Necromagus

I successfully pugged ZF twice now, although in both cases I joined halfway through. Luckily as a paladin I have enough AoE tanking abilities to make the fight on the stairs manageable.

Still powering steadily on. Dinged 43 tonight, which means I'll no longer be able to run Uldaman through the pug system, which is a shame because it's probably my favourite classic instance. I am glad I no longer have to run Scarlet Monastery though. Right now I'm reaching the point in the game where I actually need to start paying attention beyond spamming Consecrate. It took me a while to master the final Scarlet Monastery room, but thankfully that was on guild runs rather than pugs. Maraudon has the first mobs that require actual kiting, as there's packs of oozes with an aura that damages you for ~10% a tick if you stand too close. I'm dreading Zul'Farrak, as I remember it having loads of spellcasters and limited line of sight options. Still, doing fine so far. Really wish I could've gotten the Horned Viking Helmet, if only for the Lost Vikings nostalgia. Luckily I also have the helmet from the last Razorfen Downs boss, which is probably better.

Dinged 28 just now, I think I'll take a break from instances to do some battlegrounds. I'll need 57k honor by the time I hit 60, for RP gear (the epic Horde paladin set) :unsure:

I generally just do a ready check at the start of the instance, and in front of the bosses. By the time I'm through the first corridor, I generally have a good feel of what the healer can handle and adjust my speed accordingly. While doing DPS, one of my pet peeves is tanks who ask "r?", then don't even wait for a reply and just pull the boss.

I really don't want to complain too much about annoying players, especially since that's pretty much all the EU tanking forums seem to be used for, but I got the following variation of the old "gogogogo" in Gnomeregan today: The healer was spamming like that constantly. To be honest I'd rather have a whole group of new players willing to listen than a group in full heirlooms running ahead of me because they think that every instance can be done in under five minutes. This may sound strange, but almost every time I wipe it's because someone in full heirlooms thinks gear is a replacement for actually paying attention.

Tanking is a lot of fun so far. I should easily get level 20 today. Might have to take some time out to roll a Horde DK though, just to get some cash on the Horde side. For some reason the Horde side's market for glyphs is a mess, and I'd end up paying six or seven times the going rate for glyphs on the Alliance side. Almost makes me want to make said DK a scribe just so I can get my glyphs.

Well, finally got my paladin up to level 16, and started doing some RFC tanking to get used to it. So far I've only had one truly bad experience, a druid in full cloth heirlooms who came in as a healer and who insisted on spamming damage spells every time he thought I wasn't pulling fast enough. I tried to explain to him that I only had one taunt on an eight second cooldown, I would let him tank whatever he pulled rather than running around trying to save his rear end. In the end he started nuking the boss before I was even within taunt range, and I decided to just let him die before finishing the fight with one of the DPS priests healing me.

Right, so I've decided to start a paladin (again, mostly for RP reasons), and I wanted to level it through the dungeon finder, which would mean playing as a tank. I've been looking for some good guides on it, and I've only been able to find one that seems to be up to date. For some reason it wants me to start out by putting points in retribution rather than protection, which seems a bit counter-intuitive. The build starts out with full points in Benediction, then a point in Improved Judgements, full points in Heart of the Crusader, Deflection, Seal of Command and Vindication. It doesn't start putting points in the prot tree until levels 23-27 for Divine Strength and 28-32 for Anticipation. With glyphs, the suggested build looks like this. The build doesn't go full prot until level 40 (here). From what I can see paladin tanking is mostly about abilities (Retribution Aura, Consecration, etc.), so would these builds work for leveling as a tank in dungeons from 15-40?

Well, I've been having a lot of fun RPing, but obviously I'm the only person here who cares about that, so no detailed updates :)

Login servers are borked, and hilarious drama ensues. I do kind of feel bad for people looking for the Violet Proto-Drake, but all the whining on the tech support forums is pretty damn funny.

No. Not on my watch. -Necromagus, Tip.It Mod.

Still having a lot of trouble logging in :( In other news, a guildmate of mine spent the past week killing Booty Bay pirates for at least four hours a day. He got three hyacinth macaw cages, sold them for 34k total.

It's really bizarre. How could something like this slip through the public testing? This is basically making the game unplayable for me, as I can't take any portals or boats.

Is anyone else having problems logging in since patch 3.3.3? 90% of the time I get the loading screen to 100%, and then nothing happens. All I can do is alt+F4 out and try again. The problem has been discussed heavily on both the US and EU technical forums, but nobody has been figured out what's causing it yet. Blizzard suggested all the usual (delete folders, reset connections, sacrifice a small farm animal), but nothing seems to be working for anyone.

I'm really looking forward to Napoleon, especially with the increased importance of ranged units and the two week turn system.

25-man hard mode for Lich King is finally down, by Paragon of Lightning's Blade. There was an interesting bit of drama surrounding it all.

http://wow.curse.com/ - The addons are probably easiest to download through their client. Some that I can recommend are Questhelper (adds a compass and tracking for quests), Bagnon (unites all bags in your inventory and bank into a single slot), Auctioneer (gathers data on AH transaction, allows you to determine good sale prices for your drops and makes sure you don't overpay) and Atlas (adds maps for instances and raids). Other than that, it's mostly up to your class and personal preferences.

Fearing is no problem. I would've just popped Bestial Wrath and proceded inside. Unfortunately I won't be playing for a while due to technical difficulties.

Yup, thought it'd be harder.

Uniracers. Also, don't hotlink :)

Decided to fill in the gaps on the Classic Dungeonmaster achievement, starting at the lowest and then working my way up. I just finished Ragefire Chasm, which was probably one of the hardest to get simply because I'm Alliance. I managed to get in with only three deaths. First time I got swarmed by guards right at the bridge on the west side of Ogrimmar. The second time I managed to avoid them all the way into the Valley of Strength, making it as far as the entrance to The Drag before getting killed the second time. The third time I got killed was definitely the most painful one. I was literally a step away from entering the instance when some DK pulled me back up to the entrance of the Cleft of Shadow and killed me.

Picked up Aimed Spot with my 11th MM talent point (still BM specced), and decided to start using a proper rotation. Right now I'm using Serpent Sting -> Aimed Shot -> Arcane Shot -> Steady Shot, repeating Steady Shot until Aimed/Arcane Shot finishes the cooldown, occasionally refreshing Serpent Sting. With Kill Command and Bestial Wrath, I can pull off just over 1000 DPS on the level 70 training dummies now.

Had another awesome night. We did both Mount Hyjal and Sunwell Plateau. I got the T6 gloves, plus Beast-tamer's Shoulders and Thalassian Ranger Gauntlets. Unfortunately our Zul'Aman run failed because the door to Zul'jin didn't open up after we beat Hex Lord Malacrass.

Yup, 25 people, mostly level 70 - 72, although two of the healers were level 80.

I did a 25-man Black Temple run today. Missed out on the T6 shoulders even though three tokens dropped, but I did get the T6 chest.