Nothing, nada, not a single brass razzoo, just a small crappy pile of dust.
I think it’s time to hit the AH and buy a whole bunch of worthless junk in the hope that the RNG smiles on me twice per boss, once on the drop and once on the roll.
But before I get into that, let me bring you up to speed on by week.
As you know I had been contemplating chucking it in, but I got news through the week that a couple of mates might be rejoining us. Admittedly one won’t be clear of his other obligations for a couple of months, but there is light at the end of his tunnel.
So that spurred me on to starting the Sons of Hodir rep grind.
Hang on what’s this, a chain quest before I can open up the dailies? What, not one chain, but 3? 20-30 quests?
Jeepers, oh well head down, fireballs up.
One of the things I am enjoying about being a bit slow (in the content progression sense folks), is that bloggers will mention something, then enough time will go by that I am pleasantly surprised when I reach that same point.
So, Tunas introduced me to this disguise…
And the crazy mount scaling that occurs when doing these questlines, but I was cackling quietly away while I was riding about. I also love it when I am riding and I hear the dismount sound.
I haven’t really dismounted, but I have changed back to my Gnomish self and back again. Coolio!
There are some great quests in there, even for those of us that don’t really like using vehicles in WoW, including Bear back riding…
Not to mentioning jumping mounts miles above the ground to do duels on drake back!
Grabbing prisoners by the scruff of their neck while on a drakes back… bring it on!
At one point I had to see a man about a quest…
Popped in on Hodir.
No, not to slay him, rather for tea and cakes.
He was even happy enough when he discovered I was a Gnome!
Still, if I remember right it’s something like 40 days of dailies to hit exalted, and the shoulder enchants, which is the only reason I am even bothering with Sons of Hodir, which is the majority if a year for me… Unless I cheat… I’ll get back to you on that one.
Speaking of painful grinds, I have pretty much given up on the Argent Crusade. I am only doing the kill 10 chickens quest (or whatever it is), cause I can’t be bothered dealing with the lag-jousts, an I don’t want to trouble my mates to baby sit me on the job.
Lootless Friday.
Anyway, let’s get to Footless Friday, lootless – yes, achievement less – no.
Dual Spec. Yep I did it, decided I would take it for a spin. Starting with Arcane. I was/am petty disappointed with it so far, but then I didn’t know I had any new spells, haven’t worked out a rotation, whether I have better gear for the spec, or even tried to kill something that can handle more than 3 hits.
But it’s crap so far. My evidence is as follows
- I have to count their nose hairs before I can cast.
- I get hit… They aren’t lying in a smoldering pile 10 yards from me.
- It takes mana to cast? WTF?
- There are all these new spells and skills lurking in my spell book.. wish I knew how to find them!
- There’s no fire!?!
Still, I will do some reading, and maybe find a couple of quick boss encounters to get myself sorted out.
Changing it up a bit
I have been asking if we can switch it up a bit, and the boys agreed this week, so it was off to see more raids.
Vault of illusionary loot.
Had my first go at Vault of Archavon.
Archavon: 0/ raid 1. Easy McPeasy
Closest I came to a piece of loot was from Archavon… stupid Priest gear!
Emalon: 7/ Raid 1. Yeah it took us a few goes, but he bit the dust
Obsidian Suckdom 0D
We did OS0D, because a few of us hadn’t done the fight before.
Two down, forgot to screenshot the 3rd.
I enjoyed the fight, but not the loot table, I was even standing at the end.
Black Dragonflight bested… One shot in fact…
Maybe next time we will take 1 dragon into the fight with us.
What now? Naxx here we come.
Well, just outside Naxx for the moment… remember a while back I had issues with dead Horde releasing before I could /hug them?
I just read about someone that hesitated to take an flagged opposition player down the other day, well until his raid mate solved that dilemma.
Well we had something weird happening all Friday night… we were PvP flagged all night, so I guess was everyone else on the server… including that poor cow sitting outside Naxx…
I hesitated, my (PvP hating) mates didn’t…
I didn’t hesitate to /hug though…
Back to Naxx
Arachnoquickier was the objective. Maexxna down in 20 minutes. Of course none of us started a timer, but we think we got close.
