Leveling on a PvP server. . .

I have a post in the works about tanking. Not something super advanced and anyone with a ton of experience tanking probably won't find it useful, but I thought it would be a good academic exercise.

I was all set to crank that out today and then another issue arose. My guild is short on tanks and they could use another one. I don't know how I feel about this. I guess the best way to figure things out is blog about it.

I hate PvP. Basically because it involves other people wasting my time killing me making me stop what I'm doing to run back to my corpse. It has at times made me contemplate leaving the game completely. I have played the last few days back on a PvE server and I forgot how much more fun it is for me. I never have to look at another character and think "Oh, they're going to run over here and kill me now".

The flip side of this is I miss my guildies. My intention was not to quit the server, I have just been trying to level blacksmithing without spending lots of gold. For any of you that have ever done it you know that means grinding, lots of grinding. So I have been out of the loop for longer than normal but basically, I don't want to lose contact with everyone.

I have already pretty much verified what I thought before. The game is more fun on a PvE server. I can craft, level alts, and sit AFK, all without the fear of PvP. My question is this: Do I try to level my paladin on the PvP server or do I retire him and level my death knight? My deathknight is actually not far from level 70 and my paladin is a little bit into 71 so there is not much of a level difference. I know death knights can be endgame tanks. I definately like paladins more, but as a death knight I feel like A) I would be able to defend myself better and B) as a double gatherer, I can quit wasting time and money on crafting on the PvP server.

I guess its time to start looking into DK tanking builds. . .

My 10 favorite class/specs in Wow. . .

So I was having a conversation with some of my newly adopted guildies on Azuremyst (I can't for the life of me remember the name, but the tabard is pretty sweet) and we were discussing several classes. Besides me saying "Yeah, I don't much care for them" every other sentence, it was a very invigorating conversation (who knew S priests finally got AoE, sorry, can't level one to 75 just to get it though). It got me to thinking: which are my 10 favorite class/spec combos in the game and why?

1. Prot Paladin - Heavy armor, AoE, Bad-assery. I like AoE grinding with a prot pally more than almost anything else in the game. I spent almost a whole level grinding mobs for Aldor rep just because it was SO MUCH FUN! (and no one ganked me while I did it, which was a bonus).

2. Frost Mage - 15-20 mobs at a time? It can be done! (not grey mobs either!) Add in portals and teleports for quick and easy travel and you have a no brainer choice at #2. Yes, I considered arcane for this spot, but frost is tried and true, its an old friend that has lasted through multiple characters, I can't abandon it for the flashy new abilities of arcane.

3. Unholy Death Knight - I would have put blood here before the last patch increasing blood aura healing and nerfing a lot of the blood aspect healing. Unholy is powerful in single target or AoE and free epic land mount makes them amazing gatherers. I will admit, I don't keep the pet up at all times because I find them kind of annoying.

4. Feral Druid - You can be a half warrior, a half rogue, or a half priest at the drop of a hat. To me, that adds up to 150%. I love ferals, they're my little swiss army knife characters for utility and easy leveling. I prefer the night elf version to tauren for the record, lions should not have horns.

5. Blood Death knight - Still a lot of fun and powerful single target DPS, I would have swapped this spot with unholy had they left the powerful self healing alone.

6. Affliction Warlock - Haunt is quite possibly one of my favorite abilities in the game. I don't care if people say they're nerfed. I see a class that kills fairly quickly with little downtime. If only they got seed of corruption a little sooner than 70, say around 60 or so.

7. Demonology Warlock - Felguard smash! The 51 point talent is outright dumb (I want a doomguard, or pitlord or something more menacing) but a couple demons on the rampage is still pretty damn cool.

8. Shadow Priest - Fast killing with little down time. A bigger selection of AoE (and getting it before northrend) again would make this class perfect for me. It took me a while to appreciate the inherent coolness of the shadow priest but they definately rock.

9. Retribution Paladin - Its button smashing, its bursty, its not quite as fun as a deathknight, but it can heal itself on demand: its the ret paladin! I do think divine storm is pretty cool, although ret paladins are definately way weak on the AoE compared to prot.

10. Arms Warrior - This spot was close. I admit, I like what they did with prot warriors, but arms is just a lot more fun. I scoff at fury for their Titans grip, the AoE is where its at, bladestorm, and sweeping strikes all the way! Of course I have horrible problems leveling a warrior after 60, I think it more has to do with my paladin mindset than anything. I still think this spec has a lot to reccomend itself and deserves to round out my top 10.

Honorable mention: Enhancement Shaman - just missed but its the only self healing dual wielder.

Yes, no love for hunters (boring easy mode) and no love for rogues (rogue AoE is sapping one, having your buddy sap another and stunlocking them, blech). I respect their abilities and wouldn't mind sharing a group with them, but there are so many things I would rather play.

One other non Wow related gripe. Vh1 is about as metal as reynolds wrap. Seriously, check out their list of the top 40 metal songs ever. I guess if you removed half the songs on there that arent metal, it would be a decent list. You would also be removing A THIRD OF THE LIST!! 80's Ozzy - not very metal, GnR damn sure not metal, KISS and ACDC sure as HELL arent metal. Maybe my next compilation will be to re-do their horrible crappy list.

