Loading ...How to deal with the Final Countdown
With the weeks quickly dwindling away till Wrath of the Lich King’s arrival, what do we do? How should we deal with the Final Countdown? (…and I’m talking about the Real Final Countdown not the fake one that Kadomi wrote about ripping off my title name :p)
It’s simple really.
Make Goals
Ask yourself, what do you want to accomplish before it’s all over. It’s still the same game you’ve been playing for over a year. It’s true that a lot of what you get now you’ll replace later, but aren’t we playing for the experience of it anyway? So I asked around and some of my favourite tank bloggers were kind enough to talk about their goals and what they’re up to.
Talldar of WarriorTanking.com broke down his goals for himself as a tank, as a player and as a guild.
Jessika of PrettyinPlate.com is focused on liquidating mats and rearranging her tank setup.
Dezzy of WillTankforHealz.com is pursuing her writing, research and organizing her bank.
Kadomi of TanklikeaGirl.com (you know the title ninja from earlier in the post) discusses what alts she needs to get ready, what heroics she has left to do and a piece or two she’s got on her wish list.
Bizzam of TankHard.com is striving for some Sunwell kills and the status symbol of the ubiquitous Bulwark of Azzinoth.
What about you, Vene?
Hmm… ya. What about me?
I want to kill that guy. That’s my goal. And while I feel an overwhelming sense of pride of how far we’ve come, how much we’ve learned and how little time we’ve done it all in for just being a casual guild. I can’t help, but dream for more and hope that the remaining weeks will be enough to see this fellow fall.
Wish us Luck and to you, I’ll leave you with this to ponder… if you don’t have a goal, do you have a game?
October 3rd, 2008 at 1:10 pm
Got the same goal as you Vene. Don’t care about sunwell. Only want to see Illidan go down.
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October 3rd, 2008 at 1:22 pm
Kalecgos for me, ill see Ili in a bit when ive finished getting my FR set but yea Kalecgos maybe Felmyst =)
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October 3rd, 2008 at 1:37 pm
I’m just saving up gold for professions now, and of course looking for the last few people to fill out my ten man group for my guild. 10-man Lich King, here we come!
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October 3rd, 2008 at 1:42 pm
lawl yea thats the big thing too eh money and seting up the 10 man raids so you get a good start right off the bat
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October 3rd, 2008 at 1:58 pm
Hey, wait a second, I posted first. My timezone advantage wins me the title. *shakes fist in the air*
Good luck with Illidan, fingers and toes crossed!
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Veneretio reply on October 3, 2008 2:23 pm:
No, I sent you the email with the name of my post first!
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October 3rd, 2008 at 2:11 pm
We’ve got a bit of time to learn hard mode M’uru, before we get to work on the lower health versions. Hopefully we’ll be able to finish Sunwell off before WotlK hits, but that depends entirely on how 3.0 shakes out. We’re running towards the finish line before time runs out!
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Kavtor reply on October 3, 2008 2:17 pm:
Oh yeah… I have to decide whether I want to reroll professions. Alch / herb have served me well (I can’t imagine how many thousands of ironshields I’ve made the last few years) but some of the other professions seem much more useful for a tank come WotlK. So I might have to start re-leveling professions now.
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October 3rd, 2008 at 2:19 pm
I’m in the “Illidan must die” camp. We’ve been in BT for a while now. The last couple weeks have been toughfor the guild. People leaving due to drama, some intent to leave til the expansion, and others quitting the guild to take an easier free pass to another guild that’s already doing what we’re trying to do. We’ve got the Illidari Council very close to down. We haven’t seen Illidan… yet. The question is whether or not the incoming nerf will be enough to carry us over while the unfortunate timing of new guildies in Karazhan gear try to take on T6 content with the rest of the guild. Time will tell.
