Conjured Biscuits

Every time that I started playing with my shaman team, I first logged in with my mage Alaire to make a mage table and stock up on biscuits. Usually I would use only very few of them and have the rest decay when logging out.

Yesterday I decided to change that. I gave the daily quests on the isle a whirl and did the same today, giving me friendly reputation with the Shattered Sun Offensive and access to the non-decaying [Naaru Ration]. Yummy!

Shopping list woes

With the purchase of [Merciless Gladiator's Gavel] I have now spent 40k honor. At the time that I am typing this I have 12k honor and 650 arena points. Now, I figure the first thing to buy with arena points would be [Brutal Gladiator's Mail Gauntlets], which require no rating. Easy. But what about the honor?

[Guardian's Mail Girdle] 17850 Honor, 40 AB, no rating requirement.
[Guardian's Mail Bracers] 11794 Honor, 20 WSG, 1575 Rating.
[Guardian's Mail Sabatons] 17850 Honor, 40 EotS, 1700 Rating.

I think we have a clear winner here also. These bits are so awesome that I will worry later about the other slots. =]

Seasonal Eye-candy

At first glance at the quests available in town for the seasonal flavor, I was shocked at how fiddly they are. A quest item with a cast time 0.1 seconds shorter than the target stays up with a constantly changing target. Tossing torches that doesn't work well with the wow camera to track it. Add someone else doing the same quests at the same time and it is pure chaos.

BUT! there is a component to this that is similar to looking up the elders all over the world, but gives you not only tokens but also gold. 6g and 5 tokens for visiting bonfire of your own faction, 12g and 10 tokens for visiting one of the opposite faction. Making a trip to around those bonfires nets you around 500g and enough tokens to buy some eye candy.

So I took my shamans around the game world, bagged the gold and got the eye candy going: [Brazier of Dancing Flames].

Honor Shopping

Closing in on 25.200 honor and 20 EotS tokens, I knew I had to do something about temptation. The Season 1 [Gladiator's Gavel] provides 199 spellpower, is worth an enchant which gives another 40 spellpower and allows me to equip a shield. I already have a quest shield bagged on all characters, the [Spellbreaker's Buckler] with 29 spell damage. Compared to the [Battle Mage's Baton] from the Ring of Blood in Nagrand, that is a significant upgrade. The S1 Gavel and Shield combo gives 268 spell damage. the staff gives 85 spell damage - and some crit. 183 more spelldamage is huge - considering that I am currently at 470 odd total and just short of 1k is full S3 kit.

Now, the problem with that is that it is very attractive but in seven days there will be Season 4 starting and bumping the S2 [Merciless Gladiator's Gavel] down to honor - supposedly for the same price. The S2 gavel gives 26 more spell damage and just over 1% spell hit. So it is quite sensible to wait for this.

To avoid that I succumbed to this temptation, I went and spent my honor on the [Vindicator's Band of Dominance]. That is 15k honor and 10 AV marks, and more importantly, still part of the honor kit after S4 hits, since people usually use the current season's honor ring along with the previous season's honor ring.

Now I can PvP my heart out to get honor together for the next two bits to buy after Wednesday: [Merciless Gladiator's Gavel] and [Merciless Gladiator's Barrier]. That should cost me 25.200 honor for the gavel and 15.000 honor for the shield, plus 20 EoTs tokens for each. I can't wait, but I'll have to! =]

A bridge too far

Oh. My. God. I love quad shaman pvp. Even with my 'of the noob' gear I am able to strike decisively. When I start defending on the bridge, I almost pity the attacking horde.

After my first PvP weekend I have 13.5k honor and am supposed to get 350ish arena points. I also had 51 AV marks. These are typically decaying in the mailbox of a PvP char. That fact, combined with my strong dislike of the Elephant mount motivated me to blow them on the Stormpike goat, which I promptly did. Time for bed now. =]

First steps in PvP

After reaching 70 on Thursday night, I could finally equip the blues that I had waiting in the shaman backpacks. Yet, the preparations were not complete. I was still short of Sha'tar revered reputation and all the fancy and expensive metagems had requirements that I could not fulfill. A couple of quests and Arcatraz finished my Sha'tar rep grind and after collecting a few more spirit shards I bought the Auchenai caster metagems.

Then I headed out and hit Alterac Valley again and also Eye of the Storm. I must say it was a very positive experience and great fun. While my individual characters are very weak, the combination is quite devastating.

I met a hunter at the Relief Hut that happened to be from my server, we got talking and decided on the fly to do some arenas for giggles. The hunter brought his main to battle for this, a rather well PvE geared resto shaman. We started out with a used team just under 1500 and played ten games, loosing 7, but winning 3. There was nobody as badly geared as my characters, by far. In some of our losses we lost 6 points, or 7, making the teams that opposed us quite a bit higher rated then us. This resulted in the rating not moving much.

Besides being very entertaining, the setup shows a lot of promise. Bad gear, me as arena noob, not having all my spells set up for ready use and a bunch of other things are all things that can be improved for sure, given time.

