WoW Journal 2007-08-07

It's been a while since I've done an update on my status in WoW. With the recent announcement of Death Knights my interest in Deis, my warrior has pretty much completely dried up. While I like the physical nature of warriors, compared to paladin tanks primarily magical approach, Rage makes me (pun intended) see red! It's an interesting, innovative, but really annoying system. I understand it's value. It's a permanently renewable resource which depends on something important: The warrior hitting or being hit. This is important because it encourages DPS warriors to hit the enemy to be able to hit the enemy harder, and it encourages tanking warriors to be hit, so they can use abilities to control the enemy and make them not hit the warrior as hard. In the end, the game rewards the warrior for doing what they should be doing anyway for the role they're in, by allowing them to do even more of that. Unfortunately, my problem is very easy to explain: 0 rage to begin with. Yes there is bloodrage, which gives you a small boost to begin with, but that's rarely enough to do much, beyond use one shout or maybe one other attack. Maybe I'm just impatient, but I want to be able to drop a few high-threat hits in the first few seconds and work on building up threat from the getgo.

Anyway, my initial interest in Death Knights was based upon the (not so far-fetched) idea that it would have mana. Being that it was a casterish (as much as Paladins were) in Warcraft III, it seemed reasonable guess. Obviously based upon my post below, that's not true. But once I realized how it would work, in a way it was even better. A fully renewable resource, that allowed for an initial burst of action. While the obvious potentially long cooldowns would be less than ideal between actions, the fact that it would be a permanently renewable resource that will most likely not in any way be hindered by getting better armor, or dodging, or parrying should make up for it.

Anyway, so for now (and possibly permanently) Deis is on hold. I pretty much put him on hold starting halfway through last week as word of the Death Knights began to pop up. So I slowed down playing, in case word came that it was real. Obviously it did, so now it's just a matter of waiting for the expansion and focusing on Alix. So for now I'll get Alix to Exalted with Consortium (only faction left that's non-raiding :D) and get my Dragon Mount (currently half way to the 5200g mark). That should keep me busy until the expansion since I'll be helping others with 5-mans and stuff.

The weekend before last we didn't raid since too many were unavailable. So this weekend we zoned in on Saturday. Did a quick Attumen kill, and the decided to skip Moroes (due to lack of certain party members) and try the Opera Event. And before you say it, we found out that you need to kill Moroes first. So we went back down and threw ourselves at him a few time to no avail.

Came back the next night went straight to Moroes with a killer strat. Setup was: Balance Druid, Resto Druid, Hunter, Mage, Prot Paladin (me), Ret Paladin, Holy Priest, Rogue, Warlock and Prot Warrior. Moroes' group was Prot Warrior, Shadow Priest, Holy Paladin, and Ret Paladin. The Prot warrior was MT for Moroes, I was off-tank, while I simultaneously off-tanked the Prot Warrior. The Rogue stunlocked the Ret Paladin, the Priest shackled the Holy Paladin, while our Ret Paladin tanked the Shadow Priest as it was burned down first, followed by the Ret Paladin, then the Holy Paladin. After the Holy Paladin was unshackled the Prot Warrior was shackled and I went fully to town OTing Moroes. We left the Prot Warrior shackled and killed Moroes in our easiest run yet.

Following that we did a quick Maiden kill (got me my gauntlets from her!!!!), and moved onto the Opera Event. We got the worst one to start with: The Crone (Wizard of Oz). Our first attempt was a disaster. Plan was: I would tank Tito and Roar (who was being feared by the 'lock). The Warrior would tank/kite Tinhead, while the mage Burn-kited Strawman and the rest would tear down Dorothee, then onto Strawman, then Roar, then Tito, and finally Tinhead. What we didn't realize was Tito silenced. >.> Not good since I that meant I couldn't Holy Shield occasionally, nor cast at some vital points. So I died. Next try I was on Tinhead and the Warrior was on Tito and Roar. Worked like a charm! Had a few deaths, but in the end we got the Crone out where things went to hell in a hand basket. We went from 8 alive to 5 in a matter of seconds due to, I think, people not being ready and dying to Chain Lightning (myself included). But we still walked away with a win. Got the ribbon and the Crone's hat (the Mage got it and was saying "HAT! >:D" for the rest of the night). At that point we called it a night.

We've also expanded our weekly raids to 2 nights a week permanently on Saturday and Sunday nights. This coming weekend the plan will be to take down Moroes, followed by the Opera event on Saturday and then take stabs at the Curator. On Sunday the plan will be to do Attumen then Maiden, followed by either more attempts at Curator, or if we beat him the night before then we'll do something beyond it. (Chess event, I hope!)