This Week's MVP is...

   The Dandelion Frolicker.

 

   The first thing I like about this guy is that it’s a humanoid.  Humanoids, in my opinion, have one of the best racial perks out of all the pet families, a self-heal.  For those new to the pet scene, any round a humanoid does damage, they heal themselves for 5% of their maximum health.  My frolicker is a speed breed and has 1400hp at level 25, so every time he does damage he heals for 70hp.

   The second thing I like about this guy is his move set.  In the first slot you can chose between ‘Scratch’ a strong basic attack versus undead or ‘Bite’ a strong basic attack versus critters.  I generally use the bite attack.  This is because the Dandelion Frolicker is part of my leveling team, and many if not most wild pet battles seem to involve fighting critters.  As an added bonus, the bite attack has a 100% hit chance, which negates RNG, so long as he is max level and has no debuffs, he will always hit with the bite attack.

   The second slot consists of defensive moves.  You have a choice between ‘Frolick’ and ‘Barkskin’.  Frolick gives your frolicker a 50% chance to dodge for two rounds and Barkskin lasts 5 rounds and reduces the damage done by 67 for each attack against you.  I use Barkskin in this slot.  When battling, I generally keep this ability up all the time.  Between the self-heal and Barkskin, you are negating 135 damage each and every turn.  I have also noticed that a lot of the critters I fight in Valley of the Four Winds have an annoying ability called poison fang, which leaves a DoT.  This DoT is completely negated by having Barkskin up.

   The third slot consists of utility moves.  Your choice is between ‘Kick’ which interrupts an opponent’s round if you go first along with doing damage and ‘Dazzling Dance’ which increases the speed of your entire time.  Kick is a strong attack versus the dragonkin family.

   I mentioned that this guy is part of my leveling team.  The strategy I use for this team revolves around leveling carry pets from level 10 to level 16-17.   I do all my fights using this strategy in Valley of the Four Winds, which I think I mentioned.  You could bring in a lower level carry pet, but there is a good chance he won’t see the end of combat if you do.  A level 10 can go in on the first round and generally take a single hit.  Between levels 10 and 15-16, a single battle should give you a whole level, provided you are wearing your safari hat!  I avoid the aquatics and engage the critters.  The biggest reason I avoid the aquatics is the turtles you will encounter in Valley of the Four winds have an attack called ‘Grasp’ which will prevent you from swapping pets for two rounds if it hits.  You will occasionally get the turtles as adds, so be mindful of this ability.

   The Dandelion Frolicker can pretty much solo all the critter battles in the Valley, so you can chose just about anything you like for your third pet.  This week I have been using a spider, it’s a beast so is generally strong versus critters and it has a heal.

   Using the Dandelion Frolicker+Spider allows me to go for several battles before I need to heal my team up.  This team is the most efficient I have found for leveling things in the 10-17 bracket.  I have not yet used the frolicker in the Celestial Tournament or against a trainer, so I will probably try that out this week.  At the very least, I think this guy would do well fighting Yula (a dragonkin) in the Celestial Tournament.

   The Dandelion Frolicker is somewhat hard to obtain outside the auction house.  Prices have dropped enough that this guy isn’t too expensive; I personally paid 5K for mine.  Currently the mean price for one across all servers is 4.2K.  If you are a purist you can try to farm the drop.  So far I haven’t has one drop, if I do I am not sure if I will keep it as a back-up or try to sell it.

    The drop is from the ‘Scary Sprite’ event on the Timeless Isle, which you can do once per day, per character.  This event is started by clicking a large purple crystal located at coordinates 47, 73 on the isle.  This turns all the nearby friendly sprites hostile.  For sixty seconds you need to go on a rampage and kill as many sprites as possible, each one you kill has a chance of spawning an add called ‘Scary Sprite’ that you must kill.  The pet drops from the scary sprite.  For some reason Wowhead lists the drop chance as .08% from the ‘nice sprites’ which are the mobs you have to turn hostile and kill to spawn the scary sprites.  Without going into a long explanation, your chance at the drop is around 1-2% each time you successfully do the event.

   So, cheers to the Dandelion Frolicker, this week’s MVP.

   Peace.

