Back to Guildless..... Well I Quit

A footnote in my life's adventure in WoW. LoL. Decided to leave my guild as I rather say on Neutral terms.

I'm not even sure what to write here in my blog or how to explain on my blog. I though about making it one sentence and saying I just left my guild and I'm neutral about it. There isn't that much of a story or is there? Only knew a few officers in the guild that I sometime ran with in 5 man instance and liked me tanking for them. I really can't say I knew anyone else in the guild. They asked me for over a month to consider joining them before I gave it serious thought. Galo is a solo spirit. Never really knew anyone else there other than four of the top officers and GM. For the most part unless you really looked at who was online you wouldn't even know I was even there logged on. I never speak in guild chat unless you directly ask me something and usually never to anyone I never really know either in the guild.

For the last week or so almost everyday they want me to head to Kara with them or join them in middle of a raid. Usually I'm busy so I decline invite. I also don't want to start Kara half way into Kara. In some ways i was just checking out my guild also in more ways than one. The constant asking of whether or not I can join them in Kara wears on me after a while. My guild has about ten warriors almost all of them protection short of one or two they have recruited in over a week. A few Feral Druids also. And me the out of place lone Tanking Paladin with one Ret. The Warrior is their main tank and already have a off tank Warrior sometimes its the Druid they alternate some whichever one signed up or is on. On most days I'm on I log in I just go about doing my daily quests, a instance, herb farming or whatever. At this point I'm just focus on my new goal of getting my Epic Flying Mount. IMO that some how conflicts with my guild already running Kara.

For two main reasons I decided to leave. This is obvious, but for right now my goal is working on getting my Epic Flying Mount. I mean that's obvious to you if you being reading this blog for a while, its a goal of mine and to be on a raiding schedule means lots of repair bill, farming raid mats for raid and I'll be forever before I get my Epic Mount. Second thing was over the course of the week I've being in my guild I noticed that no one runs 5 man for gear....... not at all. A good Warlock friend I run with that recently got invited to the guild quit because on his raid with the guild they were wiping all over Attunmen because of being undergeard so he quit in few days. Everyone getting to 70 and before picks up the Kara quest completes it the very day they ding 70 signs up and heads right to Kara in whatever gear they have. Last night a few people joined our guild... including the undergeared Hunter guy the other day from Heroic SV. I saw the name and remembered. He immediately wanted to know when he can raid Kara. Sitting quietly in the guild over time I observed all that. The priest who dinged 70 earlier in the day was that very night raiding already as well as a few others. This somehow bothered me a while and so I decided to bring it up in guild chat with the GM and Officers asking whether or not the guild has a gear check policy before heading into Kara. You barely ever see my name in guild chat.

The guild so far as I know has progressed as far as Curator. On most days they have a hard time getting up to that boss. They want to start running 2 Kara teams as of tonight when the first one is barely properly geared well for DPS. On most days you barely have 12 lvl 70 on at same time other than raid time. Guild have about 40 people or so. They are extremely short on healers let alone good healers at that as well as properly geared healers. So back to my question that I asked what's the policy on getting people properly geared before heading off to Kara in greens and lvl 60 gear. The response I got was that they have no policy for Kara unless they don't have enough DPS and sub someone else in with better gear as the Officers knows best. It was expressed to me that as the Tank I shouldn't worry as the Officers will take care of things.

Wait a minute here, Galo is a thinking man and as a Tank I do worry It my time too and repair bill if and when I decide to attend a raid. It was also said that the Tanks and Healers needed to have good gear and the Tank just needed to hold aggro and DPS do the rest. Hmmm. One the next officers said "Just hit your 5 buttons and just hold aggro". Up to that point I was seriously considering leaving the guild already. In a matter of 1 sec I though for what seem like forever and eventually came to an answer. At that very point my decision was made. So I left the guild at that point the feeling is all Neutral.

Tanking Tactics: Target Targeting

Target Targeting is a UI function I found that's a absolute joy to have Tanking. My UI is mostly Ace based, its not perfect nor do I need it that way. It works for what I need it to do and set up the way it is because I tank. I use ag_Unitframes a Ace base addon for my UI structure and in that you can set it up to set Target Targeting or anything else you like such as being able to see mob spell casting on botton of pic. Very helpfull if your looking at casters to know that to either Hammer of Justice or release Arcane Torrent (Blood Elfs) to silence mob before the spell is casted.

So from the pic it should be more than obvious to you if your a tank to see the benefit of Target Targeting or as simple as one can say knowing just who that mob/boss is looking at or paying attention to. Aggro in short. Boss Warchief Kargath there in one of many game snapshots have me firm in his sight. If he changed target due to aggro or it keeps flipping back and forth from anyone else I know it immediately someone is riding me on aggro or I can look up at my threat meter (Omen). If he or any other boss takes off after group I know who it will be as their pic will replace mine (next to mob) as I'm still focus on him so I know who his target is. I can hit my Taunt macro immediately and he's right back to me in firm control. I can also at my eye level without wandering around see all his debuffs if it matters and see my judgement is still there. On mobs that remove judgements I can know I need to put my judgement back up there. I can easily see his life drops in relation to mine without looking all over the place right in one view.

