On Hopes And Dreams

As humans, we all have some goal in life. Something we look forward to, and as we achieve each of these things, or as we realize that they are, in fact, impossible, we create new ones. We are constantly creating new goals for ourselves, and we are constantly hoping and wishing for our goals to come true.

Now, that was all crappy and bad, however, there was a point. When I saw that: Crusader Strike is now An instant strike that causes 110% weapon damage. In addition, if you strike a player while they are casting, their magical damage and healing will be reduced by 50% for 6 sec. I jumped for joy. As one of my many goals/dreams had been finally realized.

However, the reason that it is stricken through is this: "This is not an official change. It is something we were experimenting with, but not a change we are going to make for 3.1." -Ghostcrawler

As I said at the beginning, we are constantly creating new goals/dreams/hopes. My past dream of "getting Mortal Strike for Pallies" has now become "convince developers to actually give Mortal Strike to Pallies."



Ghostcrawler, killing Paladin dreams since at least 3.23.2009.


You've been Hathorned.

I Swears It.... I Am Alive.. And...

I'm Prot! Oh teh noez!

More on this later.

Lolcats 'n' Funny Pictures of Cats

Enjoy.

You've been Hathorned

A Look Into The Future?

After getting my daily fix of WoWInsider, I took a nap, woke up, came back to my computer, checked it again, and a new story had been posted.

It's about an interview* with a 3D Modeler that works at Blizzard. The interview is very interesting, and he does have some choice words about certain people around the company.

The full interview can be found here.

I hope nothing he said identifies him as who he actually is, because Blizzard probably isn't fond of this kind of thing.




* The interview may or may not be credible, no one knows.

Obama: The 44th President of the United States

We have a new President, a President of change.

Well, There's So Much to Talk About

I have so much to talk about that I can't organize it all.

I'm going to start with my post-80 experiences.

After I finish writing this post, I'm going to update the Armory link to that of Xaith, so ya'll can look at that.

The other day (don't ask me which) is when it all started. I hit 80 the Sunday before Christmas, and I was slowly but surely getting a little bit of gear here and there. The next day (after I dinged) I wanted to do a Heroic really badly, but couldn't muster up a tank. After looking in Dalaran for a while, a Pally Tank messaged me (who is now my current Guild Leader, (more on that later) (was that a parenthetical epxression inside a parenthetical expression? why, yes, it was)). I wanted to run Culling of Stratholme because I had learned a couple of days before that there was a mount you could grab if you did some sort of timed event. I got in there, mind you, this is my first instance besides Utgarde in ALL of Wrath of the Lich King. My gear sucks at this point, but we continue in. Long story short, the pally tank is uber, we clear the thing faster than he'd ever done it, (9 minutes left on the timer) and I won every drop, including the Bronze Drake. I had gotten 3 or 4 upgrades from the instance, and I was bolstering with confidence, I ran a couple more the same day.

I kept that Pally Tank on my Friends List, and hit him up every day for the next 4 or so days to do the Daily Heroic and a couple more. He brought his guildies for most of these runs. I'm starting to realize that I'm starting to get some upgrades, and that I should actually start getting in to the mindset of getting back in to the raiding scene. I check out my Hit, too low, and work on that first. Anywho, skipping all the boring details, I decide to join the guild of my new Pally Tank friend, because I felt like I was stealing loot from them (with all the Heroics I was bumming off of them.) That night, I realized that I need to show these guys something, and I dropped about 1800g on the mats for a Titansteel Destroyer.

The next day was a 10 Man Naxx day for my new guild, and I was invited briefly, but removed when someone better came online. I went to Storm Peaks and did the 100 quests for the Achievement in 1 day, recieving several upgrades, and about 1000g of the 1700g I had just spent. (I did all this because someone told me Sons of Hodir rep was important).

So, I got myself hit capped, and I had my spiffy epic weapon, and I was all proud of myself, and our guild decided to do 25 Man Naxx, of which 7 or so were pugged. I was all excited to test out my skills and abilities and to really show them that I had something to bring to the table. We start out that night and a Death Knight mentions right before we get to the First Boss of the Arachnid quarter how great he was doing on DPS, that he was 2nd. I thought to myself that if a Death Knight this well geared is 2nd on Damage Meters, I'm toast. I pop open Recount and lo and behold, guess who was #1? Xaith. I was so proud of myself, mainly because I have never raided as a Ret Pally before, and I had only done 3 or 4 Heroics, and was just going on what I knew, and it worked.

We cleared 2 quarters, and I got my Tier 7.5 Shoulders off of Loatheb. I prayed to the WoW God for these bad boys.

So anyway, all that's well and good, and I'm about to go to lunch today, and I realize that my helm blows, so I drop about 1000g on mats for a Spiked Titansteel Helm. I then went and did from 100-137 quests in Icecrown and almost made back that entire 1000g.