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October 3rd, 2008 at 2:29 pm
We’re a small, casual guild. We want to finish ZA… we run ZA once a week and get 2 chests each time (never get the 3rd). Getting the 3rd chest actually feels like a LESS attainable goal than just finishing-off the friggin place… killing Hex and Zul’Jin…
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October 3rd, 2008 at 2:41 pm
We pretty much accomplished it. A month or so ago, we cleared ZA with a little 10 man guild. We are working on 4 timers, but most likely, with the 3.0 patch, I’ve heard the mounts are gone.
So, til the release, farming for inscriptions, farming cash, running raids when the guild needs me, and messing with a Death Knight in Beta. Trying to compare all 4 tanks so I know what to take to 80.
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October 3rd, 2008 at 2:52 pm
Thanks Vene for the feature. Great way to find some other bloggers and a significant boost in traffic (already). And it’s good to see that there are more casual guilds out there still busy with not-quite-high-end content. 10 man raiding in WotLK, here we come, the casual gang!
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Kadomi reply on October 4, 2008 5:22 am:
Casual gang, represent!
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Hao reply on October 13, 2008 10:16 am:
agree, thought the only people around were the hard core raiders without jobs, school, and lives.
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October 3rd, 2008 at 4:54 pm
Well, our raid downed Illidian last week, so I just need to be rotated in for a kill, and I’ll have that. Fingers crossed on the shield.
Otherwise just get ready with the max number of completed quests to turn in teh day the x=pac drops for that spike in Quest XP to make that first level a little easier.
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October 3rd, 2008 at 5:05 pm
I, too, am hoping to see Illidan die. I’m also looking forward to dropping Mining and picking up Blacksmithing; though the grind to 375 will be hard, I think the pay offs are well worth it for tanks everywhere!
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admin reply on October 3, 2008 5:37 pm:
Everyone should check out Durnic’s site too. It’s an up and coming Tanking Blog and he even weighed in on this post’s topic as well.
Check it out guys and gals: http://www.orlyfactor.com/?p=153
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Durnic reply on October 3, 2008 10:25 pm:
Wow thanks for the shout-out Veneretio, I’ve been reading your site for so long. What an honor.
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October 3rd, 2008 at 5:34 pm
I’m the MT of a casual guild and it’s taken me all year but I’ve finally managed to develop a tanking corps. We’ve got about 15 in the guild capable of getting through Karazhan. We can pretty much guarantee getting to Shade o Aran but have yet to kill him on a guild run. As of Sept 30 we’re able to take a couple of undergeared folks through and get them upgrades. So- what’s my goal? To see Prince Malchezzar defeated during a guild run.
We’re also going to go on tourist runs of all the raid instances in our deteriorated plate and dilapitated cloth sets
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Arvernien reply on October 13, 2008 10:15 am:
We’ve made progress. We got to Prince on a guild run but it was so late we only had time for two attempts. Sadly both were failures.
We’re going to keep trying!
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October 3rd, 2008 at 5:42 pm
Well, i missed 16 months of BC due to deployment, so seeing Illidan is not an option (tho i did finally get to see hyjal on the ptr). So my goal is to get the helmet from Hex Lord Malicrass (it never drops for me) and clean out the bank. Also anxious for 3.0 so SH and SLabs are ezier and i can knock out “Champion of the Naaru” title.
Also hoping i can get my extremely casual guild to get organized and fired up for WotLK raiding so I don’t have to leave
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Kadomi reply on October 4, 2008 5:24 am:
Champion of the Naaru goes away with 3.0 so you’ll have to do the heroics before Oct 14.
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Antonius reply on October 4, 2008 7:33 am:
Booooooooo
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Arvernien reply on October 6, 2008 4:31 pm:
I’ve taken this as a challenge! I’m off to get the title. I finished up Trial: Mercy (SH) on Sunday. Tonight I’m going for Arc and SLabs on Tuesday. Another guild has offered to let me join them on Magtheridon next Sunday.
Are you sure on the Oct. 14th date for the patch? What happens to Badges of Justice?
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Veneretio reply on October 7, 2008 7:05 am:
Have no fear, badge of justice will remain in the game and definitely October 14th is the patch release date.