A (very) Brief Update

    I can see it’s been a little while since my last post.  So, even if I can’t get my thoughts organized, I guess I should still write something all the same.  I have been very busy in game, mostly with leveling pets, which has become something of an obsession for me.  I am so obsessed with pets, I am pretty sure that I am pretty sure I am going to experiment with leveling cageable pets and then selling them on the AH, to see if leveled pets sell better or command a higher price.

   I should have led off with the most important piece of news first.  It seems my raiding woes have come to an end.  One of the tanks in team jade (for new readers, this is my guild’s primary raid group) has burnt out.  He approached me and asked if I was up to taking his spot for a while.  I was ecstatic.  This was way more than I had hoped for.  I will now be on a regular three day a week raiding schedule in SoO normal.  On top of that, I will be the only plate wearer in the group.  This is truly a moment in serendipity.  I have no idea why I was approached.  There is a DK in my guild who is both senior to me and better geared than me.  For all I know he was approached first and declined the offer. 

   There is a price to pay, of course.  Our guild also runs flex two nights a week, and I feel the responsibility to attend these raids, as the flex raids are the only chance many have for raiding.  This means I will actually be raiding five nights a week.  I also need to improve my game.  My SoO tanking experience is limited, and normal is definitely a less forgiving place than flex.  On top of this, our guild is finding it hard to continue funding repairs, as the bank is being bled dry.  This means people will need to step up and start doing guild scenario and dungeon runs.  Naturally, I feel this too is something I am responsible to help with.   I am actually looking forward to all this increased activity.

   If I need to work on my tanking game, it at least seems that I am right where I need to be on my pet battle game (the PVE side at least).  I beat the tournament in one go this week and now have my second celestial pet.  I chose Zao, the baby ox.  I felt he had the best appearance of the three celestial pets I had to choose from.  I have also made the beasts of fable part of my daily routine, and have gotten quite a few stones as a result, along with a cache of pet treats.

   Just as I need to organize my writing, I need to come with an organized daily routine and priority list.  So this is my rough draft of such a list:

1.        Run LFRs, at least one a day, until I have collected enough secrets of the empire for the meta-gem in the legendary chain.  I should have this done within a week, unless I really get screwed on the drops.  I have the trillium needed, so after getting enough secrets, all I need do is down Nalak and the Thunder King.   

2.         Continue capping valor every week.  Until I am more comfortable with tanking SoO, spend all valor points on tanking upgrades.

3.         Level one pet to 25 every day.  If time allows continue doing the beasts of fable every day.

4.         Clear Kharazan, Serpentshrine Caverns and Tempest Keep on the three characters I have capable of doing so.  Level, at least partially, any pets obtained from this before posting to the auction house.

5.          Start PvP pet battling.  Aim for at least two matches a day, and record the matches.  Take the weekly PvP pet battle quest.

6.          Continue farming on the Timeless Isle.

This list is in rough order of priority.  I will work on becoming a better and better geared tank first and foremost and then pet collection and sales, followed by breaking into PvP pet battles.   Timeless Isle is pretty low on the priority list, which will take getting used to, as up until now, it was the first thing I did when logging on.  My alts will fall by the wayside for a while.

   Not the most exciting or insightful of posts, but like I said, it’s been over a week since my last post and I wanted to keep momentum going.

  

  Peace.

A Day in the Life...

So this is part a vignette, and part a pet battle guide. I decided to kind of keep a journal of what I was doing around Azeroth in a 24 hour period, starting with getting home from work around 5pm the other night. If you couldn't guess, most of what I did was pet battles, many of them failed attempts at the Celestial Tournament.

Right off, I do my timeless daily, namely kill twenty rares. I am creature of habit with this one, I almost always start my sessions of doing this. I then pet battle good ol' Little Tommy Newcomer. Since I was right there, I headed on into the tournament. This week's line-up for trainers was Taran Zhu, Chem Stormstout, and Wrathion. These trainers are decidedly harder than last week's roster. Taran Zhu alone made the tournament a very painful experience.