Anywho, this week has been a blast, my Christmas was great, I've got 10 Man Naxx clear that I'm guaranteed to be in for on Thurs/Fri, and I want to thank The Forgotten Few for being so open and loving to me, and counting me in on everything that's going on.



I've got a great story to tell you guys about how I killed The Lich King.

You've been Hathorned.

Okay, so...

Well, I figured it was time for a change.

My Druid isn't my main anymore, and I think my Blog should reflect that. The web address will stay the same, and I will still sign off with "You've been Hathorned." However, the stories are going to become more Paladin themed.

I will eventually get to leveling my Druid, but there is so much for me to do right now with my Paladin that I have to catch up with everything (Sons of Hodir Rep, Get Badges, Raid, Do Heroics, Quest, Rep Grinds, Maxdps.com) and it's slightly overwhelming. However, I realize it's just a game, and I'm looking forward to starting anew with the blog, and writing about something fresh and interesting. Wait, did I just refer to Ret Paladins as "fresh and interesting?" Why, yes, I did. They're so much fun to play, and in the coming days, while I'm still on vacation, I will talk about my experiences thusfar, both raiding, and the class in general, as well as some PvP stuff and more general non-funny anecdotes courtesy of me.

Thanks for bearing with me,

You've been Hathorned.

Updates Coming Soon About the Blog...

For now, take a look at the new picture!

You've been me'd.

Merry Christmas!

May all your hits, be crits!


You've been Hathorned.

Ding!

80 on my Pally.

This is a short post.

I'm realizing that this blog hasn't been much about Druids lately,
and I don't know what to do about it.


More later.


You've been Xaith'd.

Quick Update

Just hit 77 on my Paladin, got Cold Weather thanks to an awesome guildie, and everything is great.

Zul'drak is way easier Flying, and I can only imagine that Sholozar/Storm Peaks/Icecrown will be that much easier with it.


I added my little Sig thing for my paladin at the top, and got rid of the Obama thing, he's been elected, time to go down.


You've been Hathorned.


(You've been Xaithed doesn't have a good ring to it.)

Now They're Just Getting Greedy

I opened up Firefox, it opened up World of Warcraft's homepage, my homepage, and I click on General Forums.

LO AND FREAKING BEHOLD: There are ads. Not just ones on the thread pages, but in each individual thread, all with individual URLs to prevent AdBlocking just the one image/website. However a clever forum poster found a solution, and I'm putting it here:

How To Remove The Ads:

Use Firefox (a given).
Download the following addon:

https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/521

Install then restart.

Now, open up a topic on the forums. Right click on the ads (or big black area if you are using Ad-Block), click RIP Advanced, then choose Remove From This Website option.

Now, right click on the area where ads are (or would be, if you are using Ad-Block) again, then click Remove This Permanently.

Voila, ads gone and frames fixed!

This worked perfectly for me, I just had to fiddle with hitting "Permanently Remove iFrame" a couple times to get all the layers to go away. Now I'm clean, just as a I was before.

Phew, close call.


You've been Hathorned

Some of You Might Be Saying...

Jesus Christ it's been a long time. However, I don't think anyone is saying that except me.

Anywho, to today's poast. Err.. post.

I preempted the Great Hunter Nerfs '08 (GHN08). I foresaw them, I predicted that they would be coming. After I saw the glee that Bigredkitty was enjoying I knew the devs wouldn't let him have his cake and eat it too. I got to 73, realized that Hunters were going to get Nerf Tanked soon, and dropped my Hunter.

I started leveling my Paladin from 65-70, and that took my about 2 days RL time because of the leveling speed nerf. Got to 70, and I'm now 76. I started out with about 1400g to my name (from leveling 70-73 on my hunter, I had just bought epic flyer for him before LK came out) and I started saving.

*quick tip* If you are saving for your epic mount... do whatever you do to get money, play the AH, dance naked on Mailboxes, I don't care. In order to keep your money, though, make a level 1, or use another alt, and send every bit of gold over about 50g (or 25g, set the limit for yourself) to that character. You don't even realize how fast it will accumulate. I sent 1350 of the 1400 I had to Hathorn (who is sitting in Dalaran enjoying the sights) and 50 to my Paladin. Every time I finished 5 or 6 quests, I'd have 125-200g, and I'd send all of it, except for 50, to Hathorn. Low and behold, in 6 levels, I had 5000g to buy my epic flying skill.

Okay, back to the real stuff.

I hit 76, had 5200g, sold some stuff at auction I'd been accumulating, went to SMV, got my skill, whatever, now I have about 200g to my name. I need to make 750 in the 78% of a level I have left, else, I might cry if I can't fly immediately. So, that's fun.