However you look at it, as a tank Target Targeting is pretty darn valuable in knowing all the time who my mob is focus on, if I have first aggro or if someone else pet does and I need to taunt mob to me. If its a group fight with many mobs and clothy is in mob target and taunt is on cooldown. Then I resort to my next trick...Blessing of Protection macro Taunt without ever changing target as its done through Target Targeting on clothy, gets mob off bubbled clothy caster usually back to me. Target Targeting is nifty to have if your the tank, for dps too but more usefull to a tank IMO.

Some Macro's I Use

A reader asked about the Avoidance macro I use to easily compute to check my total avoidance for my gear and for uncrushable at 102.4% with Holy Shield active. Here it is:

Avoidance Macro
/script DEFAULT_CHAT_FRAME:AddMessage("Need 102.4 combined avoidance. Currently at:",0.8,0.8,1)
/script DEFAULT_CHAT_FRAME:AddMessage(GetDodgeChance()+GetBlockChance() + GetParryChance() +5+(GetCombatRatingBonus(CR_DEFENSE_SKILL) + 20)*0.04,1,0.5,0)

Just use it and it gives you the computed values with or without Holy Shield active when you use it.

Other Macro's I use: I'm no macro expert. These are just the ones I have and do use or modified them to my needs and have used them as such. They all do work, but test to make sure.

Aura Mount/Dismount
#showtooltip Summon Charger
/castsequence [nomounted] Crusader Aura, Summon Charger
/cast [mounted] Retribution Aura
/dismount [mounted]

Changes Aura and summons mount on dismount it changes back to Ret Aura.

Blessing of Protection Taunt/Target Targeting Bubble
/cast [target=target,help] Blessing of Protection; [target=targettarget,help] Blessing of Protection

Works just like Righteous Defense macro as a 2nd Taunt and 911 bubble, except it bubbles my target target since I use "Target Targeting" in my UI setup since I Tank.

Bubble Bandage
#showtooltip Divine Protection
/cast Divine Protection
/stopcasting
/use [target=player] Heavy Netherweave Bandage

It does just what it say and thats just how I use it as a last resort 911 bubble and bandage.

Devine Shield Fear Macro (cast when feared)
/cancelaura Divine Shield
/cancelaura Blessing of Protection
/stopcasting
/cast Divine Shield

Blessing of Protection Fear Macro
/cancelaura Blessing of Protection
/stopcasting
/cast [target=player] Blessing of Protection

Cancel Devine Shield Macro
/stopcasting
/cancelaura Divine Shield
/cancelaura Blessing of Protection

Those work just as it says. At least the last time I used them they did.

*Special use: Cancel DS/BoP, Judge & Erorcism Target or previous Target Macro.
/stopcasting
/cancelaura Divine Shield
/cancelaura Blessing of Protection
/target %t
/cast Judgement
/stopcasting
/cast Exorcism

The macro above is a custom Fear Macro I made and have used to immediately cancel out of DS (Devine Shield or BoP) on being feared from target and cast this to immediately judge and Exorcism target still on target. If its not undead or demon it won't cast Exorcism. Its a custom macro I use under certain conditions to auto attack and have immediate threat aggro back with minimal time loss after coming out of a being feared.

Righteous Defense Macro Taunt
/cast [target=target,help] Righteous Defense; [target=targettarget,help] Righteous Defense

Seal/Judgement of Righteousness Macro
#showtooltip
/cast Judgement
/stopcasting
/cast Seal of Righteousness

Seal/Judgement of Wisdom Macro
#showtooltip
/cast Judgement
/stopcasting
/cast Seal of Wisdom

*Bubble Hearth
/castsequence reset=3600 Divine Shield, Hearthstone

*You have to click that bubble hearth twice quickly to get it to work.

Those are all the basic ones that I have and use and I haven't changes when since the last patch update and they all work fine as far as I know.

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Note to self, changed site counter and tracking today to Sitemeter.

Fishing and Weather Beaten Journal

I love to fish for fun in WoW for R&R and for food buffs. Tanks consume lots of foods on every run for the added buffs. This is awesome fishing tracker just like finding herbs with the herb tracker for Herbalism which I have. Picked this up right after we got the recent patch. I just flew around Zangarmarsh and locating floating debris everywhere or floating steam pumps best place in Outland in my opinion to find these after all water everywhere. Any floating debris works to be able to fish one of these up in various different crates. Took me fishing in about 8-10 floating debris to get mine. You see the journal in it when you do fish up the crates.

If you pick up the journal when you spot it in the crate you can leave it there and not remove it. If you decide to keep fishing you can still fish up another crate with the journal in it as long as you never remove a journal from the crate as its BoP. However if you remove any one the journal from crate you will no longer see the other journal in any other crate you may have. Fish up as many as you can and if be sell the crates with the journal in them, mail it to your alts if you want or sell the complete crate to make money maybe. I just fished up one, that's all I needed.

