i have not published in 3 months i know i need to, i have been busy with class and there has not been that much progress

Undergeared and making progress

The only T4 Raid I have done is Kara, and I don't have the gear that would make me an "elite" healer yet. But my Guild needs me to progress in gear and in ability so I have been going on T5 and T6 raids with them. It is a great way to gain experience. I usually get assigned to healing a tank while doing raid healers with one or two other healers, nothing to challenging. I downed Lurker in SSC with the guild last week and then they switched me out, I really did not care because I got some raid experience and some DPK!
Last night we did BT. As a guild we have only killed the first boss, so knew it would be a good raid if we downed Supremus. As we were fighting Naj'entus the first time people were not removing spikes and throwing them so we downed him to 3% with only 6 guys left and his shield recharged him back to 8% /wipe. Our next try went really well and we downed him without much of an issue. All that dropped was mail/plate grrr. We then moved onto some mob killing and Supremus. During our first encounter I went down fast! I walked right on top of a volcano and bit it hard. This attempt ultimately lead to a wipe so we grouped back up and went for it. and you know what second time was a charm! maybe it was because we were all fueled with American pride knowing that Michal Phelps just won his 10th gold medal but we performed that encounter like it was our job. only 3 or 4 people went down and we nuked the hell out of him! we went crazy on vent!


that is me on the far left getting my dance on. for some reason the guild did not wanna take a picture of me tree-bagging him....

it was approaching the end of raid time so we decided to make a push towards Shade and give a whack at him. because no one thought we would get that far, no one really read up about this fight and it showed. I think it was a full wipe within a minute and a half. but we were so proud of ourselves at that point no one really cared.

Right now I am working on getting geared up, because I know I need to put up bigger numbers. We had 9 people healing last night and I finished in a respectable 7th place. Not bad for being way under geared (I still have a couple greens).

Lucky

Ok so my younger brother told me yesterday that he wants to get into World Of Warcraft. I don't know why but i did not think about the whole recruiting thing. Then today I was checking the guild forms and everyone was going crazy about the new benefits of recruiting. I quickly send an invite out to my brother and call him, at work mind you. THANK GOD he had not signed up yet!!! He went out last night and purchased the game and a 2 month card JACKPOT!!! I get this fancy new Mount!



Now for all of you who have not read about the added benefits What is "Recruit-A-Friend"?

Ok a lot going on there. Interesting points made are that when you quest with your friend/family they will gain triple XP on everything! Yes everything, from mob kills to quest hand-ins. This does NOT stack on top of rest XP though, the rest XP will be saved for when you are soloing. This is not stackable with other recruits, so there goes my idea of a 15x experience bonus. This is only in effect however when both are in the same party and are together at the same location. I like this, it will make you play with your friend and I think it prevents random guys at the checkout line of Best Buy from "recruiting" you just to gain some benefits.

The one thing that I hate to love is that for every two levels your recruit gains he can grant a character of yours a "free level". For those of you who played Pokemon, and be honest I know most of you did, its kinda like the rare candy. This is capped at level 60 though, so no one can auto level to 70 just by having their friend/family play some really easy low levels. The entire reason why I have an alt is because I think leveling is fun, but some people will abuse this... I have not read anywhere that it is only limited to one character per account, so maybe some people will create the account for 10 days and continue to just make level two characters sending one level to their "new" alt they are leveling. going from 1-60 in a matter of days. for free none the less. I really hope with that I did not give anyone an idea...
**EDIT** as i have found out playing with my brother, you can only grant a level to a character of a lower level then you. This is great because it allows my brother to continue playing with his toon leveling him up while I do some raids and then if he wants me to play with him, he auto-levels me up to where he is and we continue on our way

I really like the summon feature. To many people who are just starting playing it is hard for them to understand all that is going on, and this summon feature will allow them to call on their friend to come and aid instantly. Plus this will help with the 3x XP bonus. If one of the two are soloing and the other logs on, might as well bring them along too, you would be foolish not to.

You remained linked to this account for 90 days, which is really nice, maybe I should have told my brother to hold off until later to start so then our 3x XP bonus could go into WotLK! o well, its the last few weeks of summer and I will get to play with him this way, because I refuse to play COD4 with him under my firm belief that it is a completely overrated shooter.

Again I don't know how many times I stress this in this blog, but have fun. Some people might have a blast leveling characters and getting into the story, other people just enjoy playing with their friends. If you got recruited and still want to experience the story, buy the two month subscription and let your friend have that cool mount. You dont have to quest with them and it will be your conscience decision not to gain a 3x XP bonus on kills/quests. If you are the friend who is going to "power level" their friend, dont get upset that they don't have the skills you would expect pre 8/6/08 level 70 to have they got rushed to the end, backlash has to happen at some point.

This past week

Holy crap its been a week since I last posted? wow I can see why my buddy Voxyn has been wanting me to post again.

