Casual Huntering

Archive for the ‘DK’ Category

Another lack of Tuesday maintenance means a lack of blog posts here at casual huntering. I spent Tuesday morning trying to finish off the Lunar Festival on my Death knight. I had to pug every one of the northrend dungeons, but I finally got it done. I used random dungeon finder to jump into either the heroic or normal versions of the instances. I was either the top of the dps meters or on the extreme bottom (I only recently got good enough gear on my DK to be able to do heroics at all).

Well, all of my focus and energy has been on trying to get these holidays done. This morning I got on the computer and I didn’t know what the heck what to do. I spent like 30 minutes just trying to organize my bank alt’s bags and guild bank tabs. Wow its a mess! That’s what happens when you are trying to level jewelcrafting. I have jewelry all over the place. I have 4 tabs on my guild bank and they are all packed. I threw a few things on the AH, just to create more space. I’m such a pack rat.

Yeah, I then tried to work on leveling my druid, lost focus on that in like 5 minutes. I really need to get her to level 40 so I can get her epic mount. I was too impatient so I only did one quest and then jumped on my main character, my hunter.

So, I decided the SV spec on my hunter isn’t doing it for me. I am now experimenting with a MM build. I was suppose to try it out on ToC 10 last night, but our guild raid didn’t happen. So, this morning I did a couple of randoms. I’m really enjoying this spec more, but I’ve only done 2 dungeons so far, so the verdict is still out.

Other than that, I’m feeling a little blaa. Debating about going back to my altoholic mode that I was in before February. I’ve been neglecting all characters that aren’t on Deathwing (and several that are). Mostly only my DK and Hunter have gotten any attention from me. I’ve really enjoyed dungeons on my DK in Unholy spec so maybe I’ll play around with that. But the ever approaching gear respec makes me won’t to focus on alts instead. Oh, I probably should just pick something and stick with it.

Anyway, I’m trying to get this out quickly because I need to get back to work. So, I’m sorry about the typos that will inevitably show up somewhere.

Okay, so I’ll be frankly honest with you all. If we don’t have Tuesday maintenance server down time, I don’t and won’t post as much for that week. I love writing on here, but I also love playing the game. I use that down time on Tuesday mornings to write a little something something about the game. Otherwise, I’m playing. I gives me something to do related to the game at least you know.

Man, there probably should be more down time (even though I would be very upset about it). I might get more accomplished with my life. dishes, feeding the dog (wait, I don’t have a dog), exercising (well, I do exercise, but it takes great motivation, that of which has been failing me lately), etc. I don’t know…

So, I went raiding on Tuesday with my guild thinking I would be the bomb with my hunter, much better geared than ever before. Or at least I thought I’d do better, but no. My dps was pathetic, maybe worse. I know part of the problem is (as mentioned before) my focus in the game. I’m not super focused on getting my dps up to uber levels with my hunter. My younger brother has been bugging me about it. He wants me to go sit in front of the target dummies and practice my shot rotation and such. I will eventually but I can’t get myself to do it, not when there is so much else to do!! Of course part of the problem was also the fact that I was super tired and I kept dozing off. Not very good for dps when you just sit there like a bump on a log.

Besides lack of sleep, the main thing that has gotten me bogged down lately are holiday achievements. I’ve decided, now that Eliahna (my DK) is level 80, I want to get her started on the road to a pretty 310% speed violet protodrake as well.  And… I still have holidays to do on my hunter. So, I have double duty when it comes to this. At least we are on really easy holidays even if they require a bit of work. I just need to drag my sorry butt to all the elders all over the greater Azeroth. No PvP achievements at all in these holidays so we’re doing good. I’m dreading the up and coming Children’s week holiday. I love the holiday, but I don’t know if I’ll be able to get all of those battleground achievements. I probably should start practicing now, on my hunter, my dk, and my wife’s mage.

So, I should be playing randoms to get frost emblems; instead, I’m running around trying to complete holiday achievements. Thus neither of my end level characters are improving their abilities.

Even if the holiday was over though, I’d probably just be running around on alts or something. I can’t stay focused very well. (Which is why I’m writing the post right now instead of working like I should. )

So, I want to dual spec my deathknight to be a frost dual wielding tank for 5 man instances with family and guildies, and a unholy dps for 5 man pugs and farming. I’ve been tanking all of these really difficult instances, like the underbog, and hellfire peninsula instances. Well, okay, maybe not quite so difficult, but its been fun to play with my brother and his wife, even if my character isn’t yet getting anything out of it.

I really want to also level my kitty druid. Right now she’s sitting at level 36, and she’s been ignored due to holiday stuffs and whatnot. But I really would like to get her to level 80 before the expansion comes out as well.

Rutabaga

Sorry, I’m jumping all over the place on this post today. Randomness at its best, I guess that’s how my brain works and when you get a quick post about what’s on my mind, that’s what you get. Sorry about that.

So, I’ve been ignoring my druid, and I really would like to get back to my other Deathknights (on Duratan US and Earthen Ring US). I’m still trying to work up their professions, which seems like its taking … forever! Especially when one of them have a crafting profession. I’m really guilty about putting those off forever, but not this time, we’re going to level them before we enter the outlands with these characters by golly.

Man, it seems like I had a lot of other things to say. Maybe I need to think on it for a moment.