The most tedious things to do in Wow are. . .

Wow is a game right? Games are supposed to fun. I enjoy 90% of Wow. This weekend was spent in that other 10%. I had every intention of doing some leveling, popping over the Daggerspine, seeing how my horde buddies were doing, maybe even take my deathknight to northrend. That didn't happen.

I spent pretty much the entire weekend engaged in the tedious time sink tasks that will eventually pay dividends, but for the mean time are pretty much just killing time. First, I have a new deathknight who needs to go from mining 0 to 300. This in and of itself takes a few days, and thats assuming you can hit every ore node that has spawned where they're supposed to be and havent been mined by anyone else. Thorium is the worst part, but I'm not even there yet. I did manage to get to dark iron/truesilver (230) before the weekend was over. Obviously that is going to require some more work.

The rest of the weekend was spent on my alliance paladin. I was about 100k xp from level 65 so I decided to knock that out. I had won an auction for Shield of the Wayward Footman and decided it was a perfect time to re-spec protection. I had been retribution since the patch and honestly, it just isn't me. I love AoE grinding, and retribution just can't do it like protection. Another thing that took a severe amount of time, I dropped skinning on my paladin for blacksmithing. As any of you who are blacksmiths know, leveling blacksmithing is the most tedious, time consuming, resource intensive chore in the game. Oh, and I'm going armorsmithing as my specialty. I think it takes somewhere in the area of 400 mithril bars to knock out the levels and the specialty. I will eventually drop mining for jewelcrafting, but that will be around the time my mage is ready to pick up enchanting. As far as I can tell, armorsmithing and jewelcrafting give me the best advantage for a tank. JC only gems and ability to add sockets are going to be a huge help in the long run.

So to summarize, I won't call it a waste of time. It has to be done. I have seen the comparative difficulty between warrior and paladin leveling (sorry darraxus, I just can't do it!) so my warrior becomes a bank alt, paladin BS/JC and death knight gets mining and skinning. On the upside, once this is done, my pally will have a sweet blue breastplate (socketed with northrend gems mmmmm) and since I'm farming all my own mats, I won't be any lighter in the pockets. The downside is that it will be very time consuming, even at 30 mithril per run and 20 thorium once I get to that level, I will be farming ore for some time.

I get by with a little help from my friends. . .

Thats right, its not just a quest, it applies to other areas of the game as well (and yes, I know its a song by those kooky insectoid brits).

I am by nature a solo player. I like to run around by myself, kill stuff, do quests, level, etc. I have multiple alts on every server I actually play on so that I have all the crafting skills covered (except engineering, which I think is rather pointless and not a benefit for me personally. Motorcycles in wow? Really? Thats about as useful as a sixth finger, but I digress). What makes the game more than just random grinding and upgrades? Its the people you share the world with.

I'm not talking about douchebag 80's who kill my level 23 in tarren mill. I'm also not talking about your Mr Draenei deathknight who mined my tin node while I was killing the mobs protecting it (you're a douchebag too and you know it). Its the people that I spend time with in the game. Some I know in real life and occasionally get to have lunch with. Some I have never met, but I talk to all the time in guild chat. Some people whose blogs I read and make me feel like I kind of know them. Some people read my blog and then invite me into their guild (You've been warned Alerexis, I'm dead weight, I just roll up alts and take up space, I never raid!).

If it wasn't for the social aspect of wow, I would probably still be playing (I am a rather compulsive accessorizer and no other game does it quite as well, even if I don't like the looks of a lot of the northrend stuff), the game just wouldn't be as much fun.

I would say I wish there was a big old guild made up of blogs I read however I think it would be desperately short on heals and maybe even a little light on tanks. But it would be TOTALLY worth it to see the mages competing to do the most damage. But that's probably an idea for another blog post. . .

Why 1 crafting and 1 gathering per char is a waste of time. . .

I see this theory all the time: if you are taking a crafting skill, take the corresponding gathering skill. Blacksmiths, jewelcrafters, and engineers take mining; leatherworkers take skinning; Alchemists and scribes take herbalism; enchanters take tailoring by default. What is wrong with this reasoning? It is the absolute least efficient use of a character you can have.

First of all, for a single character just starting out, there is absolutely zero reason not to double gather. Mining and skinning is solid however my personal favorite is mining and herbalism. Mining and herbalism is a more advanced version because you can only have one or the other show up on the map, but once you master it, these are much more profitable and used by a larger number of professions (3 and 2 to 1). So if you only have one character, do yourself a favor and double gather, you will never be self sufficient, at least there is almost always a market for raw materials.

Still reading? This means you probably have more than one character. I can identify with that, I too have more than one character. If your goal is to be completely self sufficient and do it the most efficient way possible, you have to break your characters into two groups: gatherers and producers. The reason for this? Gathering takes time and if you can gather for multiple characters at the same time, you are increasing your efficiency. Here is another tip, classes that use similar resources should be grouped together. I like to pair blacksmithing and jewelcrafting. Why? You're only sending metal to one character (I dislike engineering, it doesnt do much for me and seems like comparatively a waste). I would say alchemy and inscription go together (they do, naturally) but like most people, I leveled up alchemy before inscription was introduced, so that wasn't very viable.