So let's talk about Taran Zhu. His team consists of three Pandaren Monks (humanoids) and he always opens with Yen, whose ability of note is a blackout kick, a stun. This is countered by opening with a critter, as they are immune to stuns. As I have mentioned I follow Wowhead's guide, which makes this very recommendation, and furthermore recommends a snail as the critter of choice. This part of their guide is fine. The guide also has you using a blighthawk and a fossilized hatchling as undead pets. There are two problems here. First is the blighthawk's main nuke, infected claw, only has an 85% hit chance, which in the world of pet battles means it will frequently miss, especially when you need it not to. On top of that one of the other monks has the power to periodically blind your pet for a turn. The second problem is that the fossilized hatchling is delicate, and the whole point of having him in the fight is to bonestorm. I have never gotten off more than one bonestorm with him.

After perusing some forums, I decided to apply a slightly different strategy. I open with the snail, and instead of using a blighthawk I use a Creepy Crate, which also has the bonestorm ability. I also make use of the crate's curse of doom. This is still a difficult fight, but using the revised strategy it is doable. Any week Taran is up, I plan on tackling him first, so if things go south I haven't wasted too much time.

This is the chronicle part. In order for me to use the revised strategy, I had to go farm for a snail, since I only had one, and a later fight also recommends snails (more on that later). Then of course, after farming for just the right snail, I had to level him, which I did.

The next part of the tournament that proved to be a pain was Chi-Chi. I am not sure how I got him last week, but this week was a nightmare. As I started examining other strategies, I realized that Wowhead's strategy was off. Their strategy calls for using an unborn valkyr to lead, followed by two nordrasil wisps, preferably s-breed ones. So far, so good. Unfortunately they have Chi-Chi's rotation wrong. They properly list turn three as when he goes ethereal and becomes immune to all attacks. They then improperly advise that he again goes ethereal on turn six, when in fact he does not do this until turn seven. The long version is that Chi-Chi goes ethereal on turns 3,7,11,15,19,23,27,31... . You don't need to be a mathematician to see the pattern here, and yes one of my fight's with this jackass went for thirty rounds.

The next problem is that in theory the wisps should evade most Chi-Chi's attacks, since he spends so much time with a reduced chance to hit from the wisp's flash ability. In reality, Blizzard either cheats, or the particular Chi-Chi I am fighting has uncanny accuracy. Wisps are rather delicate and can't take a whole lot of punishment. Back to the forums for a revised strategy. I find two. One advised using three snails and another recommends using a voodoo figurine, a critter with stampede and something else. Time to go grab and level more pets.

I level two more snails as well as a voodoo figurine. For some reason, I also farm a rare arcane eye and level it as well. I ultimately go with a hybrid strategy. I still open with the valkyr as before, and use snails for the other two pets. This works surprisingly well. The strategy has to be executed in a very specific way, the Valkyr is used exactly as recommended by Wowhead (Turn1:Curse of Doom Turns 2 and 3:shadow shock Turn4: unholy ascension). Both snails use acidic goo, ooze touch and dive. The acidic goo debuff needs 100% uptime on Chi-Chi. On ethereal rounds, use dive, otherwise use ooze touch.

I am finally able to beat the tournament for a week, making this the second week I am victorious. With all the farming and leveling I did, I acquired a flawless stone+ a critter stone 9both being held in reserve), and a mechanical stone (used on a tranquil yeti).

During all this frenetic pet activity, I took time out for a farming run with my guild to the Isle of Giants. We spend about two hours there, and I came away with 511 dino bones, a duplicate Zandalari pet and a primal egg. We called it good around 11pm my time, at which point I was about ready to pass out.

Before heading to bed, I remembered it was the last day the darkmoon fair was in town and so of course, I had to take a trip there to pet battle. I have been using a Wild Crimson Hatchling, a Celestial Dragon and a Son of Animus. I have had decent success with this team. So far no success in getting the darkmoon eye to drop, but maybe next month.

So there you have it, a chronicle of one of Kassandra's nights in Azeroth. I intentionally left out a few misadventures in LFR, as this is a whole different animal. Some day when I am feeling particularly mean-spirited, I might rave for a bit about LFR.

Peace.

What's in a name?

   In this installment, I will tell you about the origins of Kassandra, after all, I did promise to be more Kassandra-centric in my ramblings.