Arvernien reply on October 8, 2008 10:10 am:
I finished up Trial: Tenacity (Arc) last night so I thought I would check on my progress - turns out I need Slab, SV, SP, kara, Gruul, SP again and Magtheridon to get the title. That’s a lot of dungeons to complete in a week. I’m going to give it my best shot. Of course, that’s much harder since my server’s been a ghost town lately.
mavfin reply on October 8, 2008 6:30 pm:
Do be aware on BoJ that the actual objects will disappear and they will end up as a count in a tab under your character screen.
Hao reply on October 13, 2008 10:14 am:
Remember that you just have to kill gruul and nightbane in kara in addition to teh trial quests. Turn the quest in and kill off the heroic bosses and Mags. I got that on my tank fortunately, but my mage didn’t have the gruul kill.
October 3rd, 2008 at 7:45 pm
I’m still hoping for a kalecgos kill before wotlk, we were already getting close but then the pre-wotlk raid stagnation has kicked in for a few weeks now. Maybe the patch 3.0 will jolt some guildmates back online for a bit to try out the new talents and stuff.
As for me personally, I so hope that Illidan will have mercy on a little gnome tank and drop the bulwark while we’re still doing BT… He’s had 3 months to drop it but has refused me that pleasure so far
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October 3rd, 2008 at 9:47 pm
I’d like to see Kil’Jaeden, got Brutallus down atm so it probably won’t happen.
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October 3rd, 2008 at 10:59 pm
My characters are sort of settled. I’m only raiding 10-mans and recently beat Zul-Jin with both my tank and my mage. Finally since my characters are not progressing I’ve got some gold, bought a swift bird for my tank, and I may get one for the mage although a mage needs it the least. I’ve got all the the badge gear there is to have except the Amani Mask of Death and the mage’s spell blade (yes, so I’ve been doing a few heroics).
My goals are frivolous at this point. As a mage I want to reach the 25,000 kills achievement, which I think will be funny for a dedicated PvE player. As a warrior I want the Deathcharger from Stratholme, so I can pass as a Death Kniggit among the Northrend crowd.
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October 3rd, 2008 at 11:03 pm
There’s actually one more thing: I would like to see and beat Mount Hyjal, for the lore and the atmosphere. But that’s only likely to happen if guilds do “farewell” raids with their friends, which some guilds might. I’ve always wanted to be in Hyjal since sneaking into the empty region in the classic game. That feels like the endgame for me, I don’t care for the “prepared” dude.
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October 4th, 2008 at 1:00 am
I have lots of Alts, and (2) 375 Professions on each. I have a LOT of preparation and gold stockpiling to do. Also, I’ve spent more time leveling Alts than playing my 70 Main/Alts. I don’t see much of a point to finishing more content at the moment, because it feels like wasted effort. However, I will show up… if my Casual Raiding Guildies show up, thats just the kind of Tank I am… If the guild wants it tanked, I’m there. Trouble is, most people think like I do, in the Guild… that anything done now is wasted effort. I look forward to (after playing PTR) the patch hitting and people suddenly wanting to Raid again and try out their new bag of tricks. So far on the PTR… I feel like I’ve hacked the game. No more need for CC, its both harder and easier to hold threat (Vigilance helps, but everyone is SO GD OP) given everyone’s new abilities, and my own, respectively. The hardest thing on the PTR was putting on OLD gear to reach the DEF cap. I’ll be farming up some Badges to re-socket for some DEF soon.
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October 4th, 2008 at 1:17 am
Same goal as you sir. Our guild has reached Illidan for the second time, and I have my FR set ready to go. We want him down before the new patch hits.
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October 4th, 2008 at 1:27 am
Number 1 goal now is to get Illidan down before the changes. We have actually set up an extra saturday raid today just to get more time out of the reset and to really have a good go at him. So fingers crossed!
After that my goals will be to do some preparations for wotlk. Checking out gear setups and just read up on as much as possible so I feel ready for new challenges.
