I first stumbled upon Loque’nahak (several months ago) when I was on Deimonia, my Gnome Warlock. Deim’ lives on the Kael’thas server. I was out doing the herbing/mining (Oh by the way, there’s a macro that allows you to track two gathering professions) thing and low and behold who did I see but Loque’nahak. Initially I was afraid to get too close. I thought he was a red mob and didn’t want to aggro him in case a Beast Mastery Hunter was in the area wanting to tame this rare elite.
However upon closer inspection, I saw he was yellow. Which meant he would not attack me unless I attacked him first. That being the case I cooled my Gnomie heels and hung out with him for a bit. For the most part, he ignored me. Heck, I even offered him Chilled Meat! He just stalked right past me pacing in endless circles. So I sat back and enjoyed the view. My he was gorgeous! I have to admit I was slightly sad. You see, I have a Hunter (ok I have several Hunters) and although Indrakshi (now known as Zugsa) was only Survival Spec at the time (so she couldn’t tame him if she wanted too) it had always been my desire to capture this elusive creature. I love the Spirit Beast markings. Blizzard designers did an excellent job with his skin.
Fast forward to the present…
Zugsa picked up her second spec, Beast Mastery, not too long ago. I mainly selected this spec since I’m planning on soloing some instances in Burning Crusade along with some Northrend Instances too. I’ve already soloed a few BC instances with the BM spec. The added perk of being Beast Mastery spec is I can tame rare elites too. Thanks to having 51 points tucked in the Beast Mastery tree. In the back of my mind I eventually knew I would get around to tracking and taming Loque’nahak, but it wasn’t pressing.
Early this morning I was on Zugsa, herbing & mining in Sholozar Basin. My thoughts drifted back to another time when I saw Loq on my Gnome Warlock. Knowing that I was close to the spawn location, I turned my Windrider around and started heading towards that spawn site.
I really didn’t have any hopes of him being there but as I drew closer I saw a flash of shimmery white. He was there! I quickly urged my Windrider to fly to the ground. Upon landing, I swapped Uhk’loc (now known as Hanuman) for my gorgeous white kitty that I picked up in Winterspring and had it attack Loque’nahak. Furious, Loq attacked my cat. While it was distracted, I laid out a ice trap, abondoned my cat, and began taming Loq. He beat on me, but it was futile, ten seconds later he was mine.
So now I have Loque’nahak. Well… I call ‘her’ Ubasti. It didn’t take me hours to camp his spawn sites like numerous Beast Mastery Hunters I’ve read about. Indeed, I got lucky in catching him my first try. The only thing I was rushing against was time. You see, Tuesday is WOW maintenance day in the USA. My Hunter tamed Loque’nahak four minutes before the realm went down for scheduled maintenance.
Recently, a brand new website went live. It’s called Online Auction House. As the name suggests it allows the user to search WOW’s auction House without logging onto WOW.
I play the auction house and at times I’ve wished that I was able to do this. There are many times I don’t want to log on just to see how my auctions are doing. Enter Online Auction House. Online Auction House allows the user to search date by item name or Seller Name.
I’ve tested the site out quite a bit since I discovered it searching for a variety of items that my toons use. A few moments ago I did a search for Autumn’s glow. Holiterra’s an alchemist and snaps them up when they are cheaply priced on the Auction House. She uses them for transmutes; One Autumn’s glow and one Eternal life are the mats required to transmute into Dreadstone.
As I mentioned earlier you can also check by Seller’s name, so if you have a favorite seller, or just want to track your competition you can simply enter their name and it will pull up the list that seller is auctioning. Pretty cool feature, right?
Checking out the Online Auction House about page it states that the Online Auction House is still in the Alpha State, promising more to be coming soon. Currently it appears this service is only available for those on US realms. In the future, hopefully this will be available to all users.
Thus far, I’m enjoying this service. There are times when I only check the Auction House and thanks to Online Auction House I don’t have to log on if that’s all I need to do.
This morning I had some free time so I decided to hit the Battlegrounds. I dropped Glyph of Penance, which cuts down this juicy spell cooldown by 2 seconds and replaced it with Glyph of Power Word: Shield.
As a Holy Priest I’ve used Glyph of Power: Shield for quite some time. Reading the tooltip you’ll notice that it heals the target for 20% of the absorption amount. That’s a free heal, right?