   Kassandra in her original incarnation was born into the World of Warcraft as Cassandra (with a C) sometime in 2009 during my deployment to Afghanistan.  Previously my main was Veluna, a shadow priest.  Since starting WoW way back when, I had almost exclusively played as DPS.  All of my alts were damage dealers and Veluna would occasionally heal with mixed results, but was first and foremost a shadow priest.  My deployment brought Veluna’s raiding career to an end.  I was able to play while deployed, but my internet was unstable and on the best of days I was running 1000ms latency.  I am sure I could have been carried to a degree, but being an effective raider was not an option for me during deployment.  Early on though, I noticed I could usually ‘play around’ the horrid lag in 5 mans and overland questing.  It wasn’t optimal, but it was doable.

    I decided that if Veluna couldn’t raid, I would start a new character and play a new role.  Tanking was the easy choice; at least it has some parallels to DPSing.  I purposely chose a character model similar to Vanessa VanCleef.  Then I was stuck for a while on what her (yes I play female toons, almost exclusively) name would be.  I wanted something feminine, but not cutesy.  I wanted something if not original, at least not common.  After much thought, and in some desperation, I chose the name Cassandra.  You will notice that this is Kassandra’s chronicle and the current warrior spells her name with a ‘K’.  That is a long story; maybe I’ll get to it later.

    Names are important to me.  Perhaps it’s my RP background, perhaps it’s just because I couldn’t stand to play a character named ‘Chesseburga’ or ‘Qtpie’ or ‘Faxpaper’, all names I have seen in the game.  Azeroth is a fantasy world, and there is nothing mystical or fantastic about a lame name.  Face it; names are probably important to you.  Who would you rather go on a blind date with, Brittany or Bertha?  I thought so.  In game terms, Brittany would be the female mage, serving as the resident server QT.  Brittany would be sure that everyone knew her status.  Bertha, she is of course the dwarf warrior, played by a man in real life.  I was actually unsure or lukewarm about ‘Cassandra’ but I grew into the name, to the point where I rolled an army of alts with similar names.  At the time I rolled her, I think ever knew one Cassandra in the real world, and she is the kind of person that is easily forgettable the kind of girl that guys just don’t think about at all.  In the here and now I work with a Cassandra, and no she has no idea I have a warcraft character that bears her name.

    So, Cassandra’s early days of tanking went well enough.  It is really hard to screw up leveling in WoW.  I found I like tanking.  It forced me to pay attention to mechanics to a greater degree than DPSing ever did.  It also forced me to pay attention to navigation within instances, and where mobs were and how they pathed.  It taught me leadership, which is probably the most important thing I took from tanking.  It taught me to play a very active role in the success of a group, instead of my former passive mindset.

   I also found that as arms warrior, Cass could DPS with the best of them.  When I returned from Afghanistan, I actually spent more time DPSing then tanking on Cass.

   So, why is there a Kassandra?  What ever happened to Cassandra?  My old guild started going through rough times and thought a server transfer was the panacea to its various ills.  I had Veluna, along with several other max leveled characters.  I couldn’t pay to move them all, so in the end, I left Cassandra behind.  I knew in advance the server we would be moving to and rolled a new warrior, Kassandra in her current incarnation.  With the release of Mists, she surpassed the old Cassandra.  In a twist of irony, the serve transfer did not revitalize my old guild, and Kassandra wound up transferring back to the server Cassandra was on.  Confused yet?  You should be.

    It’s hard to say what the future holds for Kassandra.  As I mentioned earlier, I am not overly happy in my current guild and have begun looking to see what opportunities are elsewhere.  I have mentally given myself a month to mull things over, if I am still not happy then, I will leave my current guild, even if it means I roll guild-less for a time.  I have noticed that warriors don’t seem to be in high demand, either as tanks or melee DPS by raiding guilds.  Nonetheless, I enjoy my warrior, and chasing the favored class is always a losing proposition.  For the foreseeable future I will remain Kassandra the warrior, although I will certainly indulge my alt fetish, just to keep things fresh.

   So, what is in a name?  I spoke earlier about names, and it’s worth going on some more about.  Well we don’t choose the names we are born with (sorry Bertha); we do choose names for our characters.  Since a character’s name is a matter of choice, I have no problem judging you based on your character’s name.  You choose ‘Notatank’ for a name?  You’ll find I have little time for you and little inclination to have much to do with you.   Besides names that are purely obnoxious, like the above examples, there are names that are merely uncreative, overdone or simply lame.  If you ever met a rogue in game named ‘Nightsalker’ you know what I mean.  Nightstalker is probably already taken though, so chances are the stereotype rogue you met was actually ‘Nnighstalker’  or ‘Nytstalker’ or some other ludicrous permutation of a fairly lame and uncreative name.