Fishing Tracker on (yellow dots) in Terokkar Forest in the Highland areas over by Skettis in the lake. Tracking Highland Mixed Pools. Fished up lots Furious Crawdads. They only give you the best food stamina buff in the game making Spicy Crawdad (+30 Stam/+20 Sprit) currently and often very hard to get even with max fishing skill and a very good fishing rod. Need high level fishing about 475 for total (Skill+Rod+Lure) fishing to reliable catch these. I use Nat Pagle's Extreme Angler FC-5000 (Horde only). You need +100 fishing lures (10 minute lures) to use to catch them with a very good fishing rod. So I often stack those fishing lures whenever I see them at any vendor and save them up as you can only ever buy so much at 1 0r 2 a time. Make sure to get your self one these journals, you will not regret the time it takes to get one. At least I don't, ever seen the price of Furious Crawdad on AH. Its pure gold and you can bet I will be fishing up lots of them for my tanking use of course and AH as well.

Updated: One the nice things with the Fish Tracking is you can just be flying around doing whatever with fishing tracker on and spot fish pools. Drop down and fish get a mote or two. That's Awesome! Fishing is worth leveling, some people just decide not to have the patience to level it but its so usefull. I bet if Blizzard dropped some random Epics in the lakes or ocean more people would just for that.

Pug Tales - Assignment Heroic Steamvault

Another one from "PuG Tales Files". Sometimes depending on the group a Heroic assignment can seem a bit like one of those Mission Impossible assignment. I grew up loving watching that show. Funny they had a group of 5 people too on a impossible mission. Well Galo the brave knight you are your assignment if you choose to accept it is to Heroic Steamvault for the Daily Heroic Dungeon & Dungeon Quest. Was a bit busy with work so had to try and do it one day later.

One day later it seems I was the only person on server at the time trying to run Heroic Steamvault. So asked in my guild and one the Priest healers and Warlock was in and wanting to improve their gear so cool got a brave Tank, Healer a DPS just need more solid DPS with good CC. Couldn't find anyone else so tried LFG for the other two. Picked up a Rogue I somewhat knew around that had solid gear. Tried to get a mage for some time in LFG but couldn't find one or any other DPS to do a Heroic SV run so we eventually settled on a Hunter that offered to go that said he had as good a gear as he can get in 5 man. OK, awesome that sound great, lets roll.

The Rogue and I (Protec Paladin/Tank) was properly geared for Heroics. The guild Priest was undergeared a bit and barely had +1K healing. Warlock had decent gear it seems as it looked good. The Hunter I took for his word that said he had good gear for Heroics which turned out he didn't in the end. I've run regular Steamvault a lot, so I know the place and have even ran it under 40 mins on regular. On Heroics the mobs again hit solid hard around 3-4K a hit and 2-3k for the casters on spell hits and nature damage... thats rough. First few pulls mobs took a while to die, healer struggled on heals and I was tanking 2+ mobs at once. So we tried to skip killing the first bog lord there at entrance, seemed good idea turned out to be bad idea on Heroics.

The first group of five with the 2 casters, I marked and Rogue tried to sap one the casters because they all cast fear like crazy and somehow Rogue got detected and next thing all mobs come running siren cast fear and I got feared right into the bog lord at the entrance... wipe. We recovered kill the bog lord at entrance and back to the group of 5. Somewhere after that we wiped again for some crazy reason. Cleared up some trash. On the second 5 mob pull going to the second boss by the tunnel we pull, things didn't get trapped and no sap for CC and I ended up tanking 3 melee mobs at one plus casters damage again... we wipe. We rezz, we pull again and somehow I can't figure how the bog lord all the way from the complete other side of the room runs over and whack me and the group..... we wipe. We're not even half way yet to 1st boss and I'm loosing lots of armor durability on plate armor. I had to hearth out for repairs at 8% armor.. ouch (was 15g repair)!! On return we kill the bog lord over on other side of room to leave no loose ends for mobs (Lesson here). We wipe at least 2 more times to the boss to make it short.

On first boss Threspia, told group to watch out for the double lightning clouds she does at once in Heroic mode. I was mobile the whole fight as she summoned a double sets of lightnings and while I was watching and trying to evade lightning clouds the group was dead.... we wipe. Time like these you need guts of steel to be a tank. We run back and rezz again this time we got her down during which she did 3 double lightning clouds over course of fight once after each other. I was running from spot to spot to evade them, but we got her down though. 1 Badge of Justice and could barely remember what she dropped. Its was just satisfying to know she was dead.

On way to second boss Hunter had to log and we replaced him with a Mage friend. Things went smooth after that, no wipes. Tip: Even learned a short cut to second boss area. After tunnel jump into water channel on your right and swim around and then turn left at the opening and you come up ramp on other side where the one Naga patrols with the other slaves working. We down the Naga groups quickly and head over to boss Steamrigger. We AoE the gnomes easily. On Heroics Steamrigger is on a 5 min timer to kill and lots more gnomes show up to repair him fast and constantly. The Rogue cleared up the gnomes as they showed up and we just pumped all out everything for DPS on Steamrigger while poping a few mana pots as I kept up Judgement of Crusader. We got him down in about exactly 3 mins the time it took for my Avenging Wrath to come off of cooldown. Another Badge of Justice and can't remember what dropped, but someone got it. Two Bosses down one more to go!