Personally I came up with two different models, one is a one gatherer model if you intend to ignore leatherworking and buy any leather you need at the AH (I don't like doing this, I like to be purely self sufficient, but thats just me). The other one uses one "pure" gatherer and one gatherer who has a crafting skill.

One gatherer:
Gatherer: Mining/Herbalism
Crafter A: Jewelcrafting an either blacksmithing or engineering
Crafter B: Tailoring enchanting
Crafter C: Alchemy/Inscription

Again, thats an ideal layout starting (mostly) from scratch.

Two gatherers:
Gatherer A: Mining/Skinning
Gatherer B: Herbalism/Inscription
Crafter A: Jewelcrafting an either blacksmithing or engineering
Crafter B: Tailoring enchanting
Crafter C: Alchemy/Leatherworking

You can tailor this to your liking, you can swap LW with inscription and make your herbalist a BS or engineer to give you an additional metalworking profession, it has a lot of possibilities. You could do herbalism with skinning and do JC with mining. The important thing is since you can only be gathering with one character at a time (unless dualboxing, but I won't get into that), do it as efficiently as you possibly can.

Lastly there is one more benefit of crafters and gatherers being seperated: rested experience. The best place to leave a crafter is near an auction house. Why? To sell the stuff they made. AH's are generally in capitals which give you rested XP. You only need to get to level 60 to hit the crafting cap. Let your crafters sit, quest with them when you feel like it getting the benefit of a full level and a half of rested XP.

I'm not a traitor, I'm just indecisive. . .

So after much deliberation and scouting of many prospective guilds on many servers I came to a conclusion yesterday. I'm back to Azuremyst alliance side and I will continue to level my hordies on Daggerspine until someone pisses me off (basically first time someone kills me). Its a lot of work, but looking back, I should have been on a PvE server all along anyways. I just can't stand getting killed. I thought to myself "wouldn't it be nice if they had a server where players of other factions couldn't attack you whenever?" Yeah, I am not exactly what you'd call a quick learner.

I have decided on a very generic model for being "self sufficient". It will pretty much work on any server, either faction but as I prefer alliance (ok, I like medium build guys with beards, and that fuzz blood elves get is not a beard! Orcs are great for fighting types, but as they can't be paladins or mages. . .). Paladin tank blacksmith/jewelcrafting - can solo instances to gather cloth, AoE for mats, etc. Deathknight mining and skinning - kills quick, free epic mount, goodness. Mage tailoring/enchanting - Can also solo instances for mats, and my favorite caster class in the game. Druid leatherworking/alchemy - this one is sort of optional, leatherworking is kind of a throw in, but I like druids and these professions fit. Shammy Herbalism/Inscription - Need inscriptions for enchanting and general utility and someone has to get herbs for alchemy and inscription, this works. Yes, thats 5 characters to be self sufficient, thats why I have so many alts floating around.

I have talked to a few people and I am giving a couple guilds a shot to see how I like it. I'm sure they won't be quite the same or as enjoyable as my horde guildmates but peace of mind is priceless. I will now be able to run any content I want without fear of being killed (by other players at least, mobs are still an ever present danger)

Rock Band and other non Wow content. . .

I figured I would file something under the "anything else I feel like blogging about" heading. I was thinking the other day while looking over the new Rock Band DLC and thinking "man this sucks", Do we really need any more grateful dead? I didnt download and of the first batch, nor will I touch anyf of this. Godsmack was a good surprise, but a little late if you ask me. So I put together a list of a few things I REALLY would like to see for Rock Band.

Take it off by the Donnas - I love this song, it would be so fun to play. I know it was released as DLC for guitar hero but COME ON, its AMAZING.

The entire Countdown to Extinction album by Megadeth - Peace sells, great song, but the whole album? They really dropped the ball on this one. Countdown to extinction went to #2 on the charts, was double platinum and is the best all around Megadeth ablum to date.

A Saliva setlist - I'd go with Your Disease, Always, and pick one of their new singles. I like Saliva, I've seen them live, they would be super fun.

You couldn't be me by Hell Yeah - the same lead singer from mudvayne (as a side note, I am SOOOO happy they ditched the creepy face paint) with more of a southern metal sound, this song is shear awesomeness and probably more appropriate for all ages than their other single "Alchohol and ass".

Last, but definately not least, Bad girlfriend by Theory of a deadman. I actually saw this band live a bunch of years ago they opened for Trapt (who has a downloadable song, WTF?) and smile empty soul (pretty certifiably gone at this point). Bad girlfriend is pretty is pretty much my favorite song right now and I bet they would get a TON of downloads by putting this out.

Also, if you are into the philosophical side of martial arts and like a good tragedy, Red Belt is an amazing movie. If you're looking for mindless action, avoid it, too heavy on plot and character, basically the opposite of a Jean Claude Van Dam movie. There is a pretty damn awesome scene where he escapes a rear naked choke by running up a wall and doing a backflip. Strangely enough, I never learned that choke defense.