I spent the better part of eight levels running instances and gearing up Chantre for the 29 Warsong Gulch battleground. Below is my plan for Waffle:

Waffle’s Warcrafter Sandbox

Despite my prior protestations to the contrary, my old PvP skills are slowly coming back. Back in the early 90s, I used to play Doom over the modem (with a Novell network bound to the modem connection) and did pretty well. In the late 90s, I developed motion sickness when playing FPS games such that I basically had to give up the genre. Even EverQuest could give me problems.

WoW doesn’t make me motion sick, thankfully. I’ve been playing Chantre in the 20-29 Warsong Gulch battleground and have earned a reasonable chunk of honor and enough marks to get a trinket. I wouldn’t say that she’s overly twinked, she has nothing that a dedicated (and well-connected) player couldn’t achieve on his own, and she paid for everything herself through harvesting and the auction house. There are a few more things I want to get (like a +3 damage scope for the gun) yet. Once she levels out of the battleground (through daily quests or housekeeping, like picking herbs between fights) I’ll push her to get 70 before returning to Waffle and gearing her up for the 29 BG.

My lessons learned:

• Slow guns like the Chesterfall Musket are more effective than quick bows like the Nightstalker Bow, despite the likelihood of getting more shots off if it’s quick. Most of the shots I take in the battleground are on the run, so a gun with a slower speed (even if only 0.10 more DPS) will hit for a hell of a lot more.
• Likewise, my daggers, Thornspike and the Tail Spike, while great for Agility aren’t as useful in close combat: Corpsemaker has high DPS and a very slow speed. I treat melee like my ranged shots, where auto attack is nice but my most telling blows are from skills. Corpsemaker can take out Rogues that are more twinked than I am, especially if I land Wing Clip.
• When on defense, where Chantre usually does very well, placing a Frost Trap at the flag or in the junction between the long entry corridor and side passage “upstairs” near the boots can help tremendously in slowing down an attack or flag capture.
• Freezing Traps, while utterly useful, require discipline not to spam the Rogue or Warrior trapped in it.

Draenei Shamans and Hunters can be tough, along with a twinked Mage. Twinked Rogues and Warriors are still killing machines. Twinked Priests can be nearly unstoppable, while a Hunter carrying the flag is just asking to lost it (leave it to the Shamans and Druids to carry it). Paladins are annoying, especially before mana drain becomes a part of the battleground.

Two different antibiotics, four trips to the vet, and a lot of time spent watching him eat (and defending his food from the other cats) have finally paid off. Our Pirate Kitty, Arnold, has his stitches out and his eyelid looks to be cleanly folded over and adhering.

I’ll get pictures of his progress later. We need to pull them from the camera.

After his eye surgery . . .

I’m done running Warsong Gulch until 29. There were two dailies that I was lucky enough to get to run. What I’ve learned:

• Stamina is king
• it doesn’t matter how many people you put on defense if the opposing side sends in a group of twinks
• premade guild groups guarantee fast wins
• healers are primary targets: they go down fast, can’t do sustained DPS, and can turn the tide of an encounter
• you can’t have enough Stamina or Spirit
• it’s faster to die than to wait for your mana to come back
• put your buffs up to give the enemy priest something to dispel
• a good priest dispels Shadow Word: Pain, Corruption, and Hunter’s Mark from himself and his groupmates
• it’s tempting to run in and rack up lots of honor from DOTs, but that tends to make you a bigger target. Hang back, keep a finger poised over Psychic Scream for the inevitable Rogue or Hunter pet, keep your Power Word: Shield up, and pick a Rogue, Warrior, or Hunter to keep alive. You’ll get just as much honor (albeit fewer killing blows) from keeping your teammates alive, so throw Renews around like Mardi Gras beads and keep the PW:S in reserve for yourself and teammates who are about to go down. Do use Shadow Word: Pain, but not to the exclusion of healing.
• Untwinked Warlocks and Paladins (especially after Mana Burn) are the Priest’s natural targets
• Long casts aren’t going to have a chance to complete in a mobile battle, but at 19, you don’t have Flash Heal. Be ready to have lots of spellcasts fail.