I got a chance to play with my older brother last Friday. We ran a couple of beginning outland instances with him, his wife, my wife, and myself. We had a blast. It’s been a really long time since we’ve done anything in the game together. You see my brother had stopped playing WoW around last April. I didn’t think he’d ever get into the game again and it was kind of a sore spot for him and myself whenever WoW related issues slipped into our conversation. Pretty soon we just avoided the topic altogether.

At the time he was getting frustrated in the game. He originally started playing so he could spend time with some of his friends. (He got me and my brothers into the game as well). But his friends main goal was raiding, which is fine, but it made my brother feel like he had to raid in order to spend time with his friends. I think he liked raiding so that wasn’t a big deal at first, but his life is even busier than mine. I only have 3 kids, none of which are in school yet. He has 5 kids, with his oldest being 12 years old, youngest a newborn. (I just realized that I wrote a post about him quitting awhile ago http://casualhuntering.com/?p=282)

Keeping up with his friends to be able to raid with them was turning into a bit of a joke I guess. He felt that he was always playing catch up. He was always behind in dps with his mage and he didn’t have time to get the gear he needed. During Wrath of the Lich King he started getting frustrated with leveling as well. Being on a PvP server will do that to you, especially when some random @sshat rogue decides to camp on you. So, his main never made it past level 73. He was frustrated with the game and he was starting to feel like it was a waste of his time, time that could be spent doing something else to help out his family. Well, of course we could be doing something more productive with our time, I don’t think any of us would argue with that, but it took out something that we liked todo together.

The funny thing was that he’d spend a lot of time playing console games so it wasn’t like he turned all of the time into something hugely productive. I admit that I was pretty bummed about him quitting WoW. It was something we could talk about, something we had in common. After that we didn’t talk much. Our interests don’t exactly coincide outside of the game. (I guess it sad that I use warcraft to have something to connect me with my brother, but its better than nothing). My wife really enjoyed playing with his wife (she was the one who got Kydra to play, not me). We really enjoyed doing 5 mans together. So, when they stopped playing (since my brother’s accounts were not active), our wives stopped playing. Of course young children also had a hand in putting that to an end at the time.

So, when I heard my brother reactivated his accounts I got really excited. We ran with my dk as the tank, my wife’s level 59 dk, my brother level 66 priest, and my sister-in-law’s 65 warlock. Great fun was had by all. And hopefully we’ll be able to do it again real soon. I think we’re going to be making a weekly event out of it. It’s a nice way to spend time together, because it’s really hard to get away to hang out when we have children running around everywhere. This way we can get our kids to bed and then play and chat via vent.

So, I’m much happier with the game these days. Good times.

Alright, I finally hit an accomplishment that many people will think isn’t much, but it was totally a big deal for me. I got my second character to level 80.

The funny thing is that my second character is a death knight. Shouldn’t they be the easiest class to level to 80??? Yes, I’m afraid so. So, how long did it take me to get the toon to level 80 though? Well, I rolled her the night Wrath of the Lich King came out, when everybody else was rolling death knights as well. So, it’s been over a year. I remember the death knight starting area being crazier than hell. My wife and I rolled death knights at the same time and went through the death knight begin area together.

Now my wife and I ended up parting ways at level 58. I really wanted to level this death knight. I know my wife is still a little mad at me about that. Well, we do have a pair of death knights that we are leveling on the Feathermoon server at least. Originally, the death knight was going to be my farming toon. So, I leveling mining and skinning on her. By the way, leveling mining can be a pain in the @ss! It took a good deal of time to level that high enough just to take it to the outlands. Since then I’ve enjoyed playing the death knight so much I’ll probably try to get her geared enough to do some raiding, and maybe someday I’ll try to learn how to tank with her.

Well, with my attention deficit problem it has taken awhile to get my first death knight finally leveled all the way. In the mean time, I’ve taken four other death knights through the beginning area to level 58. I don’t keep rolling death knights cause I love the class (I do actually love the class don’t get me wrong), but mostly because whenever you go to a new server, well you ought to roll a death knight. It’s the quickest way to make money and get established.

So, how long did it take to level the dk? When I checked the /played feature it said I’d played this character for 6 days and 13 hours. That’s nothing compared to my hunter, but its still a freakin’ lot of time to be playing a game. My next highest leveled alt is only level 36, my druid on Deathwing. Now getting the druid to level 80 will be much more of an accomplishment. Of course I think just the fact that when I leveled my hunter it was still back in the day before Blizzard increased the speed at which you could level. I tell you, by golly, back in the day the grind from level 40 to level 60 was really bad. And leveling in the outlands took a lot longer as well. So, in my opinion leveling a toon in vanilla WoW was much more an accomplishment than it is now. Leveling from 70 to 80 still takes a good long while, but much easier and more fun with LFG. I would quest while sitting in the queue and then I’d jump into a group and take out an instance somewhere. Keep going if they would or jump back to questing. It’s the ultimate help while leveling. You get good gear while getting a ton of XP.

Well, there you have it, I’m probably one of the most casual guys in the game you’ll know, of course the very fact that I’m writing a blog means that I’m probably not quite that casual, but now I have my second 80. Well, neither of them are geared very well, so I’m still rather pathetic.

Well, I was running to the flightmaster on top of the mushroom town in Zangermarsh on my level 63 Death knight. And for some reason my mouse button got stuck or something and I just kept running. I thought that I was going to promptly fall to my death and have to run back to my body. I think (I’m already dead as a death knight so I’m not quite sure how that works, but we’ll leave that alone.)

Anyway, I didn’t die, I landed on top of another mushroom, so I spent some time mushroom hopping. I felt a little like Mario.