Done and Done.

I'm done with raiding and have gone back to the Horde side to play my Shadowpriest with some friends. I'll still do Kara once a week but thats about it on the Alliance side for now.

http://shadow-word-blog.blogspot.com/

This is my new blog about leveling my priest.

Slowly Crawling.

Spent quite a bit of time on Serpentina last night and got her to 22. I'm trying to finish out the last few Ghostlands quests before making my way to Tarren Mill. I don't think I'm going to have a lot of play time tonight on her since Forsaken is wanting me to run Kara on Mutoh. Boo!

I'm quite enjoying my little Shadowpriest so far and the leveling spec I found online is working out nicely. I'm going through levels much faster than I ever did on Telura when I leveled fully Shadow specced. 5/5 Wand Specialization makes a huge difference but I had always laughed it off before I knew just how much wanding a low level priest does. I always want to go all in to Shadow to get Mind Flay at 20 since I'm a sucker for new spells but honestly the damage sucked and apparently continues to suck until the level 36 upgrade.

At the moment I have 5/5 Spirit Tap, 5/5 Wand Specialization, 2/2 Improved Shadow Word: Pain and 1/5 Shadow Focus. Apparently I should have put the 2 points from Imp SW:P in to Blackout because those extra 2 ticks never really occur since the mobs die so quick at my level. It should be included in my respec at 40 but not for a leveling build. DOH!

I can't wait to get her to 40 so I can respec for Shadowform and stop healing instances all the time. I'm sure healing instances is far from over for me but it's hard to convince a lowbie group that I can DPS for SFK just fine. I think having Shadowform truely defines to your group that you are not a healer and can hold your own in DPS.

I took a break from her for about 3 hours last night when my wife and her friends needed a DPS for normal SP and UB. I took my Fury Warrior, Adiar, and finished the quests I had inside. I haven't played Adi in quite awhile. I leveled her with an Elemental Shaman friend of mine but he stopped playing that toon to work on a Hunter alt. Soloing as a Warrior is quite possibly the most boring thing to do in WoW aside from leveling a healer so I benched her, hoping to someday come back and get her to 70.

Honestly, I can't stand melee classes. I'm a caster at heart and could easily level another caster or 2 to 70 with no problems but I just can't seem to get in to the melee classes. I leveled my Shaman as Enhancement because there wasn't any caster gear.. but once their was, I respecced him and kept him Elemental. I had a Horde Rogue at 27 for months and months until I finally deleted him. I gave the Rogue class a 2nd try but deleted him around level 12.

I've tried Hunters numerous times and even though they attack from afar it still feels too melee to me and I can't get in to them. I've deleted at least 6 around level 11. I even went as far as to go out of my way to get a pet that I think looked cool and sounded fun but it just didn't hold my interest. I don't think it was the micromanagement of the pets so much as the boring gameplay and looking at my wife's 65 Hunter, spamming a Stead Shot macro just doesn't seem appealing to me at all.

The only 2 casters left for me to level are Shadowpriests and Mages.. both of which I've tried a few times and gotten them between 35-40 but can't seem to finish them off. Not because I dislike the classes but usually due to WoW burnout phases. I'm determined to get Serpe to 70 before WOTLK but the Mage is going to have to wait. I have a 25 Blood Elf Mage that I'd consider transferring from Sisters of Elune over to Silvermoon just to save me about 3 days worth of replaying the same crap again but that won't happen anytime soon.

The bottom line is that I'll still do Kara once a week but my main priority at the moment is Serpentina. I've gotten a good welcome back on the Horde side from the friends I had that didn't reroll Alliance with us back in November so at least I'm not completely alone. Twysted has been tanking instances for me on Splendour, his Druid, and Nobs has a twink Warlock he took with us to SFK. It's been fun and it's holding my interest.. I just hope I don't burn out again too soon.

Oh yeah.. the blogs name will be changing.. to what, I don't know, but it'll be changing. Since I stopped raiding on Jandrae there will be a lot less focus on Moonkin blogging and more focus on my Shadowpriest.

10 Most Memorable WoW Moments?

I saw this posted on Gnomeaggedon's page and thought the idea was awesome. I've had my fair share of good moments in WoW but these are the 10 that stick out with me the most.