Getting to last boss from there was much easier with the Mage on board. Clearing up the guard patrol mobs we avoided before swimming around the water channel to second boss was easier from this direction (Tip). Was much easier to pull them toward us coming from 2nd boss direction vs risk been feared into the other group of 5 on other side of room. We easily cleared up to the last boss room. At the last boss room I mark, Rogue sapped siren caster, I pull, Mage sheep and I tank the rest. Sap breaks and siren caster fears us into the 5 mob group on other side of boss room...... we wipe. Uhh sucks!!. If its one thing you learn in Heroics is cover your tracks with mobs because you may just regret not killing them where you left them. Good CC is very important especially when your dealing with mobs that fear and fear allot. I always Hammer of Justice the caster on casting before its complete and silence them with Arcane Torrent on casting before its complete always worked great. Sometime just the luck of the dice.

On Warlord Kalithresh what I know on Heroic mode is he hit a whole lot harder (Yeap!) and the tanks heal him for a heck of a lot more than regular mode and he has allot more health at 200+K. Thats a lot of health! And indeed he slam hit you pretty damn hard no joke! The undergeared Priest struggled to heal the entire time and we paid the price for that.... too late on heal...I die we wipe. On 2nd try.... I run up to boss in about 5 seconds or so I die...we wipe. Disappointing there really! 3rd try DPS seem to be taking a while to kill tanks, we get him a little less than 50% and boss gotten so strong from healing from his tank he was hitting really hard healer couldn't keep me up... we wipe. You think you have headaches as DPS, try been a tank! Yeah a lot of people would of quit by now I imagine for sure and given up. Healer went aft for a few mins seem like forever to feed his dog while we wait on him at the boss. Mage friend had to go to another instance run with his guild friends. So the Rogue had another Rogue friend and we invited him in.

We made another attempt at boss Warlord Kalithresh. I buff up again with everything and Wizzard Oil, that means I been through 4 sets of Elixir now on the boss alone. I AS, drop SoR, Judge Crusader and kept it up the entire time for max damage and just popped mana pots when I could. As soon as I hit him we just moved him to the tanks to destroy them quickly and then stayed mobile moving him quickly to the next tanks and we just pumped out lots of DPS. Long fight it seemed. We down the boss finally. Mission Accomplished thank goodness!! I was glad that fight was over at that point. Another Badge of Justice. For loot he dropped 2 pieces of plate one piece some Gauntlet of the Bold and some Epic Amber Bands and some Nether and a few other things. I just picked them all up all the plate. Healer picked up a Vermillion Robe he needed a upgrade for him. I left Instance with less than 20% armor durability for another full repair. It's not fun to admit we wiped that many times, that's the most I've ever had in one run but its Heroic mode also. But that's just how this group run went, it happened.

On Daily Dungeon Quest turn in for both quest got my other 2 Badges of Justice for 5 and not too soon after that picked up my Libram of Repentance which I was soo glad to finally pickup. Later Armory the Hunter after the run that we had, he was wearing level 60-68 level gear, barely just slightly Honored with CE and not a single piece gear with any enchant, almost every single socketed gear piece he had was ungemed as well, imagine that also. You can take many lesson from that run if you can see it all in between, it cost you no repair cost or frustration. However when things go well there is hardly anything to learn. When things does not go so well you learn from all the mistakes made from people being undergeared & unprepared, undergeared for healing, lack of very good CC. Your determination will indeed get tested here. I called it a night after that. Epic Heroic PuG Tales.

BRK Story Time

If you haven't stopped by and read our favorite Hunter blog over at BRK - Big Red Kitty today I urge you to stop by and have a read if you haven't. I'm sure you will have a good laugh and be amused. I was laughing so hard I was choking all at the same time my stomach was hurting. I know where he is coming from, I was there too. I remember those days well but not quite as enriching as BRK tells it. So hop over and have a read.

Thanks for the story and laugh BRK!

Do I miss those day? Sometimes and then again there times I really Don't miss it at all. What I miss are my friends that were there, always have.

Heroics - Libram of Repentance

Well its finally now mine. Standard Paladin tanking Libram for Kara and beyond. With Holy Shield up I can attain uncrushable status without it gear wise. Now I'm easily uncrushable with it and Holy Shield up wearing my normal good tanking gear pre-Kara. Earned my last 5 badges completing daily dungeon for Heroic Steamvault. The Libram cost 15 Badges of Justice at G'eras in Shattrath city. I've now completed all my 5 man pre-Kara gear goals.

So how was Heroic Steamvault? Well be in my next post.

In Case You Missed It - WoW Item Links in Blog

Saw this over at WoWInsider for link to items from Wowhead database. Anyway its a quick post so if your a WoW blogger, here is a good way to get the item linked into your blog without blocking your blog article view. I always link all my items to Wowhead anyway so will work great for item links displayed without blocking blog article when displayed and without having to go there also. Linked article Here.

Thanksgiving Holidays

Have a safe and enjoyable Thanksgiving Holiday and weekend wherever you may be going.

New To Heroics, Be Prepared!