Holi loves to Shield people. As amazing as the Glyph is in PvE, It can be over the top awesome in PvP. Kicking it up a few notches into super awesome would be picking up the Talent Body & Soul. Naturally, Holi has this with her Holy Spec. As amazing as it is in the PvP setting it’s still extremely effective in PvE too. There were many occasions when I wanted a group member, or myself to get the heck away from a situation fast.
Anyway back to the Glyph of Power Word: Shield…
Today I had ample chances to test out the glyph as a Disc priest, multiple teammates were taking hits in the Battlegrounds. I shielded everyone that was close to dying, and topped the lowest with Penance. HOTs of Renew were freely passed out like Halloween candy. Psychic Scream was cast, at which time I used my long casting spell Prayer of Healing to bring everyone back to full health. Glyph of Power Word: Shield, is a definite keeper for Battlegrounds so I won’t be replacing it with Penance.
PvP Priest: Flag carrier
You want to know something Holi had the honor of being the flag carrier today. It’s the second time I’ve done it on my priests. The first time Holi was specced Holy PvP. While everyone was duking it out in the Alliance flagroom, with Holi in the midst healing. I glanced over and noticed that the Alliance flag was waving proudly. Alliance foolishly thought they had the potential flag runners locked down and really didn’t pay too much attention to me, so I bubbled myself and off I ran with the flag. Sure I had a bunch chasing after me, however casting Penance on myself, Pain Suppression, Renew, Arcane Torrent, and I was fine. I had a few teammates escort me to our base.
Oh by the way, we won that Battleground. It’s about the only battleground today where Horde won. You want to know something, I still had fun. I’m seriously starting to think about organizing or getting into some pre-made battlegrounds. Hmm, I wonder if I could get enough interest, for a pre-made, within my guild? I know a few guildmates already told me there are interested.
Earlier this week I took the leap and came up with a PvP Disc spec. Holi’s Disc PvP Spec is 60/11/0. As much fun as I had as a PvP Holy Priest, at times I’m having even more fun as a PvP Discipline priest.
Earlier this week I had a chance to test out my brand-new Disc PvP spec. Holi was Disc healing in the battlegrounds. If you go to Holi’s achievement link and check out her summary page you’ll see that most of Holi’s achievements recently have revolved around pvp.
Easing into PvP as a Discipline Priest
The first few battlegrounds as a PvP Disc priest were challenging. I had to get used to a different type of healing for battlegrounds. I’ve been playing Holy for so long that healing as Discipline was brand-new. Yes I have a Discipline priest on the DemonSoul server but I haven’t played her in several months. I only played a few battlegrounds as a lowbie with that spec. Battlegrounds at 80, is a whole new ballgame.
After about three or four battlegrounds pvp Disc healing wasn’t as foreign to me. Of course now as deep Disc I could no longer use my much loved Circle of Healing.
As a PvP Discipline priest, I’m still using Prayer of Healing. Although not as powerful a spell as when I’m rolling in the Battlegrounds as a Holy Priest it does what it’s designed to do, keep more than one person alive. Although Discipline priests shine at single target healing they still can keep multiple people alive too. Prayer of Mending is still used, so is Renew, and Flash Heal. Body & Soul cannot be used when the crap hits the fan since that is deep into the Holy tree. But I do have Pain Suppression for those ‘oh crap’ moments, and I have the incredibly tasty Penance.
PvP Disc Priest Major glyphs used
As a PvP Disc priest the major glyphs I’m using are:
Glyph of Penance
Glyph of Smite
Glyph of Pain Suppression
I’m thinking about dropping Glyph of Penance and pick up Glyph of Power Word: Shield simply because I found that glyph to be extremely useful in PvP. It heals the target for 20% of the absorption amount.
Using the Blood Elf Racial, Arcane Torrent, in PVP
Always one to take advantage of my characters racial, I’m using Arcane Torrent every time it’s off of cooldown in PvP. The chance to silence an opponent every two minutes is just too good to pass up. Why do I use Arcane torrent? Arcane torrent silences all enemies within 8 yards for 2 seconds, and it restores 6% of your mana. Holi mainly saves this spell for enemy casters who are trying to burn my teammates (or myself.) They are silenced and it gives me a few precious seconds to heal. 
