Tag: WoW

I don’t enjoy confrontation, and I’ve never been a huge fan of PVP though I do partake (it’s probably because I’m constantly doubting my skills or lack there of). Where that doesn’t seem to matter at all because of the method in which battles have been implemented in is in World of Warcraft’s pet battles.

At the start I was pretty intimidated. My first attempt at doing pet battles (in a pvp sense) was during pet week when there’s a bonus to the experience earned. You get a token that instantly boosts a pet of your choosing to 25, and that’s a pretty awesome thing to have. I figured how bad can it be to win 5 matches.

The very first thing I realized is that there’s a lot LESS pressure than I thought because the whole thing is anonymous. You have no idea who the player is that you’re up against. There’s no names, there’s no chatting. It’s just like you’re fighting NPC except they’ve got a different way of doing things.

I started learning a lot about my pet set ups and thinking outside of the box as to what team would be best suited for random battles where I had no idea what I would be up against. The team switches from week to week, but for now I’ve settled on the unborn Val’kyr, anubisath idol, and soul of the forge.

I open with curse of doom, and follow up with haunt. This kills the val’kyr but only temporarily until haunt triggers 4 turns later. This gives my opponents a false sense of security, they think “hey, one pet already down!” – then I sandstorm. I try to time my deflection when their biggest moves are up, and crush in between. I swap pets and repeat the process when the unborn val’kyr is back in play, and spam flamethrower, and deep burn on the soul of forge while keeping extra plating up where possible.

Do I win every fight? No, of course not. But I win enough to earn a few achievements and to earn the quested token that lets me boost another pet to 25. It’s fun, stress free, and if you’ve been avoiding it because you’re not sure how the pvp aspect of it would be I highly suggest diving right in.

As always, happy gaming, no matter where you find yourself!

Legion is right around the corner, and with all of the hype going on lately I’ve wandered back in game to play around with my level 100 characters and perhaps get another one (or two) to 100 before the expansion. I’m pretty sure I’ll be playing my priest when legion hits, but there’s always a chance I’ll decide on someone else instead. Priest is just what I’m most comfortable with, and the character I’ve dedicated the most time to (achievements and what not, even though I know those are account wide).

Even though I’ve had multiple level 100s for quite a while now, I still hadn’t gathered the courage to defeat Kazzak in Tanaan Jungle. Today I decided it was most certainly time. I got a nice cloak upgrade and a few felblight for crafting. Plus the achievement for defeating him. Before that I had been going through the LFRaid groups looking for ones that would reward me the goodie bags for queuing as a healer. I got a neat empowered apexis fragment from that which I’ll probably pass down to an alt to use so they can have a piece of nice gear too. My main is just slightly shy of 700 ilevel, and I couldn’t be more tickled about that.

Having fun in a game that I’ve played (off and on) for years now is important to me and I’m glad I can still get that same sort of joy from it. If you want to add me to battlenet, I’m Stargrace#1783 and while you’ll typically see me wandering through Azeroth there are times I take a dip into Diablo3 and other Blizzard games too (Overwatch maybe?) in time.

As always, happy gaming, no matter where you find yourself!

The Noblegarden world event is taking place right now and runs from March 28th until April 4th. This is a combination spring / Easter type event and I always have a lot of fun with it. This year I ran around collecting 100 chocolates so that I could get the Mystical Spring Bouquet companion pet (you can’t level this pet up, it’s just for decoration). The Noblegarden area was relatively empty, I saw a handful of bunnies bouncing around as we ran after eggs but there seemed to be enough to go around. I’m still missing a few of the achievements from the event, but after collecting 100 eggs I was ready to move on. One of those achievements requires another 100 eggs and you’re supposed to eat all of the chocolate. That means I need 200 eggs. No thanks!

My monk tank is now sitting at a lovely level 48. The monk tank I was playing with decided to level ahead and is now over level 70. I decided to slow things down, and instead of running dungeons I turned to questing. I’ve seen very little of Azeroth since.. well, pre-cataclysm era, and I wanted to see how things had changed over the years. I started out in Thousand Needles, a land that used to be nothing but desert, and is now a giant lake. The quests here were fun, you get an under water buff so you’re able to move about quickly, and you even get a boat that you can summon at will. This comes in handy when you want to get to Tanaris, the next zone on my list. Down at the southern end of Thousand Needles is a path through the water. You can swim it, but that would go pretty slow.

Being back in WoW is nice and relaxing and I’m pleasantly excited about Legion even though it’s still a ways off. Unfortunately the cost for tokens has skyrocketed these past few weeks – probably with the excitement of the latest movie trailers that have been released. A few people coming back here and there who would rather use in-game gold to pay for their subscription (and rightly so). My account is paid for the next year so for now I don’t need to worry about such things.

I should be able to get the little monk to level 50 early this week, and we’ll see how things go from there.

As always, happy gaming, no matter where you find yourself!

After reaching level 33 with my troll warrior, I suddenly decided that I wanted to try out a monk instead. See, I have an alliance monk, but it was one of those boosted characters that I rarely played so even though she’s level 92 I have absolutely no idea what I’m doing. Compared to my other characters she feels like she’s made of tissue paper. I die on practically every WoD quest.

I decided to make a Tauren this time around. Getting to level 12 was pretty easy – and then I had a thought. I wanted to catch up to the other 33 monk I’ve been playing with and I wondered if I could go and solo Ragefire Chasm. Once again my character was wearing heirloom (pants, shirt, shoulders, hat, charms, necklace, cloak, weapon) but would that be enough? I was pretty certain that my warrior would not have been able to solo it at that level, I could barely hold my own at level 33. Maybe monks were different. I decided to go down the tank spec, one I’ve never played before. I’ve always WANTED to tank, I keep saying I am eager to learn and then when it comes time to queue for dungeons I completely freeze.

I was still too low level to pick up the quests, but that was alright. I’d do a run or two to get some levels and then snag them – IF I could complete the zone.

Turns out I could. Easily. I went from 13 to 19 in a matter of minutes, I think I cleared the place twice. I was excited to hit 20 because monks get a daily buff that grats 50% more experience from kills and quests. I filled my bags with some green loot to sell on the AH and by the time I hit 19 I had already fallen in love with the class. We’ll see how long that lasts.

Ragefire Chasm was a breeze – could Wailing Caverns go just as smooth?

It was a bit more difficult, but by then I had a heal that I could use on myself and it was just a matter of spamming some attacks, regenerating some chi, and healing myself if the damage got to be too much. The zone was certainly harder than Ragefire, but just like the first dungeon I was able to solo it with no deaths.

Since I had my 50% bonus buff, I actually went from level 19 to 25 in one run of the dungeon.

Nice.

Now I’m debating Blackfathom Deeps. So far the monk tank is incredibly fun – even though I’m sure it can’t last. Playing through the game this way is exciting, and it’s a break for me from doing the usual garrison runs every single day. It’s exactly what I need to renew my interest.

As always, happy gaming, no matter where you find yourself!