As a result of Patch 2.3 the requirements for Heroics was lowered from select faction Revered to Honoured. You no longer have to prove you got the chops been tested and Revered with blue gear to prove your somewhat ready to perform at Heroic level. Anyone at Honoured for the select instance faction at lvl 70 can now find a group.... or try to and venture into a Heroic level Dungeon. Willing to risk life and limb being unprepared and most likely put 4 other unsuspecting people at death's gate.

If your a new Paladin tank or if your another tanking class do your self and other people a huge favor and be prepared! As Illidan says.. you are not prepared! For Paladins you need some damn good blue gear. You need 485 Defense minimum for Heroics and at least 10K HP minimum to make a decent shot at doing Heroics. I would say 11K HP would be a lot better and you would be doing the Healer and the other DPS a huge favor in you having survivability in front of melee mobs that hit from out of this world HARD. They hit harder than mobs in Karazhan. Just because you tanked a few instances new at 70 don't mean you should venture into Heroics with crappy gear and crappy greens and think your going to survive. You won't in one piece! Your going to be running up lots of people's repair bill being unprepared. That's goes to DPS as well as Healers who lack healing power also. I love PuG's but I sure won't be in yours in Heroic mode!

Blogs I Read

I read more blogs that you see there, be too long a list if I put them all there too. Most popular ones I read are there though. I often adds new links, not just for you to find but often because its easier for me to remember where to find it. Often I add blog articles linked to other peoples blog that I find interesting to my blog link list. Anyway here is a new comer that plays a Rogue but likes to drop Paladin seals. I have a Rogue too but he's been stunlocked at level 20 for quite a while. Why are Paladin type blogs so popular? I may update this entry if and when time permits.

Seal of Rogueshness

Dungeon Chaperoning

I'm never quite sure why people read my blog. I don't track stats, though I know for sure lots of people read here in the shadows. I write about my experiences as a Protec Paladin. I don't Theorycraft as a Paladin at least not usually, we have many good Paladin blogs for that and the Maintankadin forum for it. What I usually do any serious post on it all falls under perspective or observations but its all perspective to me. So one of the things I've being simmering a while now on is the act of Dungeon Chaperoning if you call it by that name or better known as Dungeon run thoughs. Not clear yet! Ok ..... /w Will you please help me and run me through "X" dungeon OR Will pay "X" gold if you run me through (RFC, WC, SFK, RFK, SM etc) please?

Plain and simple Galo's personal policy is the answer is NO! And I don't care if your offering me 10g to do it either. I can't tell you how many and how often I get a /w like that or see it in general or trade chat. For all I know it could be you or someone else like you, a newbie, a noob or on a high level with a alt as the guilty party that did that /w. My number one policy as a Paladin and as a level 70 is: I do not under any circumstances run anyone through a dungeon ... period! I'd rather heal for a lowbie or group so they learn how to play in groups as a team than run someone or group through any dungeon.

People sometime wonder how people get to lvl 60 or lvl 70 in Outland and have no idea how to play the game. You walk into a PuG and you wonder how some people have no idea how to play or even group and play effectively with each other. You wonder what the heck that person has being doing for 60+ levels. You get frustrated when you see people like that and you wonder how? Well one the many reasons I think is Dungeon Chaperoning by level 70's to low level players and to alts or people in their own guilds for quest, loot or whatever. Your not doing those people any favors by depriving them of the opportunity to learn to play before they get to lvl 70 and make your life hell in 5-mans or even raids. Heck I've even gotten /w where when I said "No, I'm sorry I can't do that" people resort to question why I won't run them through a lowbie dungeon. Imagine that.

High levels are not doing lowbies any favors by chaperoning them through dungeons. I know you sometime do it for the gold because your broke maybe. Your not doing any lowbie or group any good favor if they are never learning how to fight instance mobs and bosses as a group by one manning the dungeon for them. Sure you save them a lot of time and a quick run through but at the price of them never learning how to play properly. If you want to run someone through a dungeon that's up to your its your character. But if you /w me and ask me to the answer is a NO. I've never asked a high level to run me through any dungeon when I was leveling. I always tried to find a group at my level and if I couldn't I just bypass the dungeon completely leveling up. But I learned to play in groups on my own effort and thus developed my own skills over time and playing my class. I'm not sure why people are so lazy that they wont take the effort to find a group, learn to play and quit asking to have everything handed to them easily even a instance. What happened to putting in your own sweat and effort in a group and pulling your own weight?

What's In a Bank? - Alt Personal Bank

Hmm, I remember that post I did a while bank about "What's In a Bag". This time it's What's in my Alt personal Guild Bank. My level 13 Warlock is my Banker toon on Zangarmarsh server. The lvl 18 Shadow Priest is my Banker toon on my old server of Rexxar and he still holds my small fortune there too. My Warlock Banker has his own personal guild: Legion of Armageddon and his own personal Guild Bank. This bank is the central bank for all of Galo's stuff he can't fit in his own personal bank and stuff he has to deposit spread out over various alts in their own bank that I barely play. I haven't seen the Guild Bank controls not sure where its at. Maybe because there is a one person Guild Bank not sure.