Would have been closer, or even success if we didn’t try to mix the trash pulls up.
- Some without DPS,
- Some without Heals,
- Too many with Rezs
It really was shame, cause the bosses went down without issue.
OK, one issue, when Gnome is on web wrap duty, that includes getting the pally out of wrap after the fights over… He will still die…
Dom, Dom, Dom goes the soldiers drum
Military quarter was a piece of piss too.
Dom, Dom, Dom.
The sound of 3 bosses dropping. They could at least put up a fight!
I got to tank in the 4 horseman again.
Apart from TreeHuggerDave being shocked and amazed by my 3 mirror image gnome mates, it went pretty well.
One /fail practice attempt, then watch the melee dance from boss to boss.
GNoLootForggedon
Loot wise, it was raining loot…
Mail, plate, mail, plate, mail, plate (do you get the picture).
The only roll I won was for the solitary piece of cloth that dropped. Priest cloth! Cant vendor it, can’t DE it, gotta delete it.
There were a few shards, didn’t win them either.
No my solitary loot drop for the week was a green…
At least I could DE that, so the sum total of 3 raids worth of loot was 2 dusts!
Our raid’s Mr Offpec (I have a post in the works about Mr Offspec) pointed out that I wasn’t the only one not to get loot, but then he is still dreaming of that 1dps increase for his offspec, considering both of his specs are better geared than my main spec I say… Whatever…
That’s it for this weeks adventures in Gnomerlife, more next week!
Blogday Gifts start rolling in!
Thanks to Jong for sending me the 1st of my blog day gifts… A multiple choice question that will end up with an essay as an answer…
GnoLootForgeddon and Out!
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Oh no… You too have been cursed by the Sons of Hodir slavery. It’s hard to get out of their grips once they get hold on you. Considering your gaming time I seriously recommend you to do some goblin tricks at AH and buy the relics instead.
So you’re checking the arcane side of magery while I’m struggling to remember how to play fire. My stumbling tries in 25 man raids haven’t been impressive. For some reason I seam to lag more casting fireballs than arcane blasts. I serioysly can’t understand why. In 10 man on the other hand the spec feels decent enough.
Be careful writing about your achievement hugging… Isn’t that like an exploit? Don’t want to see you suspended from the game!
Yes, cursed. My sneaky way of beating the daily grind has been nerfed, but will still get me 150 rep per run. But the AH is looking good right now.
Arcane… Will see how it shapes up this weekend…
No exploit in the hugging, though I feel sorry for the steak sandwich, it could have been me… Silly PvP bug… Silly Blizz…
Ahhh Larisa, you saved my bacon… Dropped by the AH, spent some of my TBC cache, and now I am exalted (on the dot) with the Sons of Hagar the Horrible.
Arcane… The jury’s still out…
Being a disciple of Arcane, I am trying Frostfire. I feel like theres just too much going on. Living Bomb, Scorch. Hot Streak…My DPS is down because my rythym probably sucks.
I’m going to give it a few weeks, and see how it goes. I think I’ll be back to Arcane in no time.
lol, and for me the opposite. I have so far found them about the same, but there may need to be some gear changes to support Arcane a little better.
I now have so many mods telling me when things prod, or drop off, that I just find it mind blowing. Search for Gnomeaggedon’s theme song, play that while FFB, feel the fiery love.
Oh yea, and the Hodir got me fully in their grips, just hit revered.
Exalted in 72 hours… Thank you AH and TBC disenchanting!
Arcane all the way!
I’m guessing your 57/3/11 is probably very similar to mine…
You should not be getting hit. Much.
You do have to learn to kite and strafe a bit. And don’t forget to use Slow! Open with a ABlast to get their attention, strafe away during your GCD, nail them with Slow (while moving), don’t stop until your GCD is up again, nail them with ABlast again or a Missile Barrage.
Make a PoM/ABlast macro, don’t forget to use Mirror Images (now 20% less stupid!), Ice Nova, Fire Blast… an Arcane mage still gets to use all the tools in the tool box. We just get to use them while moving.