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October 4th, 2008 at 7:35 am
I need to level up my hunter so he can mine. That way I can drop mining on my warrior and take up BS. He’s Mining/Engineering right now, and I dearly love Engi. I can’t drop it. BS looks like it’s going to have some really nice tanking goodies though, that it really didn’t have in TBC. So, I guess in addition to doing daily quests for cash, I’ll be mining up old-world (and TBC) ore for the next month or so.
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Durnic reply on October 4, 2008 7:56 am:
I’m right there with you. I’m currently engineering/mining and I’ll be going engineering/blacksmithing once the expansion hits.
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Gravelayar reply on October 7, 2008 12:38 pm:
I haven’t seen the new BS items but went with power leveing engi/BS nce I hit 70. 775 on both and also trying to level a hunter up to max mining prior to WoTLK
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Gravelayar reply on October 7, 2008 12:38 pm:
Ouch! once and 375 on the typo’s!
October 4th, 2008 at 2:15 pm
just want to kill illidan before 3.0…we’re so close, we’re mostly a casual guild, and we’ve had to revamp our healer makeup twice in the course of BT…so i’d LOVE to be able to say we did it…
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October 4th, 2008 at 8:26 pm
I pugged my warrior to 70, through kara, Gruuls, Magtheridon and through Zul’Aman. I also did a bit of SSC.
The chances of getting any higher are close to 0 because at some point the PuGging stops.
So, nothing new to explore so my warrior is a bit “on hold” till wotlk and in the mean time I’m leveling alts.
My main was a shaman, resto, cleared BT with him. My warrior is my new main but I want some options next time. Don’t know about my shaman, but my rogue is going to be my pvp character my warrior my tank and my druid my…………well my druid is only 26 atm.
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October 5th, 2008 at 11:10 am
Taking down Zul’jin. That’s what I want to do.
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October 6th, 2008 at 1:44 am
I stopped playing a few months ago, so…
Anyway my plans are:
-Cleaning the banks/inventory.
-Leveling fishing/cooking to max (needed for the WOTLK 10-a-day buff foods) with my main and alter.
-Finishing the leveling guide of WOTLK.
-Seeing more content on Naxx10 (hard to see more than 6-7 bosses with 1 day reset and PUGs).
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October 6th, 2008 at 6:15 am
Main (HPriest): Mag’s, Gruul’s, ZA clears
Alts (Lock and War L39): Level as high as possible, harvest as much ores and herbs along the way to assist DK in Inscription/Blacksmithing
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October 6th, 2008 at 6:50 am
We are stuck on Illidari Council… which hopefully will be adjourned tonight after three weeks of trying. And then on to Illidan… however, would like to see your take on the upcoming talent shuffle and the new tanking rotations and change on stat and gear emphasis…. enquiring minds want to know…lol… please… soon…
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October 6th, 2008 at 7:48 am
Final countdown goal would be Illidan Kill and some of the BT tanking gear for my tank, then having enough Boj to gear up the hunter and mage before venturing into Northrend…so leveling wont be a pain in the Bliip…
Possible getting the paladin on his first tanking run in kara…or further
But mostly BT main boss killed with the guild im in, but future there looks grim.
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October 6th, 2008 at 8:33 am
I wanted to have 10K gold before WoTLK. That’s already done so I don’t know what else to do. I ended up starting to level my bank toon so I’ll have 3 lvl 70s by the time WoTLK comes out. The bank toon will take up inscription. I’ve already got big stock piles of herbs to level that proffession.
As for the guild, we are really hoping to down Vashj. She’s all that’s left in SSC. Unfortunately we have had a hard time getting riads going in the last 2 weeks. Everyone is taking a break and we also lost several of our spanish speaking players to a new Latin America server.
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October 6th, 2008 at 8:38 am
Still haven’t made a complete run of Kara so that’s my goal. Also trying to get a few more badges (like 78 of them) for the sunguard legs, which will finally make my tank gear full epic. (Unless the legs in Kara drops ofc)
*$
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October 6th, 2008 at 9:46 am
I want to run Heroic Shattered Halls. I’ve run all heroics, cleared Kara and get my 1st shot at tanking ZA this week. I tried Heroic S.Halls once in my early tanking days and it wasn’t good.