Grizzly Hills is a very, VERY, fun zone. It is visually stunning, everything is spread out nicely. Venture dailies make me happy, and Venture Coins are good for stuff too. I really liked the Fjord, and I really liked Dragonblight (Wrathgate eat my heart out.) However, Grizzly was the first zone where I got a sense of the massiveness of the world, huge trees, strong questlines (especially Ursoc), and I'm really enjoying it there. I've got about 12 quests left, so I'm happy.

On to Paladins. Retribution is $&#*ing fun. %&$*ing fun. My Paladin was my first 60, I cleared MC more times than I want to remember, did BWL at least 15 times, AQ20 down, ZG down, AQ40 to the Twin Emps. I experienced everything except Naxx on this character. Now I'm back at it, and back then, I was Holy (because Ret blew, so did Prot (kinda')). I feel like a Warrior-Priest, I'm dealing damage, getting instant heals, contributing to groups with Replenishment, and all the Imp Ret. Aura talents. I'm just having a blast.

Even though we were shot by the Nerf Tank, I think we're perfect now, and just need a little fine tuning. Like the recent change to Divine Shield/Forbearance/Avenging Wrath. Shared 30s cooldown is reasonable, and Divine Shield hacking 50% of our damage is fine too, because ususally, I'm either healing in Divine Shield, or Hearthing. I mean, let's face it, sure it's 12 seconds of immunity, that's definately abusable, but it's always just a panic button for me. Doing less damage while in it isn't as big a priority for me as is staying alive.

Anyway, I know this is supposed to be Druids Do It Animal Style, but for a while, it might turn into "The Light and How to Swing It."


You've been Hathorned.

Post About Stuff Coming At Some Point...

Probably about my new love.

Starts with an "r" and rhymes with pet rallys.

You've been Hathorned.

Task #1: Checked Off

It's all mine. I've wanted a Bear ever since they announced the Amani War Bear, and now I have Smoky. (That's his name).

You've been Hathorned

My Queue Brings All the Hate To The Yard

So, first off, I probably wouldn't have gotten to this today if 2 of 2 things hadn't happened.

1) I got out of work.

2) There's a queue on Drenden, something like 12 minutes.

So, that's why I'm---- WAIT JUST A MINUTE. A QUEUE ON DRENDEN?!? THE SERVER THAT I TRANSFERRED TO BECAUSE OF THE QUEUES ON DALARAN?! SON OF A BEE STING.

Now that that's out of my system, both of the things mentioned above happened, so I'm writing this post.

This post is about a slew of things, but most importantly, Ret Paladins.

Just like the rest of the general community, I think that Paladins needed a change, and Blizzard definitely made them too OP in the beginning. With the nerfs of 3.0.2 and 3.0.3 as well as some hotfixes, they have been generally reduced to a little above where they were above 2.4.3. Now, by little above, I mean they don't run out of mana, they do more damage, and with Art of War, they feel more like actual holy warriors. 

So, as none of you know, my first character was in fact, a Dwarf Paladin, he was the character on which I did my first raid ever, Molten Core, back in the days when the first Molten Giants might as well have been bosses. He got left behind at Burning Crusade after I got Hathorn to 60. But, with these recent changes to both leveling and pallies, I respecced and got to 65 in maybe a day /played... less? I'm not sure, anyway, it's freakin' FUN. So, the whole point of this part of this post is to congratulate Blizzard on a job well done with Ret. Sure you let us down when we got nerfed a couple of times, but I think they're pretty close to perfect now, and with all the nerfs we've recieved, it's going to be hard to justify more for a while.

*BREAKING NEWS* I just tabbed in to the game, and before it was 436 in queue with 11 mins. to go, and now it's 242 in queue with... 11 MINS. TO GO.. KKTHXBYEFAILBLIZZARD.

Back to the post. I went to Gamestop today and picked up my copy of Wrath (the CE of course) and come home, ate lunch, watched some Mythbusters, and then meandered over to my computer and installed it. The first thing I noticed was the speedy install time... ~15 mins. to install and patch back up, and I was in the game. The first thing I did, since this was at about 4:30 PM, was to create a Death Knight, level it up super fast and get out of Ebon Hold before all the kids come in on the weekend and make it LagFest2k8. So that's done and checked off the list.  So, the only thing I really have left to decide is who to level to 80 first? I've got some 707 days /played on my Druid, and some 10 /played on my Hunter. I'm thinking Hunter, because he's going to get more upgrades from quests, and it will give me more time to learn how to play (even though I was pushing ~1100 DPS in Season 0 gear pre-Wrath). Starting off with a new class has me re-energized in to the game, and I'm pretty excited to rediscover the fun of leveling a Hunter. I'm not even sure if I'm going to level my Druid before I level my Paladin. I'm under the influence of the idea that this expansion is really about Paladins. It's about Tirion coming back to power, coming from hiding to fight Arthas. It's about the Ashbringer (which I'm vowing to get somehow, on my Paladin) which is held deep within Paladin lore. This sense of lore really has me wanting to get my Paladin back up with the times, especially now that I have the holy warrior aspect that I want.