It also has its uses in PvE too.
Observations on Holy PvP & Disc PvP
Compared to my PvP Holy Priest spec, I’m definitely not as squishy and I’m able to do more damage too. Although I won’t be rocking the charts as a pvp Discipline priest you’ll normally find Holiterra at the midway point DPS wise. I imagine those numbers will improve slightly as my pvp gear improves. When It comes to healing (even if we have a high amount of healers in the group) I’m usually in the top two. I’m an aggressive healer, and am not afraid to run in and heal when it gets dicey. Even as Disc I’m still tossing about the group heals too. If I can keep more of my teammates alive, we might have a better chance, yah know. 
When it comes to PvP I’m definitely not an expert, but I have always enjoyed PvP and have done fairly well with a few classes; Holy Priest, Survival Hunter, and Druid. I’m looking forward to enhancing my skills as a PvP Discipline priest and I’m thinking eventually I’ll arena with Holiterra too.
I’ll write more on why I’m selecting +Hit, +Spell Penetration, and chose Mooncloth over Satin for my Disc priest PvP gear in another post. Oh by the way Holi’s Resilience is now over 500, not bad since I didn’t start to PvP in earnest with her until recently.
A while ago, when I was searching Youtube for anything related to Disc Priest PvP. I stumbled upon Thickly’s videos. Thickly is a PvP Discipline Priest. Seek and you will find, right? I enjoy watching his videos on YouTube and my only wish is that he would post more.
I finally decided to dual spec two of my Horde toons on the Bronzebeard server…
How much does Dual Specialization cost?
Be prepared to plunk down 1000 WOW Gold when you pick up your other spec. Don’t forget to head to your nearest trainer with the gold to make that happen. Once the gold changes hands you’ll be granted another spec.
Zugsa, my Survival Hunter was the first one gifted with the dual spec and she now has Beast Mastery. Although it’s my least favorite spec, it’s great for rounding up a ton of mobs at one time.
My Holy Priest and Survival Hunter now have an additional spec. With my Holy priest, I chose a PvP Disc spec. I really enjoy PvP, and these days that is where you most likely will see Holiterra. I’ve PvP’d with her some in the past, but I really didn’t start PVP’ing with her until recently. She’s close to 5,000 kills at the moment and is having a blast Healing in Battlegrounds as a Holy Priest.
I’ll be trying out Discipline spec later this week. From what I’ve been reading the ideal number for resilience is 850. Holiterra is currently at 420 resilience. Her spell penetration is 50. Unlike my PvE gear. I’m also snapping up +hit on my PVP healing gear too. I’ll write more on healing as a PvP priest in a later thread.
I’ve PvP’d as priest, but mainly on another priest. I’m fortunate to have guildies that enjoy PvP as much as myself and PvP with them when I can; BurgerKnight, Lovegigii, and Smokeyblades are great PVP’ers and I really enjoy hanging out with them on the Battleground. That being said, I really enjoy chatting with Candy and a few others in guild. She along with the others reminds me a lot of my buddies back on Zul’jin and really do make me wish I could be involved with raiding a bit more.
PvP or PvE: Which do I prefer?
If I had to choose between PvP or PvE I would most likely choose PvP. Sure I enjoy PvE, enjoy running heroics/raids with my buddies/guildmates but I like PvP a little bit more. Additionally I don’t have to deal with the loot drama that can occasionally happen in the PvE environment. I don’t have to devote X amount of hours to PvP as I would in a raid setting either and I enjoy working with my team as a group to take down the opposing faction. Players aren’t scripted and at times they will force you to try other methods to take them down. I really like that a lot.
In other news…
This past week I had a lot of expenses that cut into the amount of money I brought in. As I mentioned in a prior post I went ahead and purchased my fifth guild bank tab which cost $2500 WOW gold.
I spent 3,000 WOW gold in cloth and some ridiculously low priced herbs, and gem stones too. 3,000 for the investments, 2,500 for the 5th guild tab, and 2,000 for dual specs on two toons put me at $7,500 total money spent this past week. I have a little over $3,500 WOW gold sitting in my guild bank at the moment, about $15,000 worth of investments in the guild bank.