I still haven’t decided how to best spec. Blackout was annoying but not tide-turning when I was hit with it, while Shadow talents like Improved Psychic Scream and Silence are as useful as Improved Mana Burn. Based on my experiences in the 19 WSG BG, heals are sorely needed, and that precludes Shadowform and, arguably, Improved Divine Spirit provides a bigger return per talent point for both BG and instance grouping (before Vampiric Touch is available). I can see spending a few points in the Holy tree as well.

Is a heavy Discipline spec appropriate for all PvP, or more appropriate for Arenas rather than BGs? Is the style of play sufficiently different in later, higher level BGs that strong Shadow or Discipline builds are more useful than builds that incorporate some healing?

I got my new laptop on Friday, an ASUS G1S-B1 from NewEgg. It was the best deal on the hardware that I could find, and it’s a strong performer, over five times faster (in terms of 3DMark 06) than my desktop. Lenovo wouldn’t have shipped a laptop to me until March 20, so it was worth going with such a consistently well-reviewed piece of hardware. I spent a lot of time playing Waffle in Warsong Gulch over the weekend. This week, I’ll be receiving a Zalman notebook cooler and a SIIG USB Soundwave 7.1 Pro USB microphone and audio adapter. The cooler is for obvious reasons, and this one reviewed well. The USB audio is because on my last Cardinal laptop, a Dell, the solder on the audio card and audio jack was defective which caused the audio to fail. Since I only plan on using headphones and a microphone when playing in a different room from Becky, I’ll plug the audio adapter into a USB hub (a poor man’s docking station) and use it that way.

The afternoon after I ordered my laptop, Arnold’s eye started weeping. He apparently developed glaucoma in his right eye, the feline iris melanoma finally progressing to the point where, during our vet trip on Thursday afternoon, Dr. Wrycha recommended enucleation. I dropped Arnold off at the vet for surgery this morning: he gets the last of the tax refund money and all of the pet savings account for his medical care. Arnold spent the weekend feeling no pain as I’ve kept him doped up on Torbugesic syrup, 1.0 cc’s every twelve hours.

Brody and Rose are getting alone. While Becky and I played online games, Rose babysat Brody.

Brody is a very sweet, cuddly dog. He’s going to be a total nightmare when he gets to be a “teen” in three months or so.

Are my dogs half-brother and half-sister? Or siblings? Or cousins?

Both Rose and Brody share a father, Jojo. But they come from different mothers who are sisters. They’re from litters approximately seven months apart (May 26 and December 22).

We tell Rose that she has to watch her baby brother, which she interprets as an excuse to chew on his face.

I’ve hinted that I bring bad luck before, but Becky absolutely believes it. There are times when she’ll actually order me out of the room, sometimes the house, because my presence is causing bad things to happen. For instance, she’ll have been pulling mobs as singles or pairs for an hour with no problems. I’ll walk into the room, start to talk to her, and the next pull will be three or four or more. It’s not that she’s paying less attention to the game, it just happens. I’ll come into the house after work, which she won’t consciously know (because of the layout of the house, the sound won’t travel and vibration of the front door closing is minimized) and she’ll immediately have her first character death of the day. When she’s soloing, she’ll regularly get purple drops in WoW, but if I’m in the house or the room, they won’t drop. Last night, she needed to kill a quest mob in EQ and had trouble getting it (other groups would pull it even though they didn’t need it; she’d clear to get to the mob only to have another player grab it). As long as I was in the room with her, for an hour, this quest mob that had been respawning on a regular five minute schedule didn’t respawn.

Likewise, my bad luck extends to myself. One of my Draenei Hunters, Foulhoof, was grouping in a PUG with a Mage to get some quests done in Arathi Highlands. I saw an incredible number of greens drop, plus a quite nice blue melee staff. I’m not kidding when I state that I lost 23 of the 25 rolls we did over 60 minutes. If I need a particular piece of gear out of an instance, I’ll make my wife take me rather than trust that I’ll win the roll in a group. We had to clear Wailing Caverns over fifteen times to get a particular weapon that drops off a boss more than 25% of the time.

I tried another BG. We lost spectacularly, but that was okay because I couldn’t select spells. I was in the middle of debating talents when I was ported into the BG. Immediately after porting, my mouse couldn’t select any gumps or widgets–I’m not sure if it was because I was trying to interact with another layer or window that wasn’t there, or whatever. The mouse worked, the pointer would let me interact with or select characters and items in the game world, but not with any gumps, even after the BG ended I was dumped back into Silvermoon.

I /quit out of WoW and will try again soon.