Arm’s Warrior-Blast from the past.

I’m not entirely sure when my last post was and I’m not entirely sure if this will even count as a post but here goes.

Arms warrior.

I decided after reading a blog post by the esteemed Mr Rossi of WOW insider, to respec my secondary warrior specialisation to arms this morning. I ran over to the auction house and bought myself a fairly good 2hand weapon and started on the training dummies not knowing what the hell I was doing.

After about 10 minutes I went back to Pandaria to carry on questing an tried getting used to my new spec, bearing in mind that the last time I played an arms warrior was at level 65 in TBC.

I found myself enjoying the spec quite a lot and decided it would be rude if I didn’t put it to the test in a random 5man dungeon.

Now, I’m only level 86 at this time and still am not 100% sure on my rotation when I finally get into the jade serpent temple instance or whatever it’s called. I announce to all at the start that this is a pure test and that’s it’s the first time in years since I have been arms. After the run I sat in the 3rd position in my metre behind the Death Knight tank and a survival hunter so I was pretty happy with myself.

I asked Mr Rossi himself if he had any resources for a noob warrior and he actually replied and told me to check out icy veins which I did, and after a few more runs with my new information, I was sitting at the top of the majority of metres.

Im not one of those players who posts the metres every 5 minutes, my metres are purely for my own viewing and I don’t post them even if anyone asks. Although I am sometimes tempted by the asshat warlocks who think they rock the metres and ask after every pull to post a metre showing them at the bottom.

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Long time no see.

So what have I been doing while I haven’t been keeping you updated, well I have been playing a lot of Starcraft 2. Now I realise that the title above is My week in wow but I kinda broke that rule when I started posting about Diablo 3 when that first launched and no I’m not a blizzard fanboy I just like their games.

Anyway, Starcraft 2 has taken up most of my gaming time I have been playing mostly Protoss as I love warp gates and mothership rushes.

So my friends laptop is running the game smoothly and we have been getting addicted ever since. He plays mostly Terran but has dabbled in the Zerg, we have managed to get another colleague of ours to download the free trial and he has joined us a few times for a few 3v3 games.

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My week playing Starcraft 2…. Badly.

Well hello there readers. Long time no post, it’s been a few weeks since my last update as I have been taking some time out with IRL issues. I won’t go into them here because I’m sure nobody wants to here about it .

So I decided last week that I needed a new project to take my mind off of things and after chatting to a colleague of mine we decided we wanted to play some sort of RTS game together. We both used to love the old Command and Conquer series especially Red Alert 2, the draw of building a base and army to destroy each other with was great and we both had a lot of memories playing when it first came out. But the servers are not there anymore for online play so we started to take a look at other titles and I settled finally on Starcraft 2. Now I never played the original and neither had he so I took it upon myself to download the free starter edition which gave you access to the first five campaign missions and a few multiplayer maps. After downloading and creating my profile, Grimdem of course I started the campaign.

Wow, I thought. This is awesome in every way that RA2 was only this is vastly better. I played through the first mission and thought to myself “oh dear” this could be a new addiction .

I told my friend what it was like and he started looking into it aswell but wasn’t sure if his laptop can handle the graphics.

So for the time being its just been me playing through the campaign and trying to learn the finer points of the game.

It turns out to be vastly more complex than I had thought. The strategies involved in your build orders and economy is your number one priority and that’s kind of hard to get used to. It’s going to take me a while to get into a comfortable position before I venture into the multiplayer ladder and start my career. Ill keep you posted as much as I can. Just hope his laptop works so we can practise

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Thinking of taking a break from the blog for a while.

Hey people. I’m thinking of taking a little break from writing for a while. Need to focus on getting a new job and some other IRL stuff. Plus I think I need some time to get some fresh ideas for the blog and maybe even my book. Thanks all who do read and watch this space.

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Grimshen the Explorer. Part 2

Keep in mind that this post is being written over the course of a week and might jump from level ranges while reading.

It’s been about a week since I wrote my little guide on the Brewmaster monk an I thought I should keep it updated as I level up. So I dove straight back in last week and hit 47 rather quickly and with that I got the best spell in the game; Spinning crane kick.

This spell adds an excellent AOE effect spell to our already good AOE toolbox.

If you use it on three mobs or more you will generate one chi. It costs 40 energy and is channeled for 3 sec’s. while being used you can still dodge, block and parry.

So with this new amazing spell of awesomeness how did this help me level quicker, well in truth it didn’t help until I got the passive ability Gift of the Ox which generates healing spheres when doing melee damage. This ability plus ScK, BoF and keg smash means that I can pretty much pull as much as I like and live through all of the damage I receive. If it gets hairy I just pop Guard and elusive brew and its a winner. I’m grinding mobs 4 levels higher than myself in Nagrand at the moment and only getting in trouble if the mobs have stun effects which can build up and hurt lots when your pulling between 10-15 mobs at a time.