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Arvernien reply on October 6, 2008 4:34 pm:
It’s tough on us warriors. If you can bring a feral druid to off-tank you’ll have an easier time. Try to minimize the CC or you won’t beat the timer. You get a bonus Badge of Justice and extra gold if you beat the timer.
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Hao reply on October 6, 2008 4:42 pm:
To be honest, tanking heroic shattered halls goes much smoother with a pally tank currently. *flame suit on* Well reason is, you basically go through collecting 5 or 6 mobs at a time and aoeing them down. No thought required and no CC, just have all mobs on pally and kill.
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Arvernien reply on October 7, 2008 12:40 am:
True, but this is a warrior tanking forum
Shattered Halls can be done as a warrior - I’ve done it in mostly level 70 blue gear and in Kara/Badge epics. It’s not easy but you will learn a lot about multi-mob tanking!
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Hao reply on October 7, 2008 1:12 pm:
I wish people were as patient to wait for ccs as your groups are. I get people leaving after teh first boss complaining that its not going fast enough….
October 6th, 2008 at 10:08 am
My goal is the same as vene’s. We have our first real night of council attempts ahead of us. If we can have the same succes as we did on the other BT bosses maybe just maybe we can see illidan tonight
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October 6th, 2008 at 12:32 pm
My goal is actually on my warlock. I want my warlock in BT before LK. he’s geared for it, but on my server, those slots are rare, esspecially now. My lock is basically s-3 and sso badge geared. But some how exceds the dmg done of most t-4&5 locks. People said i couldnt raid set up like he is, until i went to gruuls with a “popular” raid guild on my server, and held top dmg done spot by 94 thousand dmg done when gruul died. dunno what I do diffrent, but with that much over, I still only had a dps readout of about 780ish, when 2 dps reached 1k. 3 dmg meters had the same results. Did i mention at the time, he was specd sl/sl lmao? in sl/sl his average dps is 700ish. and in aff, 750ish. give or take depending on where im at. 1380 bsd aff, 1403 sl/sl.
be.imba rated him halfway through bt in sl/sl, and not even in za in aff. i hit top dmg in ssc. go figure. But thats my goal, hes ready for bt, i just hope i get to see inside there before LK releases. 1 boss downed at least.
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October 6th, 2008 at 2:56 pm
Guild experienced a gutting of all of its core members a couple of weeks back. My goal now is to get champion of the naaru… Hopefully get another TK or SSC kill and then move on to Wrath with a clean slate.
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Hao reply on October 6, 2008 2:58 pm:
Forgot. Hopefully i’ll get into a grp that will let me see the end of ZA.
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October 6th, 2008 at 7:15 pm
Shattered halls speed run and a 3 chest ZA, both w/o a paladin tank. I’ve been 70 less than amonth.
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Tyl reply on October 6, 2008 7:17 pm:
BTW, that’s HShattered halls speed runs post 3.0. When a warrior actually CAN do it.
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October 7th, 2008 at 1:58 am
As a new player my only concern is to get some more gold and maxed fame / bg badges as it seems a bad idea to try get some epixxes before wotlk, id prolly wear them for 3 weeks only. btw i did shattered halls in mostly green and half off-geared, it only becomes a problem if you screw up which i luckily never did on the whole run ^^ besides that im also looking to meet some new people and maybe make more friends until wotlk since i have transfered one week ago and thus know nobody except my guildmates. need to show around my tanking abilites to make my name popular enough to get some pms when wotlk starts
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October 7th, 2008 at 8:16 am
I would like to kill something in Sunwell before 3.0 hits. I would like to kill more somethings in Sunwell before Wrath hits.
Things to do:
- Rebuild the gold fund. Epic Flyer #4 cost a tonne and I still have to worry about buying 50 mounts for the achievement.
- More herbs to power level a Scribe.