I’m not big on Blizzard’s achievements, sure there are goals I set for myself in-game but the achievements I do attain rarely match what Blizzard considers an achievement. Hallow’s End is my favorite Holiday within World of Warcraft and since I had time I figured I might as well go for the achievement.
Holiterra only had a few things left to get ‘The Hallowed‘ achievement. She had done the rest last year. Holi needed to visit a few inns to pick up the last few candy bags. She had to gather rotten eggs and lob them in the center of the Southshore town. While there, she had to damage their kegs. Additionally she had t consume G.N.E.R.D.S. while in battlegrounds and achieve 50 Honorable kills. Yesterday, Holiterra got the achievements. The battleground was fairly easy. I love PVP, and it’s fairly easy to get the Honorable Kills. My problem was remembering to eat the G.N.E.R.D.S. so yeah… Holiterra was playing a few Battlegrounds yesterday.
PvP as a Holy Priest
From what I’ve been reading Disc is more viable in PvP than Holy. I’m still entering battlegrounds as Holy. I’m thinking of trying out a some type of Disc/Holy hybrid for PVP. At the moment I have a Holy/Disc build that has been extremely helpful.
I really enjoy PVP, and absolutely love PvP as a priest. Holiterra can be very hard to kill. It doesn’t take to long for me to get on the Kill on Sight list when I’m in a battleground, I do a massive amount of healing while I’m there, and make life miserable for the opposing faction, by keeping those around me alive. There were a few times when I was targeted by a bunch of Alliance, but it still took them a while to take me down, and they weren’t always successful. Ahh, good times for sure!
Speaking of pvp…
Earlier this week, I logged onto the Auchindoun server. Auchindoun was the first server I made toons. It’s a pvp server, and I have several Alliance toons located there. I chatted with a Brazilian buddy. My Brazilian buddy is really into Battlegrounds/Arenas and so I’m thinking of transferring Divina my level 73 Draenei Holy Priest to that server. She’s currently on the Kael’thas server. The Alliance economy on Auchindoun really sucks, but I did well before so I know I can make WOW gold there again. I’m thinking Divina will be strictly PvP. I won’t play her too much, I really love my Horde toons but it will be nice to hang out with him now and again in-game.
My bank toons are steadily increasing the amount of WOW gold they’re acquiring on the Bronzebeard server. I snapped this screenshot yesterday. My DK banker had just made a deposit into the guild bank. Initially, I wasn’t going to purchase another bank tab until I hit the 7000 mark but since I had a number of sales that had sold and I was simply waiting on them to make their way to my mailbox. I purchased bank tab #5, which cost me $2500 WOW gold.
Bronzebeard,in many ways, is the most challenging & fascinating server to play the Auction House. As I mentioned previously economy wise, the Horse side is the poorest I’ve encountered. This has pushed me to try a variety of different ways to make WOW gold.
Gathering professions
As a lowbie mining and herbs did fairly well. I imagine there were some grateful crafters happy that someone was taking the time to gather those lowbie mats since there wasn’t too much at the Auction House. I found the best times to post those items were on the weekends.
In other news; Playing with my Survival Hunter
Yesterday, outside of logging onto my Death Knight to collect the money from the mailbox and listing perhaps ten items on the auction house. I didn’t do anything else. I had some free time so I played around with my Survival Hunter. I haven’t put her in instances in a while. She is extremely rusty. I want to erase any tard habits I’ve picked up from doing mostly everything solo (since I started playing her again) I immediately got her into a PUG. The Heroic daily, Heroic Ahn’ Kahet.
I enjoyed it, had a chance to chain trap with my Survival Hunter. I made sure the adds stayed off our Healer; Restoration Druid. Traps, kiting, pet assist helped out. Bad adds, trying to hurt our healer. When I’m ranged DPS I really try to keep an eye on the healer. If they die, well everyone else might die to yah know. It was a lot of fun slowly easing back into the DPS role, and in time I’ll get comfortable having my Hunter in a group.
Huntard moment avoided…
I went to put Hunter’s Mark on the last boss. Zugsa has points in ‘Improved Hunter’s Mark’ and accidently hit Defensive. Well, naturally ‘Hanuman the white gorilla’ did his initial grunt and shot towards the boss like a bullet. Darn finger hitting the wrong macro. /facepalm. The boss was far away. I keep my pets growl turned off too. I quickly put Hanuman on Passive. /shakes head I cannot help but laugh when I think about it. I feel sorry for the Protection Warrior he saw my Gorilla go in attack mode. It made him move a little faster towards the boss. Trust me, I didn’t do that purposely to make the tank move at a faster pace. Oh I apologized to the warrior too.