Thinking I might need to respec out of slow and into a little range. Don’t seem to have much use for slow in my game time.
Following all your other tips, except I have to find where I left fire blast.
I have a macro with AB then PoM. This 2nd one is instant. Not sure if that is better practice, but can’t see it hurts.
Arcane is great my fave by far and I’m sure once you get the hang of it you’ll love it too. Have a read of criticalQQ’s blog on incanter’s absorbtion, its very interesting and a build you can try out. Max SP I got was 4.5k which brought a nice little smile to my face
For raiding I’d skip the slow and also i find using POM separate to AB useful as POM procs that other ability giving + lots% crit and using that when missile barrage procs, then getting your instant AB as well.
For general play and PVP slow is definitely your best friend. Casting it on elite mobs with 100+k HP and kiting them dead is pretty satisfying too.
Enjoy!
I can’t wait for the day I love it. IS sounds awesome.. And is on my list of must tries.
Slow is loosing it’s appeal, and I must admit I am now finding all sorts of uses for PoM. Haven’t used it since my dodgy TBC leveling spec. So getting it as a part of a worthwhile spec is great.
Suppose I should have been more specific, don’t use Slow in an instance/raid for the most part. A lot of Arcane raiding specs don’t even have it, but it’s a necessity for solo questing to cut down on mob nose hair counting.
If you do have it in your raiding spec, it does seem to slow down the casting speed on some bosses and it’s an easy way to get on the threat meter without fear of a crazy crit that pulls aggro off the tank immediately, but you won’t need to keep it up to get the Torment the Weak bonus (DK Icy Touch, warrior Thunderclap… all sorts of goodies will help with that).
I think I might ditch slow at some point… so far FFB has proven to be better for grinding and questing… to paraphrase Rip…
Ashes do no damage!
I will have to have a deeper look at the Arcane tree… I am finding I am the only caster in our 10 mans lately, so I am thinking I need to spec for myself rather than specing for the day we find another caster.
As a devout arcane mage, let me just point out a few fun points for both instances and raiding
:
1) 2 minute evocation! When solo’ing, you can and should be burning your mana, because every couple minutes you can evocate! On boss fights, you have to switch to thinking of your mana as a refillable resource that should be used aggressively (as opposed to frostfire, where, as you mentioned, mana isn’t really a factor).
2) Two arcane blasts followed immediately by an arcane barrage should be enough to take most normal baddies down. If they have just a little HP left after that initial assault, finish them off with a fire blast. The only thing Slow will do is (fittingly) make your killing slower
3) Just do this for me (humor me!): macro your icy veins, arcane power, mirror image, and any “use” trinkets you have into one button, then on a dungeon boss, hit that button right off the bat and start spamming arcane blast, finishing off with a super-speed arcane missiles. Then evocate all your mana back and start with your normal rotation. Tell me that’s not fun!
I’m not quite convinced about Arcane… just yet… not giving up though. I realise that if I am only playing 6 hours per week, to be fair to the spec I need to play it for a couple of months.
1) I can’t say I am *that* worried about the mana management while grinding… actually it’s been more the health management… I am used to piles of ashes at my feet not screaming mobs.
I actually tee’d THD up for an innerverate last week… just in case, but found that I was managing my mana fine… sure I might only have 5% in the tank when the boss dropped… but not 100% nor 0% (for the lat 20 seconds of the fight).
2) I will give this strategy a go… I think I have been mistakenly trying 3 ABs… and I must find where I left that FireBlast…
3) Consider yourself humored. I actually did knock up an IWIN Arcane button for my Arcane spec (I only created one for my FFB spec a few weeks ago, and was happy with the result, so was definitely doing the same for Arcane).
Basic strategy is.
- 1-ish rotation of AB/AM/MB + 2-3ABs
- Pop IWIN Arcane
- Go Hard
- Evocate
Then depending on the length of the fight,
- Pop IWIN Arcane 1/2 way through, with whatever is off cooldown.
- Near the end Pop IWIN Arcane to finish off the boss.
Apart from anything else I have my mana gem in there as well, so it’s a means to ensure I am regularly refilling + upping my +damage