. Which, ironically, leads to my next point…
Work. I have known business was slowing down for my boss for quite some time, and without getting in to too many details I think I want to jump ship before it sinks. the truth is, I want to get in to an IT field and this current job offers me nothing in that regard. The advantage of course, is that working from home on my own schedule I can handle schoolwork in any fashion I so choose. I also spend next to nothing on gas, and don’t put a lot of miles on my car. But, those don’t outweigh the stability and medical/retirement benefits of an actual office job, so once the New Year rolls around I think I’ll start looking. I hate searching for a job. Ugh. But such is life.
Anyways, I hope December is turning out well for all my friends and loved ones and anyone else reading this. Christmas will soon be upon us, my brother will be in town, and hopefully I can manage to not stress about all of this for awhile. Take care all!
-J
Onyxia Down!
Dec 5th
What’s more is, I got the tanking version of the Judgement Crown. This is most excellent, because I’ve been wearing the T8 helmet, the one that’s ugly as sin and makes me look like Beaker from the muppets. I love it when a stat upgrade AND a visual upgrade come all rolled in to one item. This was the first time we downed Onyxia, because while we had tried her a few times immediately following her release this Fall, we were not even to Ulduar yet and she had proven to be a bit too difficult for us.
Oh what a difference some gear and practice can make.
We were able to put out -significantly- higher DPS than our first attempts, combined with better geared tanks and healers, and it was easy peasy. I am really looking forward to farming her, I am not sure I like the re-done version of Quel’Serrar because RNG procs on tanking gear scares me (see earlier post on control and tanking and you will understand my distaste for leaving things up to chance) but some of the other gear in there is just cool as hell.
Every time we’ve come to a challenge in this raid config, we’ve eventually overcome it. I am very proud of that.
-J
Tanks: You're Welcome.
Dec 4th
I kind of want this shirt:
I got a chance to play my hunter a bit today, and it’s important to note here that I have never leveled a hunter beyond like 53 or 54. I am old school ranged DPS, don’t get me wrong, it’s really all I’ve played before my current tank, but hunters just never did it for me.
I am enjoying my hunter, but I would argue there’s nothing like playing an alt to remind you why you love your main. So why do I enjoy playing a tank, now, a year in to Wrath of the Lich King?
First, I have to say that one of the things that has made playing a tank enjoyable is the reasonable level of DPS they can output. Now don’t get me wrong, my protection paladin doesn’t put out the same kind of numbers my arcane mage, balance druid, or even my elemental shaman did. Hell, he doesn’t even put out the same numbers as when I was specced retribution. But he can do enough damage, so that when I am out doing my dailies I don’t feel a soul crushing lack of DPS. It takes me longer, don’t get me wrong, but it’s made up for by…
The second thing I like about playing a tank. Survivability. Specifically, the ability to pull 10-15 mobs at once and just AOE them down with concentrate, hammer of the righteous, and all sorts of other lovely abilities. My ret could take a few mobs at once, but my prot paladin is more often limited by the number of mobs I can pull before they start evading out, not by my ability to stay alive. So this is all good and well, but it’s sort of like, “Here’s why I don’t mind playing a tank.” But why do I -like- playing one?
Control. I like controlling the progress of a raid, I like setting up the pulls, and I like the feeling of standing between the Big Bad and my friends. I like when the raid goes, “Oh god, this mob is killing us!” and I go, “I’m on it.” And, a taunt later, they are still alive and happy and my armored butt is building threat like nobody’s business. As a DPS, I was at the mercy of the tanks when the next pulls would happen. I like that I control that. I’m not making them go faster than they can handle, but I can push them, making them handle trash a little quicker than they might otherwise on their own.
I can’t say I am good at being a tank, my raid seems to be progressing well but that is not just on my shoulders. I like to think I am pretty good, but I would argue a main tank is only as good as his raid: I can hold the boss, but if the adds kill my DPSers and healers I’m going to get lonely really quickly. A strong off-tank with the ability to handle adds is vital. I have good DPS behind me – I can tank, I can mitigate, but I can’t do it forever. The DPS behind me has to tear down that boss, as quick as possible. (Especially the ghetto way we do some bosses like Ignis.) And then finally, of course, is your healers. I’m lucky, the main tank healer in my raid is my wife. The dynamic between a healer and a tank is always interesting, and I like that it’s one my wife and I share. I keep the mobs off her, she keeps me alive. I think this has also contributed to me enjoying a tank.
Finally, I’m in demand. I’m not in as much demand on my server (Doomhammer-US) as a healer, but as a tank I don’t have a hard time finding pugs. Everyone wants a paladin with 40k health and lots of threat generation. Maybe it’s an ego boost, maybe I just like the convenience of it all, but I enjoy being able to find groups, either within my guild or pugging really quickly.
Ah well, enough self-important musing for now. It’s Friday night, and that means it’s time for Guild Holiday. What is Guild Holiday? Oh, you’ll see..
-J
THE WORLD of warcraft…
Nov 30th
First, I should note that I’ve had this:
stuck in my head all night.
But back to the point of this post. As I mentioned, I’ll be using this blog for my World of Warcraft thoughts as well. Understandably, not everyone gives a rats arse about WoW so you know, that’s cool. But for those that do care, I am currently playing Tyrolos, a level 80 Blood Elf Paladin on the Doomhammer-US server. How I got to that character requires a bit of explaining to do.
I started WoW in 2005 as a human paladin. This was cool and all, but this was vanilla WoW. Playing a Paladin, especially in the early levels, was a test of willpower. A test, I failed. By my mid-20’s I had rerolled a gnome mage and was -tearing it up-. I played Hightower (the mage) for a few years, up til the end of Vanilla WoW, where we joined a raiding guild, through BC. The guild I was in, towards the end of BC, completely fell apart due to internal stride and some drama llama’s and other crap I didn’t really understand (nor did I really care to.) Up til BC, in order to see the end game you really needed to be in a “big” raiding guild with lots of people, but of course in BC there were 10-man raids. The small group of friends I played with discussed it, and we decided what the hell, we can just make our own guild and play in 10-man raids.
This was all good and well, I switched from a mage to a shaman, then to a boomkin. We enjoyed 10-man raiding in Wrath, got through Naxx, got through some of Ulduar and then we all kind of got distracted and I decided to level a Horde.
I decided to level a Horde, 2 months before they announced Faction Transfers.
Some members of my guild decided to roll with me and we all leveled up, faction transfers kicked in, and those who did not want to level switched to Horde. So now we’re Horde, we’re raiding again, but we’re all in different positions. Our old main tank is now a hunter, our off tank is a elemental shaman, one of our healers is the off tank, I’m main tanking, etc. I am -loving- main tanking. I have always enjoyed my paladin, and have intentionally focused on just him – banging out Loremaster, the Argent reps, the Cenarian reps, the Ambassador title, the Diplomat title, the Crusader title, etc. We’re almost through Ulduar completely, and it feels really good to be just back in the WoW swing of things again and it feels good to be raiding.
The holidays are always a slow period for us as friends go visit family, work, etc so we’re going to be largely on a raiding hiatus for December, but with 3.3 dropping any week I am sure I’ll have plenty of h0t 5 man action I need to get through, so it’s all good.
Okay, so that’s how I got to be Tyrolos. Maybe later I’ll post something of actual substance on WoW. For now, latah.
-J