So having bought a Guild Bank tab for 100g its just about filled already. Next tab is 250g for that tab. I would love to invest some gold to buy another bank tab in the Guild Bank but I rather save the money for now for my Epic Flying Mount fund to get to 5200g. Already spent 120g on Bank and Guild. All I usually do is just mail everything Galo has from Outland to my Alt bankers due to limited bag & bank space to my Alt banker to store or sell on AH. Even my Alt personal bank space is full of stuff. Need more space! Galo is in a Guild but I don't use that Guild Bank I have my own. However if I was to sell all that other stuff I'm sure I can muster up a few hundred gold. Working on it.

Epic Flying Mount Fund:
Zangarmarsh: 2275 g. Increasing Daily as long as I don't have massive repair bills.
Rexxar: 1688 g. How do I get all my money off that server. Takes getting lvl 18 Shadow Priest to lvl 30. Priest being at lvl 18 for over 6 months. Get my lvl 28 Hunter to lvl 30. At level 30 I can split the gold among the two alts and transfer them to my current server and get my gold.

Total current Epic Flying Mount Fund: 3963 g. I think I'm looking good for that mount soon. If I also sell the extra stuff sitting in my alts banks I'm sure I can get 1000g.

Post 2.3 Farming for a Azure Whelping Pet

A new pet was added in Patch 2.3 the Azure Whelping pet which are quite cute nice little blue pets and farmable in Azshara. Can be farmed or grind from killing Elite lvl 51-52 Dragons if you dare put in the time it takes.
If you have a map Addon for coordinates you can find them around a large ruin area around 38, 78 spread out around a large area. There are three kind off Elite Dragons here but the ones that I'm aware that drops the Azure Whelping pet are the Blue Dragonspawn & Draconic Mageweaver. However just to make sure a pet dropped my motto is kill everything just to make sure. Started at around 10pm and it was just me and the lvl 60 Alliance Hunter there in the pic in entire area. Got called to kill last boss in Heroic SP and picked my 3 Badges of Justice for 30 minutes. By time that I got back thee were over a dozen people there farming the pet.

Persistence always pays off. It was about 0215 when I finally got my pet. When I left that lvl 60 Alliance Hunter was still there. He was farming the Dragon skins. I'm quite sure he got plenty. After all he was there before I first got there. Not sure what those skins are worth but he got a ton I'm sure as no Dragon in the entire area stayed alive for even a minute. Anyway now proud owner of a Azure Whelping companion pet on my server and not many people seem to have them as yet I've seen. Glad that grind is now over.

Post Patch 2.3

Hasn't been smooth since patch 2.3. On patch day I was back to vanilla WoW as my UI didn't work nor did many of my Addons. So spent most of that time trying to manually update addons. Its a few days later and I'm still playing with getting Addons working properly. So play time has really been limited on Galo. For the most part I just went played with one or two of my alts a bit as my UI's get updated as didn't feel like playing much with error messages constantly on my screen. So got my Hunter from 23 to 28. The life of Addons and broken Addons on every patch.

My First Heroics

Well if your progressing on gear everyone has to start Heroics at some point. A warrior friend of mine really needed a tank so being hesitant with a PuG I said why not. So we headed to Mechanar to get some Heroic Badges. Me Protec Paladin, a Warrior (Fury), 2 Warlocks, Shaman (Resto). No CC there except for the demons it turned out.

Have run Mech a few times was familiar with the place. But on Heroics I can really tell the difference in being hit hard on Plate. No joke, Heroics do hit pretty damn hard. The Shaman healer is a friend of mine and did many runs with him before and he was also a bit new to Heroics. Think he took a while getting used to healing Heroics so we ended up wiping a few times during the entire run. On Capacitus we wiped once due to the Resto Shaman running out of mana, I could clearly see it as it was happening. Everything hits as hard as a asteroid impact in Heroics. A few times I seen hits on me for 3-6k hits including on bosses.

The fourth boss the Fire Boss lady just sucked, we tried her last and wiped on her several times with all 3 fire elementals running around. Best try we got her to like 4k health and we wiped but it didn't help that the DPS died first and I last one alive when we wiped. The waves to the last boss we had to reset them a few times as someone easily died when they were getting hit and with lots of fire damage that burn hot like sunspots. We wiped a bit learning Heroics. But we did get our 4 badges to stay the least. One the Warlock a clothy was complaining how much her repair cost was going to be. I never said much about that being the tank but I can say my repair cost was over 25g for the run and that's not including all the tanking food consumables I used or including Potions/Elixirs/Wizard Oils. Cloth wearing class can say all they want in a instance but I can tell you their repair is no where in the ball park of what a tank consumption and repair cost is. I go into every instance fully stocked. Often inmost cases a tank cost can easily out cost the entire 5-man group repair bill and if you include all the consumables its a pretty damn high cost.

Never been to Slave Pens before but later with my new guild we ran Slaves Pen on Heroics. That was smoother but we had 2 wipe deaths due to inadvertent adds on the first boss right at the pull and another sometime after that. Most the Naga mobs I just AoE for CC unless the mage had one sheep or rogue had one sapped. The second and last boss we one shot both of those. Picked up some plate gear and epic gem and all 3 Heroic Badges. The gear drop I can barely remember what they were. Was fun. But best I can say if doing Heroics you really need good gear, damn good healer, good DPS and for no one to pull aggro if can help it. CC does makes like much easier. Run a instance your at least familiar with on Heroics. I always prefer 1 or 2 mages in Instances. Melee mobs in Heroics hits real hard its just in my opinion ridiculous the amount of damage they hit for. Well 8 more Heroic Badges and I can get my Libram of Repentance and a few huge repair bills I'm sure.