Playing with lighting is immensely entertaining. I am enjoying pvping with the shamans very much! Oh. AV is up. Laters =]

70!

After 10 days /played over an extended period of time, my four shamans hit 70 tonight. That brought a lot of fetching, carrying and running with itself, but seeing the four of them lined up in noob pvp gear uniform with four baby elephants to accompany them just had me grinning without even hitting a key.

After a bit of messing around with gems, a few enchants and respecting to cover up some blunders I made on the way to 70, I stuck my toe into the water of Alterac Valley. I just played twice. The very first bit of text that greeted me when I entered was some random player from another server recognize me as multiboxer and show a positive reaction. That is a good omen as far as I am concerned.

Considering that I have not done any pvp setup for my controls, was using a pve geared tank totally superflous just because I did not want to set things up fully yet and that my resilience is just as low as my spelldamage, I was positively surprised what I could do already.

I look with anticipation to the weekend! Time for bed, work and then pvp! Yay.

To-do list

Right, things that I need to get for my team are:

3900 Sha'tar Rep With the help of the WoW Reputation Calculator, it is a breeze to find some quest chains to help out with that. Due to the Mechanar farming for the totem, I don't really want to use instances. ;]
The Journal of Val'zareq: Portends of War 150rep+500 rep for follow up battle.
Akama's Promise Chain 1012rep and a temporary shield
Harbringer of Doom Chain 2000rep temp neck and belt but 3 dungeon runs for the 2nd half.

400k xp looking at the above quest chains, that will take care of itself.

Enchants There is an awesome post by Boylston here, but it does not link to the materials needed. So I looked up that information to tally them up for my shopping list:
Formula: Enchant Chest - Major Resilience 4gpe 10ad
Formula: Enchant Bracer - Spellpower 6lps 6pf 6pw
Formula: Enchant Gloves - Major Spellpower 6gpe 6lps 6pm
Mystic Spellthread 5pm 1rt or Runic Spellthread 10pm 1pn 1rt
Formula: Enchant Boots - Fortitude 12ad
Formula: Enchant Shield - Major Stamina 15ad
Formula: Enchant Cloak - Spell Penetration 2gpe 6ad 2pm

gpe 4+6+2=12x4=48
ad 10+12+15+6=43x4=172
lps 6+6=12x4=48
pf 6x4=24
pw 6x4=24
pm 6+5+2=13x4=52

uh-oh. This is going to be expensive!

Next I need to figure out the most sensible honor and arena point allocation.

Level 69 - 4/4 Totem of the Void

When I finally got the fourth totem, I was happy to turn my back on Mechanar indeed. I ended up at 8162/12000 towards revered with the Sha'tar and 230k/770k towards level 70.

Now it is time to seriously look for enchanting materials and maybe already put a shopping list or better priority order together for honor bits and pieces.

But I will leave that for another day.

Name Change Woes

For the shaman team I originally picked names that were individual and loosely based on the five elements: earth, water, fire, air and void. That was all good and well, but did not really work as intended. Maybe if I had gone straight with the element names, using replacement letters where they were taken it would have been ok, but as it was, it has been annoying me for a while. No longer though!

Saturday around noon I decided to change the names of the shamans. I had a silly idea, played around with it a bit and liked it. After a look at the account management, I was not too sure how long the name changes would take and how long the characters would be not available for playing. So I went and tested it with the low level shaman Aethera that I had left aside to boost the other four. The name change went through smoothly and instantly. Yay!

I changed the names of Firma and Flama next, again instant service, everything was going well. Then I hit a serious bump in the road. Payment problem. A quick call to my bank gave me my credit card contact and this again gave me the information that there was no problem from the Credit Card company's side. So it had to be Blizzard. Who are available for Billing problems Monday to Friday. Great news for me with the weekend just starting.

So I made a character each on the accounts with Lavia and Venta to sit on the names that I wanted. And waited. And waited. My first guess was 24h cooldown after the third payment. No joy.

Next stop, Monday morning. I called the toll free number listed on the wow website and spoke to a friendly female agent at billing. I explained my problem, she sorted it with the payment department, and I could change the 4th name. Yay! When I tried to change the fifth name - blocked again. ARRGH! Another call, another agent, another time on hold. And I could change the 5th name. Finally!

Now, what is the whole thing about? Meet Æteam, Ætèam, Ætéam, Ætëam and Ætêam! I remember the A-Team on TV when I was a kid. How they amazingly built a tank from cardboard and vegetables before battle, each episode. That is very much like me putting down a forest of totems when fighting. I used Æ instead of A because it seperates itself a bit from the T - and seriously cuts down on random whispers. ;]


This is a portrait of my four shamans standing on top of each other after I renamed them. Yay!

Having virtually identical names is a tactical advantage in BGs for a multiboxer. If the characters are perfectly stacked on top of each other, dissimilar names leaves you with a blob of text. With very similar names, it looks like just one name. Devious, I know. Also calling focus fire is more difficult: 'all on... never mind!'.