Naked Tauren Dancing - An old friend of mine whom I don't communicate with anymore actually started my wife and I on WoW. He and his girlfriend were RL friends of ours and convinced us to finally start playing with them on the Horde side of Silvermoon. I had never seen a Tauren before but when he met up with my wife's Rogue and my Mage in Orgrimmar he was buck naked and dancing near a fire. Seeing a naked Tauren doing the "peanut butter jelly time" dance made me ROFL for a good solid 20 minutes. I still have the screen cap of the 3 of us dancing naked by an Orgimmar fire sitting around on my PC somewhere.

Downing Hakkar - Our guilds first raid was ZG. It was our 3rd week in there and we had already cleared the other bosses before but always had to call it due to people leaving. We subbed in a few people from another guild and managed to down Hakkar on the first shot. What stands out the most in my mind is that a hunter friend of ours, Xuda, was in charge of Hunter-pulling the Son of Hakkar's up the ramp to be killed so we could poison ourselves but was AFK during the entire explaination.. and the whole boss fight. Turns out another Hunter did this and we made short work of Hakkar but noticed in the screencap that Xuda was still AFK after the entire thing. It was an ongoing joke in Mente Conceptus for a very very long time.

Sisterfister - After shuffling around a few alts and not really finding my niche' in WoW, some guildies in Mente decided to reroll on a PVP server that a friend of ours roomate that played on. I wanted a character with a retarded name so when I killed people they would say "I just got ganked by XXXXX!!!". Sisterfister was absurd and offensive enough and I created an Orc Warlock with the name. I honestly loved the class and had a blast playing him that when we all left the PVP server (around level 26) I had made another Warlock back on Silvermoon that eventually became my first 60 (pre BC), Abigore. So Sisterfister, who was meant to be nothing more than an offensive name on a PVP server, is the entire reason I have 2 70 Warlocks to this day and still consider it my favorite class.

BoP the tank? - During a routine farming run of the first 4 bosses in SSC we pulled Tidewalker. The fight was going smoothly as always until about 4% when suddenly he starts going apeshit on the raid and picking people off one by one. Our vent channel starts going ballistic trying to figure out what had happened when eventually it came out. Turns out that one of my best in-game friends, Call, who was a Holy Pally in the raid, had still had the tank targetted when he went to BoP someone who was getting torn apart by murlocs and cast Blessing of Protection on him, wiping his aggro completely and causing Tidewalker to destroy the raid. Mass amounts of laughter ensued and it's still an ongoing joke today.

Axe of Directions - Drim and Call are brothers and usually play together. When I met them, Drim was an Orc Warrior and Call was a Tauren Druid Moonkin. They were trying to find something in-game and Call was going all sorts of the wrong way, blaming his Treants for giving him wrong directions. Drim claimed that his axe gives better directions but the way it was portrayed in guild chat was hilarious.

Pull over! - After the BC expansion came out and all the quest reward gear looked awful, Drim, my wife's Rogue Evissia and my Warlock Abigore all got outfits that made us look like park rangers. We pretended to be cops and would run around Undercity giving people tickets for riding their mounts indoors. We've done some stupid stuff over the years but this takes the cake. It only got worse once Drim gave Evissia a Riding Crop for her birthday and our Rogue friend Shadowslip gave her a club weapon that looked like a nightstick. COPS! Undercity: On Patrol.

We come from SPACE! - This was very similar to the above mentioned act except it was only Drim and my Warlock, Abigore. We both had the rocket helm quest reward from Netherstorm and got wore nothing BUT that in Undercity. We would find one person and constantly follow them around, claiming to be from space and looking for our spaceship. If they wouldn't give information we'd threaten to probe them. We eventually found one person who would NOT stop running from us so we would duck behind a corner, put all of our gear back on and step back out like nothing had happened, asking this person if they had seen 2 aliens running around. This went on for a good solid hour.