Epic Mount or Raiding?

I'll never be a Hardcore Raider, quite frankly I don't have the time to commit to it. I can only see myself as more of a casual raider due to real life obligations and time. Whatever I do I'm usually dedicated to it. However I've always wanted a Epic Mount for Galo. Even since I've seen those Netherwing Flying Mounts and always wanted to have one. In my view its efficiency with in game time to do all things from farming for needed mats to quests and getting around Outland at warp speed.

Its sucks seeing someone zoom by you on a regular mount at the speed of light on a Epic Flying Mount. Tanking is also fun and its nice to be able to see Karazhan and do all the fun things there for progression of character. But like all things I like to charter my own course of things. The possibility of spending lots of time at this point Instancing running Heroics or let alone raiding on a full time schedule leave you stagnated when it comes to gold fund more so in my opinion as a Tank. The way I see it being in dungeon most the time leaves you broke! I'm also not fond of been a tank with low funds! For some people maybe but not for Galo.

I'm already neutral with the Netherwing faction but cannot progress any futher faction wise until I get a Epic flyer. Yeah I'm in a guild that's already currently raiding Karazhan. That's not a big deal to me to say the least. Epics in Karazhan are nice for tanking gear. But Galo has a mind of his own and what fancy me as being Epic is a Epic Mount at this time and point and for me that's all perspective. To raid Karazhan full time is to be constantly broke in mats, consumables and gold. That can take a long time over months. I can easily spend my time with dedication to quest, daily quests, grind out that 5000g for a Epic Mount within a short few weeks. Not longer than the time it took me to gear up to uncrushable Pre-Kara. After that it be no problem to go raid Karazhan already having a Epic Mount and being able to farm for gold at warp speed. So I'm thinking next up to farm for my Epic Mount while running a few Heroics to get my Libram of Repentance. Its all about time efficiency doing things with a Epic Flying Mount and time is money.

Recruited to a Guild

Many month ago when I first started this blog about Galo I have always being and still remain very much a solitary and solo player. I enjoy the solo life and the peace of mind that comes with setting my own goals going after them and achieving them with dedication progressively on my own time and on my own efforts without the pressure of being apart of any guild whatsoever. Guilds help leveling and in progression content, however its sometimes good to be a bit maverick if its to your style of play.

Solo'd all the way to 70 on my own. Did quests and figured out how to solo quests and elite quests on my own. At 70 I've managed to run all instance guildless and all in happy PuG's for the most part. Made lots of good friends from all the 5-man Instance runs and have gotten countless guild invites from friends and everyone wanting me to join their guilds for a tank spot. Have also turned down everyone that asked also for my own reasons. Often I just like to do my own thing without being bothered by a guild as a whole. More than often my goals haven't always mesh with a guild goal thus more reason to remain solo.

However one young guild on my server I have managed to tank for their members while getting gear in 5-man instance a bit. I pretty much know most of all their top guild DPS members including their GM Priest. Have tanked many instance with him before and he's a very good healer. I've run with their DPS groups before as most were doing 5-man Instance for gear. They had asked numerous times over the last month while I was collecting gear on my own running instances to join their guild. I decline usually! Often being that I really don't need a guild imposing any pressure to tank here and there let alone the pressures of getting to Karazhan while I'm working on my own gear goals. PuG's & friends were more than fine with me. Tank this instance get gear and its over with no pressure there and then I can go farm in peace on my own time. So last night I finally decided and made a decision to join the Priest in his young guild: Ascention. They were more than excited to say the least.

The Guild already have a Warrior and a Druid tank at 70, though their warrior is their MT. They also really wanted to have a Paladin tank also. As a guild they have just started doing Karazhan and have progressed up to Curator. So far it seems to be a good guild, however I'm taking things cautiously with Galo and this new guild. Karazhan sounds fun, Epic gear looks and sound great. However I have no illusions of ever been a full time raider nor do I really care all that much about Epics. I tank because that's how I started playing WoW and its fun, gear allows me to do that much better. Getting gear upgrade is great to do what my class skill is but I'm not the kind of person that go nuts over loot or Epic loot at that. I'm still not in a hurry to raid Karazhan but now that I'm in a new guild will see how things go.

Broke the Steamvault Bank!

Persistence: Basis of persistence is the power of will. Most people are easy to give up on their goals at the first sign of difficulty in a task and throw it away and move on at the first sign of opposition or misfortune. Few people carry on despite all opposition, until they attain their goals.
So far I've achieved to get almost all the tanking gear I've desired to get from regular 5-man Instance for tanking or as alternative gear set combinations. I'm already Revered with Cenarion Expedition with Heroic Key for Colifang Reservoir. last night did one Steamvault in less than 40 mins. Beat every boss into a quick pulp including Warlord Kalithresh who we beat into absolute submission and he finally released his grip on the Steamvault bank and gave me my: Breastplate of the Righteous. Pays to have Persistence!

