Multi-boxing!

Krista and I have been battling WoW burnout for a while now, and I’ve gotten to deal with some personal stuff that’s made me reevaluate my priorities, so we hadn’t been playing much.

We’ve transferred our main toons over to a new server with our guild (the announced changes to PvP for Mists were kind of the straw to break the camel’s back, although I think most of us are relieved to not have to go through the PvP gankfest that I remember from the beginning of Cata).

However, the bank guild that we had finally caved and set up on our old server can’t be transferred unless it’s at least level two. I rearranged all my remaining alts on the old server into the bank guild, and I’ve have been doing fishing and cooking dailies when I have the time and inclination to do so. I’ve also actually gotten a little bit of a bug and enjoyed leveling my baby warlock from 40-something to 66, and I’ve gotten a DK up to 80 for the first time as well.

More recently, we were enticed by the new pretty Recruit-A-Friend mount, so we might have gone ahead and signed up for RAF accounts with the excuse of having more toons to group up and use to get extra guild exp.

We had each gotten a RAF account when Blizz first introduced the incentive, mainly to try it out (and maybe for the zhevra mount too). Back then, we set the baby RAF toons on follow, and bounced through dungeons on level-capped toons to clear the way. We took advantage of the increased exp gains and freebie summons as long as the account link was active, and then we let the subscriptions lapse (until the Scroll of Resurrection incentive offered another mount, and we took advantage of the freebie 80 toons to powerlevel a few of our lowbie alts through dungeons while we had the RAF accounts active).

Ghostbusters!

This time around, instead of each of us running around with a useless loot mule on follow, we decided to take a shot at multi-boxing. Krista researched a few different programs before settling on ISBoxer. We followed the guide and went through the quick start wizard, and soon Krista was controlling two pallies, and I had a hunter and priest.

We quickly figured out that 1) controlling two melee toons is kind of a pain in the ass and 2) controlling two rdps with different rotations is similarly a pain in the ass. We dropped that first group composition shortly after level 10.

Pretty wolfies all in a row.

The solution, obviously, was to roll four hunters.

It was a lot easier to manage the rotation of dual-boxing hunters, and we quickly got the little humans up to their mid teens (with a lot of gigglefits at how quickly things died) before deciding to take a shot at four-manning Deadmines.

Lemme tell ya, hunters are squishy.

We did somehow manage to clear Deadmines (and got the achievement for the baby bank guild, as well as a nice chunk of guild exp for being in a guild group) with only one actual wipe, but there was also a nice little repair bill from taking turns at playing kite-the-boss.

After finding a video guide showing how to heal with Grid on one character through the other character’s screen, we tried again, this time with a mage/priest and warrior/druid combo. We figured that we’d primarily play the mage and warrior, with Krista’s priest healing and my druid playing critchicken.

I quickly learned that trying to manage any kind of rdps rotation while meleeing is beyond what I care to attempt to juggle in game, and switched to keeping the druid as a pocket healer.

We four-manned Deadmines with our new combo (marveling at the difference with actual tank and healy-type toons), hit 20 and got class quests in Shadowfang Keep, and decided to take a whack at four-manning that one too. We quickly noticed a difficulty with mana management on Krista’s priest and my druid.

After a few frustrating shots at the second boss, we took a break from SFK and dual-boxing to level up another mage to replace Krista’s priest. Managing two mages with the same rotations made it a lot easier for Krista to nuke stuff, and we made steady progress through SFK before hitting a brick wall on the last boss, Lord Godfrey, where we ended up buying a few greens off the AH and cheating with a few heirlooms.

We wrapped up last night with a nice chunk of guild exp from quests and dungeons (we’re almost halfway through level one! >.>); four-man experiences in Deadmines, Shadowfang Keep, and Stockades; and four level 25 toons ready for more.

I’d post a screenshot of our current group, but both my warrior and druid look like they got dressed in the dark.

While I do miss the camaraderie of SiB while we’re working on the baby bank guild, I’m actually having a lot of fun dual-boxing and working on my warlock and DK. Dual-boxing a tank and healer has been one of the most rewardingly challenging things I’ve done in game so far, especially with a tank class that I’m completely unfamiliar with, considering my 85 warrior made it to level cap as arms and has rusted in Stormwind ever since.

I don’t know that I’d be too interested to try dual-boxing in PvP, but I’m definitely enjoying the PvE side of it.

Random, Little Update

I haven’t really had too much to blog about lately.

SiB’s main run is consistently clearing Dragon Soul in under 2 hours, and Krista’s rogue will be getting her legendary daggers after next week’s clear. Our tanks seem to have fallen off the face of the earth, and my paladin has been filling in (and has as many Deathwing kills as my shaman as of this past week… >.>).