Rerolling as Alliance - After coming back from a 1 month break, my wife and I noticed that our Horde guild had dwindled down in numbers and that Call and Twysted (some of our closest friends in-game) had joined other guilds to raid. Shadowslip had mentioned that he was Alliance before Horde and raided pre-BC with a guild called La Femme Fatale and if we wanted to raid (which we all did) we could re-roll as Alliance and join their guild. We did so, but eventually left LFF due to conflicts but stayed Alliance and leveled all of our toons to 70. My wife, Shadow, Drim and Call all re-rolled with me and the most fun I've ever had in WoW was leveling as a group with the 5 of us. We had the perfect make up with a Hunter, Mage, Warlock, Prot Pally and Holy Priest and hit 70 in about a month.

Aulbeth - Aulbeth was my first alt in WoW that I created to play when my wife wasn't playing her Rogue. I played my Mage with her and we leveled together but there were times that I wanted to play and she wasn't on. I was already a caster and wanted to try something more confrontational so I picked a Warrior. Vevister was Undead already so I picked a Troll and named him Aulbeth, a play on Aulbath, the Japanese name for Rikuo from the Darkstalkers videogame. I had a blast with him and eventually passed up Vevister in levels. My wife joined a punk-rock band and quit WoW for awhile and thats when he became my main. I leveled him to 52 before getting sucked in to the Warlock class thanks to Sisterfister (see above). Sadly, my Alliance Warrior Adiar is 64 and Aulbeth has since been deleted.

The Burning Crusade - The day the BC expansion hit, our guild headed to Hellfire to check out the new zones and instances. The mass amount of people that were out there questing was INSANE and I had never seen that many people online at one time. Waiting for respawns sucked but 1,000+ horde mauling Fel Orcs and queing up for Ramparts groups was jawdropping. My Warlock Abigore, my RL friends Chikin (feral drood) and Burger (resto shaman), and my in-game friends Bulldren (enhancement shaman) and Twysted (mage) ran it for the first time and had a blast figuring out the new bosses and pulls. No one had ran the place before so no one knew what to do. It was totally a great experiance with good friends at the time.

I know I said Top 10 but there was 1 more thing worth noting.

My first BG - Bulldren was a really good friend of ours in-game who we had met in a PuG for SFK while leveling Vevister and Evissia. We needed a healer for Arugal and his roomate actually had a Troll Priest he brought in to finish the job. They wound up being really cool people and we ran instances with them nightly, farming SFK and BFD. His roomate played a T2 Mage in a raiding guild over on a PVP server and talked us in to running WSG. I had never done PVP before and neither had my wife so we were both a little nervous. We played 1 game but it wound up being pretty drawn out. It was tied up 2-2 and the server was about to restart. We snagged the Alliance flag and our carrier was getting beat on pretty badly. He made it to our tunnel, I Blinked over to him and Frost Nova'd the 3 attackers which allowed us to cap the flag and win the game with a few minutes left before server restarts. Before I logged, Bull whispered me and said "it was your Frost Nova that saved the day, man!" and I actually felt awesome for a minute lol.. that was until the next day when we got smoked by level 29 twink pre-mades and I learned to hate a few select Alliance players.

When PuGs attack!

Last night I dinged 17 on Serpe but it was not without it's fair share of work.

I had some RFC quests left in my log and a group was looking for a DPS so I volunteered my services. The Mage in the group insisted on sheep pulling whenever they wanted to, regardless of who was AFK, and even pulled Taragaman. The only DPS they were doing was spamming Arcane Explosion even on one mob. The Rogue in the group seemed to know how to play but was overexaggerating quite a bit and cussing the Mage out for being stupid, for lack of a better term. It's RFC, not Kara, but yes.. it was very annoying having the Mage rush up in front of the tank, Fireblast something and then Sheep it while 2 other mobs chase after her. With her spamming AE until she was OOM it was pretty much impossible for our Concecration-less Pally tank to regain aggro.

To make matters worse, after we drop the first boss the group starts congratulating each other and starts to hearth out. Apparently they think this is the end of the instance.. all 4 of them.. all from different guilds. So that ended my first RFC run. Good times.

A T6 raider friend of mine ran me through RFC after he got out of Black Temple so I could finish my quests and then hopped on his 22 Druid to run SFK. He drug me along to heal (*GASP*) and everything went fine. I even got the Belt of Arugal to bank for 3 more levels. w00t!

That was the jest of my WoW evening. I hate lowbie pugs but they make for great stories. I'm sure I'll have a few more on my way up on Serpe!