When I tank instances in Outland if I have a good healer I will try pull whole rooms at a time and just watch as the healing spheres mount up next to me. Ill strafe through them and they will heal for 11000 on average when your hitting a few at a time and for a low 60′s toon that is safe to say my monk is topping both healing and damage meters

I can’t decide on who’ve level 60 talent I like best at the moment. I have been switching back and forth between Leg Sweep and Charging Ox Wave I am tending to lean more towards the latter as I can send it off while attacking one pack and be able to go get the stunned pack without the whole lot running away and leaving the casters stood there.

All in all it’s a great class and possibly the best all around class balance. Currently in the Outland level ranges so can’t wait to get to northrend.

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Grimshen the Explorer

 

 

 

So we have had mists for a week now and we are all either hitting 90 or furiously leveling monks. For me it’s the latter.

I started my monk with the thoughts of just popping on every now and then for a few dungeons here and there when I get bored of grinding quests in Pandaria.
How wrong was I.

I think it was the spell Touch of death that did it. For those that don’t know touch o death instantly kills anything non player that has equal or less health than yourself, which means every 1.5 minutes you can walk up to a mob thrust your fist into its throat and drop it it one.
That’s very satisfying.

Also I love the animations of my monk. At the moment he is dual wielding two swords which are strapped to his back during combat and whenu
you jab you quickly grab them striking rapidly before sheathing them at your back again. It’s very fluid movement and it really works well. It also gives many opportunity for you transmog junkies out there because let’s face it, who doesn’t love the idea if their monk duel wielding twin Katana’s.

So…. Ill go over my thoughts of Brewmaster tanking at the 15-40 levels.

These are the main abilities as a brewmaster that I have got access to so far:

• A taunt-Provoke

• A frontal cone AoE ability which puts the weakened blows and dizzying haze debuffs on all targets-Keg Smash

• An AoE move that does good damage in front of you and puts a DoT effect on anyone with Dizzying haze on them-Breath of Fire

• A ranged attack that puts dizzying haze on all enemies in the targeted area-Dizzying Haze

• A single target strike that causes all attacks to ignore armor-Tiger Palm

• An absorb shield like Power Word: Shield-Guard

• An ability which reduces damage taken by 20% and increases health by 20%-Fortifying Brew

I tend to use all these abilities in any given situation, jab is used to generate chi which is needed for the majority of our spells.

Guard and Fortifying Brew are More situational but the rest get used as follows

1. Pull with Dizzying Haze or Keg Smash

2. Tiger palm to get the armor pen on you

3. Breath of Fire on all mobs on front of you for good threat and DPS

4. Repeat above steps untill things fall over, using Guard and Fortifying Brew if needed.

So that’s what we do in a nutshell. It’s a little more involved when actually playing as your spamming jab to generate your chi.

Now in Mists, Blizzard is pushing the “Active Mitigation” theory on all tanking classes, the brewmaster mitigates damage with Stagger which turns a percentage of damage into a DoT effect.

That’s all this week. Next week I will go over the remaining levels of my monk and maybe go into the Windwalker spec.

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Day one in Pandaria.

This post will have spoilers for the Jade Forest zone of Mists of Pandaria

85-90 levelling begins.

“Why do we fight……”

Oh no skip that rubbish it’s finally here woooohoooo the waiting is over

Erm, excuse me. Had a minor nerd freak out there, sorry about that.

So it’s finally the 25th and the mists have dropped. Pandaria is open and the army’s of the alliance and the horde have decended on the shores of the jade forest.

Today is the day that we get to start out adventures in a new Shiny world.

So I decided very casually to level my Death Knight grimtank first, I had been wracking my brains for weeks trying to decide who it was going to be first. The second my character screen loaded I didn’t even think twice before I double clicked his name and entered the world.

So, first impressions. Awesome.
The opening few quests were great. Blasting an alliance encampment with a massive cannon and getting my first piece of “dynamic” quest gear (green of-course) was a nice feeling.

A few short kill and collect quests later and I find myself looking at my first pandaren. Shado-lord bla di blah, who proceeded to teach me about the Sha energies.

I won’t go into many details about all the quests but I will mention a few of my favorites. The Sniper quest was fricken awesome. I felt so OP just picking off jinyu from atop my little mountain. Also the Tian Monestory questline was really nice, gave you a nice sense of being.

The quests in and around the Jade serpent temple were good too especially flying around the zone on the back of the jade serpent. I can’t wait to get my hands on one of those flying mounts.

I’m going to tank the first two instances at some point today and ill maybe write a little something about them another time.

All in all I am really enjoying the first day of Pandaria and can’t wait to see what happens next.

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