Hateful Farming Noob

That's me in the last few days. I am splitting my solo play time between WG/AV on my five shamans to collect a starter set of ilvl 200/213 pvp epics and leveling my druid Ægis and the four hunters.

I do surprisingly ok in level 80 PVP, even though the level 70 resilience doesn't really cut it and things are a lot more bouncy now. Various knock backs and death grip have joined fear as multiboxer hazzard, not to mention retri-pallies who make their pretty lights while encased in their bubble.

I love that level 80 honor gear does not require badges from various battlegrounds, as I always disliked my negative impact with too many chars concentrated in one spot in the smaller battlegrounds. In AV, I go where needed and can play in a strategic fashion. WG is more hectic in this aspect, but being able to take out vehicles extremely fast is a big plus.

Tomorrow I will get the hateful pants. I worked around the ilvl 213 WG chestpiece for the hateful set. Bracers, belt and boots are next.

Boxing Update

What has happened since my last post?

Aquired 4x Titanium Spellshock Ring.
Bought 5x Tattered Dreadmist Mantle for 40 badges each.
Levelled 1x Shaman and 4x Druid from 60->75.5
Dual-speeced 1x Shaman resto and replaced Flame Shock with Earth Shield and Chain Lightning with Riptide, leaving the other elemental spells in place and sequence.
Bought 4x Protective Barricade of the Light for 35 badges each.
Bought 4x Hateful Gladiator's Mail Spaulders for 31600 honor each.

My short range goals are to get the 5th shaman to 80 and start WG/AV with the five shamans grinding for level 80 PvP gear. I plan to do 5v5 arena as before with four shamans and one other person sorting the healing.

80

After enjoying flying around in Northrend I set to the Sons of Hodir quest chain in Storm Peaks. After also doing the Frosthold and Earthen quests in western Storm Peaks, I started my work for the Argent Dawn. Then the Shadow Vault, the Fleshworks and the Death's Rise quests and....DING!

A bit of shoring up materials and then my first level 80 shaman weapons were sorted: [Titansteel Guardian]. Time for bed! =]

Finally!

After some questing in Sholazar and Zul'Drak my shaman group hit level 77. The first thing I did was jump back to Dalaran, and test /follow with epic flight speec in Northrend with one character. I was a bit worried that it might break and make epic flight for the group near-useless. It worked out fine! Yay! YEEEEHAAA!

So I dug into the purses of my various characters to shore up the next money for the other three shaman's flying pleasure. Fortunately enough, I am a compulsive miner and had been a busy bee. Yet, I still could only buy the epic flying skill and cold-weather flying for three of the four shaman. So I took all my fungible assets and chucked them at the auction house. At the end of the day I had enough liquidity to sort out the last shaman.

I spent 24800g on this yesterday, but flying around fast in Northrend with five characters at once is well worth it. Time to take the four shaman to Storm Peaks and do the Sons of Hodir quest chain! =]

Back to boxing!

Being basically done with everything not on a weekly lockout that I could possibly do on my tankadin, prot warrior and unholy tank death knight, it's time again to look at my boxing!

This weekend, I did the Violet Hold on normal three times and Drak-Theron Keep once. My level 75 shaman did have quests for both places. While the yield of quest xp for Drak-Theron is much higher, Violet Hold is much quicker.

I wasn't very lucky on my first go at Violet Hold. My first random boss was the water elemental, called 'water boy' through clenched teeth. Fighting him at the door, I got through it. Then, the next one my personal least favorite random boss - the ethereal who summons his AoEing orbs. I got through both of those without any deaths. Then I fumbled on the final boss moving my shamans in the wrong direction after the threat-wipe and teleport - straight into the breath! =]

The second and third go saw me mowing down the voidwalker, beholder, doggie and the ethereal again - plus drop the dragon both times. That brought me up from 75.5 to 76! I took the shamans to the basin for some relaxed questing to 77 now.

How the desktop changes!

Looking over some old stuff, I noticed how much my setup has changed since I started boxing two years ago. Originally, I used three additional Sony VAIO notebooks that I borrowed from work to to bring up the number of computers to five. Not knowing where to put them, I originally just put them left and right, which was very simple, but not ergonomic at all.

Being fed up with this, I build a shelf above my computer desk to hold the additional notebooks, which looked much more tidy and formed a rough three by two matrix. This was much much better and was my setup for the remainder of the time that I used one computer per WoW session.

Finally then, last summer, I made the step to one computer running all five sessions and using KeyClone to broadcast my keyboard input. I had added one 22" screen between the two 19" displays I already had. I continue to use Multiplicity by Stardock to control both desktops that I use with the master keyboard and mouse. The additional notebooks went back to the sample stock at work and their space is now occupied with all the stuff that usually accumulates around computers.

Four Flavours of Tanking

The Wrath of the Lich King has thrown a big spanner into the works of my multiboxing! Now, after the expansion has been out for two months, the highest level of boxing I have done in Wrath is the Ring of Blood 2.0 in Zul'Drak with me using my Shamans to nuke and heal while I tank. On the other hand I have three level 80 chars that I played in normal single-char play. So what's up?

Firstly, Wrath is so much more fun and there are so many more things to do that for me there is subjectively much less need for boxing to entertain myself.
Secondly, Wrath introduces two features that are not a multiboxer's friend: phasing and vehicles. Some zones have your chars act along and do not phase the group into the same instance. While in a vehicle, /follow is not effective and while for some quests one can work around that and accomplish the objectives with one char and have the others positioned to get the credit, for others this is impossible. Both features are great in my opinion and enhance gameplay for non-boxers, but they are a pain for a boxer.
Thirdly, I have a different sort of pet project going!

My heart in WoW has been in tanking since just after starting to raid back in Molten Core. From then to T5 content I played my warrior tank as my main. For T6 and the Mount Hyjal waves I changed my main raid char to my paladin tank. Now, with wrath introducing Death Knights as fourth tanking class, I got it into my head to sample them all!

First, I pushed my paladin Stephanius to 80 and through heroics and raids. The paladin was and is my main for guild raids. Yet, I then pushed my death knight Tacitus to 80 and got him kitted out in heroics as tank. This week Monday I hit 80 on my warrior tank Ivl and did a bunch of heroics since then. My druid Ægis is still level 70 and I am working his herbalism up. As soon as that is on the level, I will push him through Northrend. This will then give me first hand experience in all tanking flavors!

I expect to take up boxing again once things in Wrath have settled down a bit, but at the moment I am too busy having single player fun! =]

Cheers, Steph.