Level 68 - Totem of Void 1/4

After making the last post, my next boxing time was spent trying the Black Morass. However, that was a bit too hectic for my taste. I did Old Hillsbarad two more times for decent xp and CoT rep. Bringing me to 4/5 of the Seer's Mail set and three quarters of the way to level 68.

After that I picked up the gryphon points north of Zangermarsh and did a few quests to get to get to level 68. After training up, I headed to Tempest Keep. Using my first multiboxing team, I gave my shaman's a leg up into the Mechanar by summoning them into the instance.

A quick test run showed that I can get the key to the cache of the legion quickly and without much hassle. Naturally, there is always the luck of getting the drop, but its definitely doable.

After the Sunday raid, I went for a couple more casual attempts, putting me halfway to level 69 and 3000 rep short of honored with the Sha'tar. I also got one Totem of the Void so far. At this rate, I should have all four by the time I reach 70.

Rep!

This morning I took my four shamans to Old Hillsbarad. My objective was to complete the quests in the instance to collect the reputation. I plan to have the five bits of baby-pvp rep armor ready to equip by the time the shamans reach 70. Getting 3000 more CoT reputation will see my shamans honored with the faction and 4/5 done for the set. Leaving only Sha'tar rep to do.

I sailed through the first part of the instance. Breaking Trall out was a bit tighter, because I rely on mana biscuits to regain mana on Steph. On the gauntlet from the keep to the gate I intentionally stopped damage while hanging in there with judgement and seal of wisdom, which - combined with a pot or two - did the trick.

Then at the battle in Tarren mill, my shamans were dying left and right, like flies. If not faster. Add to that that the epoch hunter dispells buffs. Like seals. Doh. Clearly I needed a new plan. I stuck the shamans into Tabetha's house's lobby and brought the waves of dragonkin into the house, breaking line of sight on those pesky caster mobs that like to hang back cleanly. This worked like a charm and left me with the team upright at the end of the fight and all that rep nicely bagged.

Time to do some shopping before I try my hand at the follow up Black Morass. I don't know yet if I will be able to do that place with my 4x67 noob elemental shamans and my tank, but I will know this afternoon. If the answer should be 'nope', I can go and do Durnholde twice more or so to get the rep I need.

We'll see. =]

Sethekk Halls and 67!

After finishing Nagrand with Durn the Hungerer, I was left with Viktor half a box and the four shamans 12 boxes short of level 67. I did all the group quests with these five chars, with the exception of Durn, for which a guildmate gave me a hand, and of course the Ring of Blood, for which another guildmate did the same, tanking out of the party.

While I fully plan to go for shield and 1h mace at 70, I took the Battle Mage-Baton from the Ring of Blood for all five characters. It has just the right stats and is a serious improvement. I can level without the armor provided by a shield.

One thing that I keep an eye on while leveling these characters is rep. Rep with Honor Hold, Cenarion Expedition, Lower City, Caverns of Time and the Sha'tar. Passing through the Hellfire Peninsula and doing the Ramparts boss kill quest, Zangermarsh and locating the lost expedition members in the Slave Pens and the Underbog and doing a couple of quests in Terrokar allowed me to get halfway to my target. That means it left me honored with Honor Hold and the Cenarion Expedition, and on the way to honored with the Lower City.

Looking at the shamans being half a level behind Viktor and them needing more Lower City rep, I parked Viktor and headed to Sethekk halls to get some instance xp. I made a mage table with Alaire, then logged her and grabbed biscuits with the shamans and my tankadin Stephanius. That saw me ready for the dungeon.

The way I went about it was to just tank and dps. My tank is sufficiently geared that no healing is needed in the time until a group of mobs is put down. The only time I healed was at about 30% of the first bosses health. One thing that is very nasty in this place are the mind control totems dropped by the Time Lost Controllers. However, the combination of taking this mob as first target, opening fire on it before it reached the tank and stunning it if still alive when it arrives at the tank did the trick nicely.

I completed Sethekk halls the first time on Monday, taking the last boss in the first go. It also brought me to honored with the Lower City! Then I fell out of bed early today. Too early to head to work, by enough of a margin to clear the dungoen again. That took me to level 67 on the shamans. All shamans had rested XP saved up and were bagging about 1500xp per trash mob kill, adding up very quickly.

I will definitely do some more dungeons for leveling purposes - not just in the Caverns of time for that rep, but also in Mechanar for the Lightning Totem. I have not tried yet, but aparently it is possible to summon people into Mechanar with a warlock, which allows character that do not have a flying mount or are not even 70 to get in there. Considering that I really need that lightning totem drop for all four shamans from the Mechanar Chest and that I plan to PvP with these shamans - making a flying mount totally unnecessary, that is awesome. I have three level 70 warlocks, so with a bit of fiddling I can get my characters into Mechanar and set to go by myself. I can hardly wait. =]