First off I would like to thank Bell over at 4Haelz for posting one of of my blogs! I have seen some new traffic enter this site so thank you!

Lets see what has happened in this past week... Ok maybe it will be best to do a day-to-day recap.

Monday - Messed around with my swift Flight Form and tried out a new spec for arena. WOW was that a mistake, not only did I have no clue what I was doing with my new talents, but I went 2-8 in the Arena. Needless to say I watched my personal ranking drop quite a bit.

Tuesday - Kara run, we downed all the bosses but Prince and Nightbane, but the run went until 2am. This really led me to question my dedication to the guilds raid schedule.

Wednesday - I spent the day at work reading up about guilds on my server who's raid schedule matches my personal schedule, I spent the night leveling my Shammy alt, Earthwindfir. If you could not guess from the name he is an Elemental Shaman.

Thursday - Travel/Guild applications. I went home for the weekend so most of Thursday was spent either at work filling in various guild applications or on the train.

Friday - My 22nd Birthday. I played a little WoW in the morning and then spent the rest of the afternoon with the family. I went to concert at night to see one of my favorite bands American Taxi. The show ROCKED! I hung out with the band before their set and afterwords they gave me a set list. HIGHLIGHT of the weekend! If I could have died and gone to heaven right there I would not have complained. My Birthday gift was a new Suit from Jos A Bank to use for interviewing this fall/spring. AHHH I have to enter the real world in less than a year!!!

Saturday - Whenever I go home there is always a project waiting for me. This time it was building a wardrobe closet for the guest room. Man that sucked. It took me a good five hours to build it. My dog sat in the room the entire time "helping" me build, the added aid in messing up my piles of screws and brackets was much appreciated on my end. It was also my dogs 3rd birthday, or 21st in dog years, so being a good owner I took him out to an Irish pub. Now before you call animal services let me tell you that he did NOT drink any alcohol! At this one pub back home, they have an outdoor area where you can bring your dog and the waitress will bring a water bowl for the dog and adult beverages for the humans. My friend who I had not seen since my 21st birthday was in town too for the weekend, so we headed there together, found a parking spot right in front of the the pub and got a seat right away! I am never that lucky! We caught up on life, and it was fun

Sunday - I finished up building the wardrobe closet, and traveled back to Milwaukee. Played on my alt for a bit and passed out

Last Night - I was officially accepted into Pantheon! From what I have heard through the grapevine the main resto druid will be quitting WoW at the end of the month and they are going to try and gear me up from my mid-Kara gear to SSC gear in that time to replace him w00t new content!!! An added plus is that my buddy Voxyn is in this guild as well, and looking over the guild roster there are a lot of people in there that I leveled with as well!

Today - ??? Blog posting, going for a run then playing WoW. Updates to come later! and more guides soon? leave comments on what you would like to see me write about!

Swift Flight Form

Hey all, sorry for not posting for a while, I got a bit carried away with gold farming and was able to purchase my level 300 riding skill on Saturday! Yes that is right, in ONE week I raised 5000g, needless to say I really don't want to see any more Felweed, Dreaming Glory, Fel Lotus or Adamantite Ore
for a long time! I take that back, the herbs I will continue to farm because Swift Flight Form makes it SO easy.

In addition to all the loot I got while doing the Flight Form chain, since Wednesday I have added the following gear, Gargon's Bracers of Peaceful Slumber and Mitts of the Treemender. I still have a few greens on my toon, but I am working hard of finally replacing them, the goal is to have all purples by the end of August, so very obtainable. As far as Druiding goes nothing else really has been going on. I will try to think of another guide to post/something interesting about WotLK here soon.

-Zeffy

Epic Mount

Yes, getting the Epic Mount is the pinnacle of any level 70 but to a druid it means so much more. We get the sexy Swift Flight Form!
/hawt
So loving to farm, I have been doing mining and herb circuits like a mad man. Right now I am making roughly 300g a day from posting these mats in the AH before going to bed. Not bad, add on my 150g a day from dailys and I am on pace to have my mount by July 31st (taking into account the 2000g I have farmed since Friday, yes I had 38s to my name Friday morning). Just in time for a nice birthday present to me! I will need to farm for Lower City Rep as well, not only for Lower City Prayerbook, but so then I can do the final quests in the chain. Getting two Prayerbook's will increase my +heals by 60, good stuff and the rep is not that hard to farm, esp on heroic when I can farm for badges as well.

The 5000g price tag seems like a lot at first, but its totally doable. The best advice I can give is STOP BUYING SHIT!!! Yeah I know you want that gem, but do you really need to spend 600g on it right now? no you really don't, there are other options as far as acquiring the gem. Most quality gems are available to purchase via Badges, so get going. One full run through Kara will net you more then enough Badges of Justice to buy it from the vendor. It might seem cruel not spending money, but if you do it right it will only take two weeks, and in the grand scheme of things that is well worth it.