Uncrittable & Uncrushable, Pre-Kara and Heroics

Well I've now achieved it, both uncrittable at 490 Defense and uncrushable at 102.4% (Miss/Dodge/Parry/Block) total avoidance value while Holy Shield is active for a Paladin. All Pre-Kara & Pre-Heroics. All unbuffed at 10.4 HP and at 4188 mana. All my gear are either Quest Rewards, Revered/Exaled Faction Reputation gear and 3 pieces of Crafted gear one piece a Epic Crafted piece. I have no Heroics or Karazhan gear as I have yet to do either.

All I did was log in and played around with a some pieces of gear I collected recently. In my normal gear usually worn I have a max of 11.2 HP but in that set I'm uncrittable but much crushable Pre-Kara. With Libram of Repentance from Heroics that would also give me a lot of different gear options for both uncrittable and uncrushable gear set combination.

Combined Avoidance without Holy Shield active and with Holy Shield active using the Avoidance Macro to easily calculate combined avoidance value. Just a little bit over 102.4% for uncrushable through various combination of a few select pieces of alternative gear. Another reason to KEEP ALL YOUR GOOD GEAR!

I have about 4 different combination of gear sets using ItemRack addon. This just the gear set listing that I'm wearing for uncrushable set. My Armory set is a different set I usually wear and interchange trinkets & weapons when in instance. Will have do a posting where you can obtain all that gear in another blog posting.

Paladin Epic Mount Poll

So after 30 days of polling thanks to everyone that participated the official Paladin Epic Flying Mount results are in. I myself did not vote in this polling and I also have no idea who all these people were that stopped by this blog and voted. Thanks to all that participated. Anyway here are the results:


Question: Should Paladins have their own class Epic Flying Mount?
Poll Duration was for: 30 Days on Blog.

Voted Yes: 451 (67.1%)
Voted No : 137 (20.4)
Didn't Care: 84 (12.5)

Total Voted: 672 people.


As far as I have head is that Blizzard has said no in the past to Paladins getting their own class Flying Mount. Who knows if that will ever change in the future. Just because they said no in the past don't mean it can't be reconsidered. However its nice to know that other people other players voted in favor for a Paladin class Flying Mount also. I for one would love to see Paladins get a unique Class Epic Flying Mount. Of course.... I'm a Paladin.

Words of Wisdom: Failure

I like to read, unfortunately playing a lot of WoW don't leave much room for that these days among other things. I have a vast personal library of books that contain a vast amount of wisdom between those pages. WoW is much a game built on killing things, leveling and overcoming failure in given tasks from questing to raiding. Its all perspective. So a few thoughts to ponder on your WoW adventure or raid because whether you know it or not, you and your group have to overcome things to succeed. Its a given fact that people hate to fail.

Failure
Drifting without aim or purpose, is the first of thirty major causes of failure.
Edison failed ten thousand times before perfecting the incandescent electric light bulb. Don't worry if you failed once.
Many men have found opportunities in failure and adversity which they could not recognize in more favorable circumstances.
Success requires no explanations, failures must be doctored with alibis.
There is a vast difference between failure and temporary defeat. No one may succeed until he/she recognizes the nature of this difference.
A man is never a failure until he/she accepts defeat as permanent and quits trying.
Most failures could have been converted into successes if someone had held on another minute or made one more effort.
Success attracts success and failure attracts failure, because of the law of harmonious attraction.
Failure is not a disgrace if you have sincerely done your best.
If you have no major purpose you are drifting toward certain failure.
Failure seems to be natures plan for preparing men for great responsibilities.
If you don't know why you failed, you are no wiser than when you began.
The path to success is riddled with many attempts and failures.
By Napoleon Hill: Succeed and Grow Rich Through Persuasion.

Its all perspective. In questing, leveling & raiding in WoW every bit of that is use full even for a game. Its a game that takes group effort, teamwork and combined guild effort in raids and leadership. We all fail at a quests and encounters or in a group sometimes. At some point we will face death and have to do graveyard runs. Failure is not the end or has to be, it temporary setback. Try and try again using different tactics. If everyone learned from their failure then you are better than you were before because you attempted and failed. That puts you one step closer to success on a Quest, a Instance or a Raid.

Busy Week!

Quick post as its a really busy week on the Job. Working at night or night shift this week on my schedule rotation till Friday and sleeping during the day. That's 12 hours a day on the Job and this week its a very busy one. I work for a major Biotech company and all this week we're dealing with the FDA which is our industry regulator on a surprise inspection. I would say its not a fun week to be at work at all trying to fix or straighten some things out. So I'm not going to see any WoW till the weekend as sleep after a long night on your feet is more valuable than fun this week.

Update 11/05/07

A bit busy for a few days catching up on some real life stuff so haven't played as much WoW as a result. Not that much to update. My banker Alt hit 1500g so that puts me a about 2500g for a Epic Mount. Also created a one man guild for my banker alt so he can have a guild bank full of space when guild banks arrives in patch 2.3 to store all of my character and alts stuff. Other than that not much to update just trying to finish some stuff I need to do in real life.

One more day left on the Paladin Epic Mount poll. Thanks to everyone that voted.