Feral Druid with pumpkin head
Hallow’s End has begun! You want to know something? The real world has been busy with new projects on my plate and of course I spend a lot of free time hanging with my daughter. It really hasn’t given me much time to play World of Warcraft. The great thing is I’ve still been able to hop on and play the Auction House for a few minutes so that is nice.
When I logged onto one of my bank toons this morning I saw the Hallow’s End decorations and knew my favorite holiday was finally here. Other than going around collecting candy for some of my toons I haven’t done too much else. The Trade channel on Bronzebeard is literally ablaze with people looking to sell and purchase Hallow’s End costumes for the achievements.
Rack up Experience points by collecting candy from Inns
For lowbies going around and collecting they candy at the numerous ends is an excellent way to get quick experience points. If you’re level 80 you’ll be awarded gold. My lowbie Feral Druid dinged 30 simply by going around and collecting candy at the various inns in Azeroth. You want to know something she still has a lot more to do. I most likely won’t do them this year for one thing I’m too low for quite a few of the areas and well, I just don’t have too much time to try to complete them.
Now that I think about it, one of my bank toons dinged also; My level 9 undead mage is now level 10. She visited three inns. Another bank toon; Level 2 Blood Elf warlock received the Hallowed Helm, heh. My Holy Priest received the Hallowed Helm and the Sinister Squashling last year.
I’m hoping I have a chance to squeeze some Headless Horseman runs with my Holy Priest and Survival Hunter before the event is over. /fingers crossed
Other than doing my daily transmutes on my Holy Priest and creating Titanium Steel on my Survival Hunter, and sending them to my alts I haven’t been on World of Warcraft the past two days. However I was able to log on for a few moments today to collect some of the auctions.
This week my bank toons did fairly well. They’ve only played the Auction House for less than thirty minutes, most of the days it was 10 minutes or less.
This past Monday the total amount of WOW gold available in my alts guild bank was 1843G 95S 25C, When I checked the mail a few moments ago and deposited the some of the money within the guild bank the total in the guild bank was 5200G, 7S, 52C My bank toons didn’t do too bad at all. I imagine she’ll hit over 6000 in actual WOW gold sometime today since Auction House sales are still being processed. My bank toons have over 20k in mats at the moment. Naturally they have some gold on them also.
Trade Channel: Great Deals
WIth my bank toons I listen to the Trade channel. Over the past few weeks I’ve found some great deals. When I was on earlier there was someone in trade having a ‘leaving the server sale’ the seller had a large amount of Northrend herbs marked well below the Auction House price. I bought all the herbs he had which cost me a little over 2k WOW gold. I still need to add them to the guild bank, additionally, I purchased a lot of cloth too and ridiculously low prices. I’ll most likely resell those at the auction house. With the herbs, after I move them to this bank tab, I’ll hold onto the majority of them for a few weeks, but will sell some of them mainly by making flasks.
WOW Addon: Postal
I usually have at least 3 pages of auction sales waiting to be processed when I log onto my bank toons. Postal lets me process all my auction sales automatically so I don’t have to click on every mail item. It has numerous other features that it can do too. For example, I can right click on mats in my bank toons inventory and automatically send them to a preselected toon. It makes the mail process a lot easier. If you’re looking for a nifty tool that enhances the WOW mailing system definitely check out The WOW Mail addon, Postal.
A few moments ago I saw this video on YouTube. I love the Teldrassil Sproutlings dancing animation. I’ve wanted the Teldrassil Sproutling since they first appeared in World of Warcraft but I have no desire to get them on my Alliance toons.
The price is still high on the Horde Auction, well over 1000 gold and right now even though I do have the money to make the purchase. It’s just not on my priority list at the moment but eventually I’ll snap it up for my Tauren.
Depending on your server, Vanity pets can sell well at the Auction House. Thanks to the Achievements that Blizzard has implemented into the game, I’ve seen even more people purchase vanity pets. Yes, that includes the ones you can pick up from vendors. From my observations, they normally sell the best on the weekends.