I see Pally Tanking and Face Melting in My Future.

I ran Kara last night for hopefully the last time on Jandrae. I'm just over the drops there lol. That is such a petty reason but I've been running Kara once a week for 2 months and haven't seen the staff from Curator or the dagger from Prince once. I've killed Ahune about 20 times and have never seen his staff once. I've ran heroic Magisters and haven't seen the dagger or mace once. I'm having horrible luck with weapons and I don't want to farm honor for the S2 staff. 27k honor is a bit much methinks.

There are talks within Forsaken of a possible ZA team forming and running it every 3 days. I'd be down for that.. but for the time being I'm just going to play my new Horde alts.


Serpentina is the Shadowpriest I mentioned earlier. Last night I got her close to 14 but it was getting late. I also sucked it up and picked up tailoring again and leveled that up a little.


Vahl is my new Blood Elf Paladin that I'll be leveling as Ret until about 50 and then respeccing Prot from there on out. I had a Paladin last year around 34 but I deleted him. I was leveling as Holy like a tard and just didn't care for him anymore. This will be a nice change to switch it up between a DPS class and a tank.

I need to invest a couple solid hours of questing to blow through some levels for Serpe (rhymes with herpe, yes) and to at least get Vahl in to the double digits.

They'll be moving up slowly but hopefully I'll enjoy the level grind ;)

Another One Bites the Dust?

I made my post in the TD forums that I was going to discontinue raiding with them. Raiding until 530am is brutal. 330am is my limit, I think. I just don't get enough sleep with my current work schedule to consider raiding anymore.

Chalk up a 4th 70 that I've raided on and quit. Ouch. Usually it's guild politics and favoritism that makes me give up but that wasn't the case this time. There didn't seem to be ANY politics or favoritism going on in TD at all and I really admired that about them. They're a fish in a big pond of raiding guilds just trying to make a name for themselves and I wish them all the best.

Where does that leave me? Focusing on my new Horde toons and maybe doing Kara once a week on Jandrae or Mutoh.. I dunno.. What happened on the Horde side last November is happening on the Alliance side now. I WANT to do stuff but no one else does. Pugging a tank or healer for a heroic is a nightmare.

I R Face Melter?

The move is FINALLY over. Finally I can get back to playing WoW regularly but I do plan on cutting back my play time. After taking time away from the game and actually DOING stuff thats productive IRL you slowly realize how time consuming WoW really is.

Most likely I will still raid 3 nights a week with Total Dominance on Jandrae but I've decided to do a total 180 and roll a Horde Shadowpriest to toy around with. I'm not unfamiliar with the Horde as I have a 70 Undead Warlock over there but I think it's best to go that way for now. I have some friends over there whom I haven't played with in a long time and I'd like to see the new zones when WOTLK comes out from a Horde perspective. Since I'll most likely level my Alliance Warlock to 80 I don't want to level Abigore as well.

This will also allow me to level at my own pace and knock out a few quests here and there in my free time without the hassle of having to commit to anything.

My wife and I had this talk to other day as we're both in the burnout phase of WoW. What we think that makes the game start to lose its luster is commitment. Video games are fun for people because it's something to do in your free time, but once you HAVE to be online at a certain time for a certain amount of time and HAVE to spend an hour or more per day doing dailies to fund repair costs and HAVE to farm for consumables it starts to feel more like a second job and less like a video game.

Some people strive for this but I'm starting to think it's not for me. The most fun I've had in WoW is playing with friends, either leveling alts or running dungeons but as soon as raiding came in to the picture and that dreaded "C word" became mandatory WoW slowly went downhill for me.

For my Shadowpriest I chose Horde for a change of scenery again and went with a female Undead toon. I love their casting animations and they look uber in Shadowform which is the whole reason to play a caster IMO. I started off doing the Undead quest hubs until about 11. At that point I ran around to all the capital cities and picked up the RFC quests & flight paths and headed off to Ghostlands to quest. At the moment I'm only level 12 but I haven't had to worry about being anywhere at any certain time at all so far and I'll admit it feels nice.

Do I plan on hitting 70 with the new Shadowpriest? Maybe. Am I in a hurry? Not at all. Do I HAVE to be online if I don't want to be? No sir.