Here are some helpful tips that everyone can use, no mater their professions (unless you play on the Misha server, if I see you doing this on my server I will find you and rape your dog. just kidding... or am I?)

1. Loot EVERYTHING. Even grey items they do have value at the vendor, even if you sell it for 1s that 1s more towards your goal and like your mom always said pocket change adds up.

2 a. Get to know common AH values. Some people just don't understand how the AH works and to me this is mind baffling. I have made good money in the past scanning the AH looking for items that are way under priced, bid on them and then resell them at a higher price. This is just like the real world buy and sell, you might be making 30s per flip, but that is 30s you did not have to work for.

2 b. Get to know common vendor values. Sometimes you can sell something for more to a vendor then you can in the AH, this applies from greys to greens, mostly greys and whites. while scanning you might see that someone placed Netherweave Cloth for some ridiculously low price. BID on it, don't buy it. If you win the auction don't even think twice and sell it to the vendor. Obviously there is no demand for that mat at this point on your server so why waste your money trying to repost it on the AH. Sell it and get your money! You could always do what I call the Rabbit Hoard method. Win it and put in in your bank and take it out once you realize there is a high demand for that particular item. This method yields the biggest return, but it requires a trained eye in the AH

3. Run alts through instances. People with alts just want to level their toon quick. and while you are spending your time at the AH pay attention to trade talk. Sometimes you will see that someone is offering up 10g for a run trough Stocks/Dead Mines. DO IT. these runs are easy and its free money. Greens will drop and if the dude is not a dick you can roll for them too and sell those in the AH. Twinks need gear too, remember?

4. Solo lower level instances. There is money in lower instances and you just don't realize it. Instances drop a lot of greens, greens that Alts love to buy. Make money off their laziness do the grind work and you will be rewarded. Remember here I am a Resto Druid with no other sets of armor. If I can do it you have no excuses.

5. Become a cheep ass. Don't buy water, beg your Mage friend to make some for you. your ONLY expense should be repairing armor during this grind. everything else is a luxury. You don't need to buy pots through the AH, do dailys that reward pots, they gotta come from somewhere.

6. Do Daily's. Daily's net between 10-20g per quest. Its easy money and easy rep, two things that every player wants to have more of. Grab a buddy and you can fly through 10 daily's in an hour, especially the Isle daily's.

7. Set goals. I can not tell you how important this one is. Don't set yourself into the mind set of I need 5000g NOW. break it up. A good goal would be, "today I want to make 200g from daily's and 200g in the AH" by doing that it makes the task less daunting.

8. Have fun. This might seem obvious, but a lot of people treat WoW like it's a job. Remember this is after all just a game. If you don't get your mount in two weeks, who cares? all that matters is that your are having fun! So get out there and I will see you in the skys

-Zeffy

Understanding WotLK: Part 1 of ?

I like most you other trees have been drooling over the new talents that are coming with WotLK later this year. I have been reading what everyone has been getting excited about, and it has surprised me that this has not come up much. I am speaking about the aura we have while in ToL.

In Burning Crusade we gain these benefits while in ToL



25% of spirit bonus healing to all party members, speed and mana cost down by 20%

In WotLK this form will take on a bit of a change.



The line that I would like to talk about is in the third yellow one. Notice how it says party and RAID members? This is HUGE and does not seem to be causing much of a buzz.

I am just starting to experience end game BC so most of this is coming from speculation. I noticed just this past Saturday as I was finishing up the Kara run with the guild that my aura was not affecting members in the other group. To me this seemed like a waste. We speced this way to maximize our healing, and if the Aura was only acting like a buff to the four others in our group. That means during a raid anywhere between 5-20 people are not gaining the buff of increased healing received. From a purely physical stand point this does not make seem to follow any sort of logic. How can an Aura just go, Him? no screw him, he is not in my group so I will not benefit him, but will travel halfway across the map to get that guy!

I was placed in the same group as another Resto Druid and I noticed something interesting as well, our Aura's stacked! this means that the other three people in our group were getting two + healing buffs! I have never seen my Lifebloom so powerful, I don't think I even casted one Rejuvenation on a fellow party member.

Now imagine endgame of WotLK and your guild is on a 25 man, wouldn't you want at least four trees with you, allowing for four stacks of the aura to build up on the raid? The amount of + healing received would be HUGE! Stick a Shadow Priest in with the other four druids and you will have an insanely mana efficient healing brigade. And now that trees can cast all healing spells in this form, you can divvy up the healing assignments, lets say three trees dedicated to HoT's and the other in charge of any long cast time healing such as Healing Touch or Regrowth. This group would be nicknamed of course HoT Domination (patent pending).

Ohh I can not wait for WotLK to come out, but until then i will be reading up as much as I can, and performing /drool at just about every single opportunity

-Zeffy