    For once I am ahead of schedule in my blog.  I have so many ideas floating around in my head; I could probably throw up a post every day for the next week.  I will refrain from this.  Instead I will concentrate a little more on editing and improving my page.  If some of what you have read so far seems like drivel, I offer the defense that when most bloggers begin writing, what they write is drivel, but that drivel slowly improves.

    No promises about what the next post may bring.

    Peace.  

The Archeology Blues

Archeology is without a doubt, the most boring profession in the game, its even worse than fishing. Watching snails race is more entertaining. This is coming from somebody who actually enjoys farming and understands the purpose of grinding. I picked up the 'Insane” title+achievement pre-cataclysm, and archeology ranks up with that in terms of pain. At least fishing lets you stay in one zone. I swear the taxi guys made a mint from me.

My first Indiana Jones want to be was my shadow-priest Veluna. She went to max cataclysm level, and then I stopped playing her. I repeated the whole process on a paladin, and now I have started again on Kassandra the warrior. I am not sure if Kass will max out or not. I have patience, I deal with LFRs, I have the insane title, but I am not sure I have the patience to go through leveling archeology again.

Thing is I have a rekindled desire for the crawling claw pet and the Qiraji mount. Since Veluna was my first archeologist, It's only fitting she be the one to go digging. Two days later, no mount, no pet. Things about these items, they are both Tol'vir artifacts, and the digsites only spawn in Uldum. This means I spent a lot of time flying the length and breadth of Kalimdor. I didn't keep records, but it seems on the average that you have to go through four or five digsites before one will spawn in Uldum. Not fun. On top of that, these items are ultra-rare. I have read posts here the claim is which rare will surface first is random. After leveling archeology twice, I say this is nonsense, its not random at all. For the Tol'Vir the first rare you will discover is a pendant that allows you to summon a swarm of scarabs. Rare number two is a very date ring (it was good during early Cata, not so much anymore). Yes, posters will deny this, but this has been my experience.

Not all the archeology items are so hard to come by. The pets and mounts from fossil archeology seem to drop no problem, as does the pet from Dwarven sites. This is what, of course, makes the Tol'vir items so attractive, their rarity. Things easily obtained, things that are common, at best they are not valued, at worst they are held in contempt. Case in point, all the negative press on welfare epics. So in the end, I will keep digging, because after all I do have the insane title, so I am just a bit touched.

Not that two days of digging were a total loss. For one, while traversing Tanaris, I noticed there was a sandstorm. I vaguely knew there was some kind of pet in the zone that only came out during sandstorms. Sure enough, I discovered a whole bunch of Silithid Hatchlings waiting to be battled and captured. I was able to snag a rare after a few battles. I also managed to level from 87 to 88, I did a ton of digging, two instances and some pet battles to do it. After tiring of Kalimdor, I decided to continue digging in Northrend, and discovered a Nerubian rare, the puzzle box of Yogg-Saron.

Still two days off archeology have left me physically tired. Its almost as seizure inducing as bad anime.

 

In the future I will do my digging in more manageable chunks. An hour a day or so is more than enough. Blizzard isn't removing any of the archeology rares that I know of, so I have plenty of time. When a grind becomes a true grind, its time to stop and move on to something else. You can always come back to the grind later.

 

This seems shorter than my usual ramblings, but then again its not really a chronicle of Kassandra, its a vignette of an alt. Next time I shall endeavor to remain Kassandra-centric.

Peace.

Behind the Power Curve

   The title says it all, from the very first day I set foot in Azeroth, I have felt as if I were behind the power curve.  I started playing Warcraft several months after it was released.  I played for several months before I became even remotely serious about the game.  My first serious character was a warlock named Tensor, who never even reached the level cap (he got to 53). 