I've still got ~5 minutes in queue, but there's not much else that I want to say, and I think this might be the most wordy post I've written thus far.

You've been Hathorned.

It is now...

Mathematically Impossible for Obama to Lose!

SUCK IT MCCAIN!

What's The Deal With...

The new Zombie Event.



Let me address something real fast... just so you guys know, I'm a huge fan of reporting late on things you probably already know about.

In all reality, I just post when I do, because I'm a very busy person, and it just happens that stuff happens and I don't have time to post about it at that moment, and besides, I don't even know if more than 3 people read this thing.


Anywho, I was just going to talk about the Zombie Event, if you don't know what it is (you live under a rock) you can read about it here. It's on the home page, and there are several posts about it intermixed with other WoW news.

So, I just wanted to give my view on it, and perhaps, later in the post, someone else's.

I didn't really do any of the infecting people and stuff, mainly because I find it annoying, and I chose a PvE server in the first place to stop griefing. However, it's happening rampantly on my server, you can barely find a Battlemaster anywhere, and I have resorted to Darnassus for my queueing needs. What I did participate in started with the new boss, Tenris Mirkblood. We killed him, grabbed his Bat, and lost his Axe in a roll of 96-93. He was pretty fun, not really challenging (read: went in there with some geared people, but also some ungeared alts and took him out with 1 death.)

After that, I realized that there were some zombies landing in places, and I realized that, "Hey, I should get in on this." (read: EPICZ, GIMME GIMME GIMME.) So, I flew around Azeroth for 3 hours trying to track down Necropoli, and managed to get 30ish runes and some epic leather legs which I didn't need. However, even though they are patching it to allow more to spawn, it got really crazy, and I never managed to tag an elite so I could open up the store to buy my Tabard.

So, that was all pretty fun, and I had a good time, grouped with some people to take stuff out and such. However, there was one person who was happy about the rune stuff, but was unhappy about the zombies...

It's Reviewin' Time...

Up on the docket for today is my new Logitech Wireless USB Headset.

Some quick technical details before the review:

• 2.4 GHz wireless: Move freely up to 33 feet (10 meters) away from your computer.

• Laser-tuned audio drivers: Advanced laser design technology delivers high-quality, uncompressed, stereo audio.

• Noise-canceling microphone: Reduces background noise for clear conversations and voice commands.

• Quick-access audio controls: Adjust volume and microphone mute right on the headset.

Okay, now that those are done with here are my impressions:

It is an extremely sturdy headset, and appears that it will last quite a while. Best Buy offered a 2-year warranty which are all crap unless it's something extremely expensive. The controls for volume and muting are on the right earpiece and only took a couple of minutes to get used to. There is an on/off switch and a power jack.

This headset does not require batteries, but instead, needs to be charged every 6-8 hours of use, which for me, is perfect. It's got some really cool effects, like when you plug in the charger, it glows orange, and the microphone boom has a red light indicating whether or not you're muted, which was a major problem with my last headset, it would frequently mute itself on some part of my chair or clothing by hitting the little mute button. Anyway, the voice and noise quality appears to be crystal clear according to the people on the other end, and what I've heard. I have not had a chance to really test the distance, but 33 feet doesn't really sound like an arbitrary number, so I trust it. For the most part, it's comfortable, and doesn't make my ears sweat after several hours of use like my last pair.

Just a couple of notes about some things, it appears to be built for someone of a smaller head size. I managed to pull it out a little further than normal so that it would fit my ginormous head comfortably. I do like the fact that you can still use it while charging, and it just feels like a normal wired headset.

All in all, I'd give it a 4.8/5. That's a 9.6/10 for those people who prefer base 10.


You've been Hathorned.

100th Poast... Perfect Timing for Large Announcements

(This isn't me, but it's what it was like...)

Even though my grammar was terribad in the tantalizer post, it's time for the real thing.

My Hunter is Level 70.


WOOOOO HOOOOOOO. My second 70 ever, and now I have a farming class. I hit 70 on Thursday night and have just been trying to get used to a completely different style of play. Of course, however, I have been making considerable antics with Misdirection (read: Before the tank can get threat on Drek, I MsD to a Mage that has more kills than me. I. Am. Evil.)

On top of all this.

Patch 3.0.2 ECHOES OF DOOM has been put forth on the servers today.

And there are several changes that I'm going to let you read, so as to not bore you like every other blog most undoubtedly has been, or will.

However, you can read the Patch Notes here.


You've been Aethiused.

P.S. That's the name of my Hunter, without the "ed."