They Cost Not Lots

After noticing that there are a plethora of wow blogs, but next to none for the shaman class, I thought I'd try to rectify the situation and get one off of the ground. As a result you wont see too much written in this, my personal blog, about my travels in WoW anymore... you find all that sort of stuff over there. the Blog is called Ride the Lightning, and it focuses on Resto spec for a casual playstyle, and Elemental spec in 25 man progression raiding. If that is your gig then go and check it out. Heck.. just go and check it out anyways! :)

Whilst the general trend of the Black Orc has remained the same during these next 10 levels, there have been some noticeable changes and of course a slew of new skills. I have taken the mastery path of "Da Toughest", the path dedicated to survivability, and the stats on my gear are weighted Toughness > Wounds > Strength > Initiative > Weapon skill. Whilst the general trend of survivability > dps holds true for levels 10-20, a change I noticed to previous levels is that DPS drops off considerably, and when I say considerably I mean by a very large factor (or so it seems). In contrast, survivability increases only slightly, and is then situational. By situational I mean that there is a difference in the survivability increase depending on whether we are discussing PVE or PVP, and whether we are solo or grouped. The general feel of the Black Orc from 10-20, particularly in the later stage of the bracket, is similar to that of a protection speced Paladin from WoW. That is to say, you are tough as nails... one really tough cookie... but hit like a 3 year old girl with the palsy using a wet noodle for a weapon!

The first 10 levels of my Black Orc have been very enjoyable ones. Thus far, it seems pretty obvious that this class is all about the tanking. It is NOT the equivalent of a WoW fury warrior. The bulk of the skills gained in these first ten levels are geared towards defensively buffing yourself or, on the more offensive side of things, debuffing enemies and being a right royal pain in the arse to them. There are very few pure DPS skills though. By the end of level 10, Black Orcs have the core skills they need to be an effective PVE and PVP tank. They have the ability to taunt mobs and enemy players and a number of useful skills to help defend their allies. There are however very few skills of the type that include "causes addition threat" in the tooltip. I'm sure these will come later. Overall the class has a feel of survivability > damage, and when it comes to survivability the Black Orc has it in spades. "Da Toughest" is the coolest skill ever (gained very early on too) and goes a long way to making the Black Orc the survival machine that he is. Each weapon swing gives a 25% chance to proc an increase in Wounds and a self heal. It is awesome and if it gets nerfed I think I will seriously roll up into the fetal position and cry!

Seems EA/Mythic made a tremendous screw up and released a crap load of faulty DVD's here in Australia (dodgy warpatch.exe files). If you are having problems launching the game after install because there is no icon for you to click on and because the warpatch.exe file does nothing other than open up a DOS window for a few seconds and then quit, read on. A solution is at hand.

Hooray! After putting my name in the beta-test lottery all those months ago, I've finally been invited to participate in the "Warhammer Online: Age of Reckoning" closed beta testing. A little late, what, with the open beta testing not that far off, and the release only a couple of months away, but pretty cool nevertheless. I seem to have been part of the latest intake, to be used for oceanic testing. Now to just to wait out the very, VERY, slow download of the 9 gig client...

In a previous entry, I reported how I was pretty much over WoW at this point in time. After years of playing it, it just no longer seemed to have any appeal. At the time of writing that I was pretty much sure that the whole genre of MMO was stale and that there was very little that could be done to make it as appealing as it once was to me. I was wrong. Enter Age of Conan.

Well, after a number of years of playing World of Warcraft, at least one of which was spent as a totally hopeless addict, the luster seems to finally be wearing off. You see, over the past month or so, I've logged onto my account less than half a dozen times. To give some contrast consider this: I am currently on leave from work and have spent about 2 hours in total playing the game during a 2 week period. Last time that I was on leave from work, I spent close to 16 hours a day, 7 days a week PVPing. My how things have changed!

I've been a bit slack with reporting guild news as of late.. been rather busy you see, but that doesn't mean there has been no news to report. Quite the opposite in fact. Over the past couple of weeks a staggering number of bosses have fallen to the SW progression juggernaught. Jan’Alai, Leotheras the Blind, Fathom Lord Karathress and Rage Winterchill all met speedy deaths. This now puts us at 5/6 SSC, 3/4TK and 1/5 MH, and has us taking our first steps into Tier 6 content!

It's been another good week on the progression front for Southern Wardens with three more 1st kills under our belt. Solarian in Tempest Keep, Doomwalker, and Tidewalker Morogrim from SSC; All of which were done on our first night encountering them. Solarian went down after half a dozen attempts, and Morogrim went down on the second attempt. That makes nine new boss kills in 6 weeks which is pretty fantabulous to say the least and puts us at 3/4 TK and 3/6 SSC.