   My first real characters were Veluna a shadow-priest and Amikatriel, a rogue.  Veluna is currently sitting at level 87, Amikatriel is at 90.  Veluna and Amikatriel, even when I actively played them, seemed to be more often than not behind the power curve.  Veluna’s raiding career started in Kharazan, months after it was released.  The pinnacle of raiding back on those days was the Sunwell, and Veluna saw the inside of that place a few times in the last month of the patch, but never was in a group that could down even the first boss in that place.

    Wrath of the Lich King was the kindest of expansions to Veluna.  I quickly reached the new level cap and was into the first raid (Naxx) in no time at all.  For the majority of the expansion Veluna was right on schedule in keeping current with the content.  Then real life happened.  I had completed Naxx along with Ulduar and was about halfway through ICC when I went on a military deployment to Afghanistan for a year.  This brought my raiding career to a screeching halt.  Funny thing is, I had Internet over there, but 1000ms+ latency and raiding do not play well together.  What I did do during this period of exile was roll a paladin and a warrior and try my hand at tanking.  The warrior, of course, is Kassandra, whom this chronicle is about.

  

     I returned to the real world and started actively playing Veluna again.  I was fortunate enough to get invited to a serious minded raiding guild and managed to be right on track for the Cataclysm expansion. 

    The Mists of Pandaria hit, Veluna was abandoned and I again find myself behind the power curve.  Kassandra never finished ToT in normal mode, Tortos was as far as she got.  Kassandra has yet to do SoO normal, and has only done the first wing of flex.  Being behind the power curve is a source of angst for me.  It occurs to me that some of this is my fault.  Had I continued Veluna’s career, I would probably be right on track, but no, instead I changed characters.  This might have not been a problem, but Kass was in an RP guild that never quite got its shit together.  Kass is now in a casual raid guild, the one I spoke of in my rant, so prospects of getting current don’t seem terribly great.

    You may have noticed, I am a half-empty kind of guy.  When life gives me lemons, I do not tend to make lemonade.  Perhaps all this angst about being perpetually behind is a self-induced phantasm.  Let me try a different perspective.

   Last post, I wrote about pet battles and specifically about beating the Celestial Tournament.  While not a world first, or even a server first, I am ahead of the curve here.  There are all kinds of people still beating their heads against the wall or still needing to level the right pets for this.  I was reading a blog a bit earlier (Alternative) and this blogger is still working on the beasts of fable, which is now, as far as pet battles go, dated content.  I have the beasts of fable under my belt and have for a while now.

    I might be behind the curve with normal mode raids, but I am right on track with LFR.  More than that, I am not doing too shabby in the gear department.  Every week of 5.4 has seen several substantial improvements to my gear.  As a tank my item level is 531 and as a DPS it is 529.  Overall, and this is the weird and wacky world of math, Kassandra has a 536 item level.  Not bad, this is close to the equivalent of gearing every slot with gear from flex raids.  There is more to come too.  I have an alt that is a blacksmith and has been working steadily since the patch released.  In another week I will have 553 DPS legs.  I still have two coins this week, and I will probably roll these into next week.

    I mentioned in my last post that I actually am wondering what to do.  This means that in a way, I am actually not behind the curve, I have some breathing room.  I have already done all my LFRs for SoO and have around 800 valor points for this week (its Wednesday as I am writing).  Seems I might be ahead of the curve in some ways.

   Some of the things I have fallen behind in, I have nobody to blame but me.  The Wrathion legendary quest line is an example.  I am not a huge fan of PvP and balked at doing the battleground portion of this quest and eventually decided I hated the idea of having to PvP so much, that I was just going to toss my hands in the air and say screw it.  After falling way behind, I finally decided I wanted the legendary bad enough that I would grit my teeth and do what needed to be done.  If I had just done this weeks ago, I would have my cloak right now.  Nobody to blame but myself.

   Other things, raiding for instance, I can blame on external factors.  Don’t want to go into a huge rant, but individual players are hostages to guilds when it comes to raiding.  You as a player can do everything right and everything you are supposed to do, and you may still find yourself on the sidelines for one reason or another.   I’ll leave it at that. 

    In the end, all you can do is work at the factors under your control and hope for the best.  You can also look at those around you and come to the realization that in some ways, everyone is behind the power curve.  There are just way too many things to do and accomplish in Azeroth, so you can be a jack of all trades, but a master of none.

Until next time.

Peace.