Tankadin!

Filling in on my tank has made me feel a little guilty about playing other toons, including my main, because there was a small, nagging part of my brain telling me that I should be working on my tank so that she didn’t feel so squishy. (It’s not as bad anymore, ‘cause she’s been able to hoover all sorts of pretties that nobody else needs.)

I do want to work on a decent transmog set for her though.

Other than that, the T11 stuff has stalled a bit thanks to RL cropping up, but I hope to go back in next weekend, and at least finish up heroic Nef in Blackwing Descent before we go play with the last two bosses on heroic in the Bastion of Twilight. We took a shot at heroic Throne of Four Winds last time, and we might just have to come back to that one.

I also had a little nerdpoint hunting spurt with my hunter, but the novelty and amusement of that endeavor has worn off, and I definitely don’t have the attention span to chase down all those nerdpoints on another toon. There are still several achievements that I still want to get for my shaman, and I’m waiting for that itch to kick back in.

In Which Jen Accepts a Challenge

I don’t really have anything new for this blog lately, partially ’cause I got distracted writing a story for Kia’s blog.

(I totally went and chased down more nerdpoints for Tal yesterday.)

Nerdpoints and Zombies

One of the things that I love about WoW is that there is SO MUCH to do.

All the teddies!

Kia already mentioned our bear-hunting, which took us a few days to get for everyone, but we had fun melting bosses and faceplant-derp-pulling trash.

There’s also interest in going through the Cataclysm heroics for the achievement drake, but we’re an ADD bunch, so it’s a challenge in itself to get us to all focus on something all over the place like that. Krista and I already have ours (thanks to more awesome guildies).

All the zombies!

Krista and I have also been (slowly… did I mention the ADD?) working on knocking out our Wrath dungeon heroic achievements, since we had different mains when that stuff was current.

Zombiefest amused the hell out of me. I got to round up the zombies and lead them through to the gauntlet, where Krista was waiting to round up zombies on that end, and I kept having to wait for them to catch up after I dropped earthbind totem so they wouldn’t chew on me too much.

I’ve also been entertaining myself by running random Hour of Twilight heroics with ALL THE ALTS. I get to meet ALL SORTS of awesomely special people. (On a sidenote, even Spanish-speaking players like to mock the Bishop’s POWA spiel. XD) There was one run where a not-so-good healer left group pretty early on (I think it much have been as soon as s/he could requeue), and while we breathed a sigh of relief and hoped for a better healer, the same priest magically reappeared in the group. XD

Other than that, I’ve also been plugging away at the Glory of the Cataclysm Raider with my awesome guildies. We’ve managed to get to the point where several of us only need five more bosses on heroic-mode to get the first batch of drakes.

While the new mechanics can be a little painful for us, I like to think that everyone is having fun with the nerdpoint hunt, and we’re able to laugh at ourselves and enjoy our time together. I know I’m having a blast with it. ^^

P.S. The heroic-mode guides for the Glory of the Cataclysm Raider bosses are in progress, and won’t be posted until we complete the raids (we still need Nef, the Council, Cho’gall, and both Throne encounters).

I Heal Hunter Pets

I was chatting with a guildie about huntering, and it made me a little nostalgic for the good ol’ days of BM.

See, my transition from BC to Wrath with raiding was with a hunter, and she was specced into Beast Mastery. When she was little and questing through Ashenvale, I found a pretty white wolf, and Cujo became her almost-constant companion. (He’s still totally my favorite.)

BM was starting to lapse behind other classes at the time, and people were saying to switch (I believe Marksman was the spec du jour at the time) to stay competitive with other raiders. I stubbornly refused to switch specs as our guild started tackling Ulduar, even though I eventually switched to raiding with my paladin (because of guild needs and NOT because of any kind of performance concerns). I haven’t raided with Talorina since those first few weeks into Ulduar, and she still has her BM spec, although I did cave at 85 and dual-specced her into Survival to keep up in heroics when I feel like waiting on a dps queue.

I loved those days where Cujo happily chewed away at boss butts and made up significant amounts of my damage, even if those were also the days where we had to manage pet happiness and food and IT WAS UPHILL BOTH WAYS IN THE SNOW.

And while we were climbing UPHILL BOTH WAYS IN THE SNOW, the absolute WORST thing was when your pet died during a fight. ‘Cause OMG you had to REZ it and FEED it and COMFORT it and REASSURE it before you could send it back out at the boss’ ass, or it would just whimper and whine resentfully while it licked the boss’ heel.

So, even though I don’t raid with Tal anymore, and even though she doesn’t even get to see alt raids because EVERYONE AND THEIR DOG PLAYS A HUNTER, I still make sure that grid is set up to show pets, so that I can toss them the occasional heal as needed too. <3