- More Felsteel to get an early jump on Blacksmith levelling.
- Finish SSO to Exalted on my rogue because Hawt Dorf Chick Rogues deserve it.
- Umm, get Exalted with Shen’dralar. What?
- Get some more gold. Cobalt and Saronite will be pricey.
- Level up a 2nd miner. Gogogo Titansteel production.
- Honour and Mark farm. Mebbe I’ll even Arena a little.
- Stock up on Food. 30 Stam food for levelling cooking.
- Kill Kel’thuzad before 3.0.
- Kill C’thun before Wrath.
- Get even more gold. There will be shinies to purchase.
- Go apeshit in Hyjal sans Pallies before Wrath hits.
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October 7th, 2008 at 12:36 pm
Just wanted to drop a quick ‘hello’ to Vene and all the other posters. I’m a fledgling tank (sooo fledgling, in fact, that I’m at level 28 lol) in a newly formed guild, so I have alot to learn, and finding all these excellent blogs has been awesome. I’ve yet to start any real tanking, but I’ve gotten loads of insight from nearly all of you guys and gals. I’m hoping to get as close to 70 as possible in the month I have left and get some real experience under my belt
So from a humble noob to you all, thank you for sharing your experiences!
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October 8th, 2008 at 12:33 am
My goal is simply Kil’jaeden. Our guild is wiping hard on Felmyst right now (yes, FELMYST. YOU CAN WIPE ON HER.) But that’s really more an ambition of the guild rather than a personal one.
My own, percious, personal goal is to get myself an Amani War Bear which are somewhat rare on my server, and I have very few cooldowns to manage it now as they become unavailable in 3.0.. post-3.0 though, I intend to spend most of my time preparing. My guild expect their tanks to be amongst the first to 80, and I don’t want to disappoint.
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October 8th, 2008 at 4:07 am
We had a few goals to hit before the patch, I’m very happy to say we have managed most of them (like getting Vashj down finally, going 3/9 BT and 3/5 MH) but we’re focusing on Kael’thas in TK.
Just to be able to say we’d cleared T5 content fully and were making inroads into T6 makes me proud to be the GM and an MT of our little casual band of adventurers. It pangs me though that ZA still hates me with a passion, we can get 3 chests comfortably, and Hex Lord has never dropped the helm despite me being the MT in about 95% of the raids there.
The patch (and hence removal of Ad’al title) is rapidly approaching, and we only have spent one night at Kael… wish us luck!
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October 9th, 2008 at 11:19 am
I cleared most of sunwell with my rogue until a life (and continent) change made me ‘retire.’ Would have loved a glaive, but oh well. Currently raiding part time with RL friends on my lock. Trying to help current guild kill Illi before LK. Just got ROS last week, will kill Mother tonight and work on Council.
Main goal is to have everything possible prepared for my DK to race to 80 lol. I’m about 80% gathering mats, bop gears, gold etc to help me ding 80 around the time my buddies ding on their 70 mains. I’ll eventually develop tanking and dps sets as I probably won’t be MT for my guild but will tank 10-mans.
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October 10th, 2008 at 2:00 pm
Think some posts got deleted somehow, but ya.. I finally completed the “champion of the naaru” chain. Good goal to complete before wrath. Next goal would be to clear ZA.
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October 13th, 2008 at 9:14 am
Not sure where to post this but I’m interested to hear opinions about the best professions for tanks in WoTLK. I currently have mining for the income and alchemy (elixer spec) for all the flasks I use. Is blacksmithing improved enough to be worthwhile? Engineering? Or is it too soon to tell? If I need to drop Alch and take up BS it would be something I could work on now while there’s time before WoTLK’s released.
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Hao reply on October 13, 2008 10:08 am:
I personally like engineering tbh. Money maker is the Zapthrottle mote extractor. Makes farming primals easy. It also gave me both of my helms for fury and for prot as well as the khorium destroyer.
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Hao reply on October 13, 2008 10:09 am:
as for wrath, i need to look at mmo-champion more outside of work.
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