Thanks for reading!

I'd just like to thank everyone who has read and commented on my blog. I hope you continue to read and enjoy my blog.

Thanks to minignomecakes on Amicitia Incursio, I was amazed to see my blog on the blogroll there, I was even above the mighty Phaelia and Matticus, but I'm sure it's not in order of importance :P

If anyone else has me on their blogrolls, let me know, I don't want to miss people out. Also thanks to Blog Azeroth for giving me a good basis for starting my blog. I will be updating my blogroll soon, maybe even today, but first I have a proper post incoming.

Fuzz

Blog Azeroth: How did you come up with your characters names?

Here's the latest shared topic from Blog Azeroth which I could make into a two sentance post, but instead I'll witter on for as long as I can. Enjoy! As always visit the forum to find other people's views on the topic.

When I logged in for the first time ever, roughly one year ago, I created a Dwarf Paladin (he made it to 21 but is now deleted) and I named him 'Takan', this was a variation on the name Taka that I like, simple as that. He made it level 16 or so before I rerolled a nelf hunter . My hunter I named 'Tarka' :S similar to Takan, but also the name of an otter :) I tend to sit at the creation screen and type random names that pop into my head until I like one. (My hunter made it to about 25 before I rerolled, he was 27 when I deleted him, realising he was the definition of the word Huntard!)

At some point while playing I somehow decided gnomes were cool and I rolled my mage, I wanted a silly gnome name, and 'Fuzzbip' was just what I came up with. I like my name because most people just call me 'Fuzz', the name is suitably cute as well.

When I rolled my druid (who is now 68! Which is why I may have been slacking on posting, also my monitor broke and I didn't have access to a computer for a few days)
I named her 'Zuff', I simply reversed Fuzz, I like this name as well. I used it for my lowbie troll mage as well. I've had many other variations on Fuzz; 'Fuzzo' my shaman, 'Slyfuzz' was a rogue I had, and 'Fuzzbane' was my warlock who is now retired to bank alt status (if only I'd named him Fuzzbank!)

Other names I have had are Dralexi, Lotifa, Reptilian, Ziljaen, Varnax, Alloria, Zakenji, Zakov (maybe he's russian), Kryptika (for my new lock, I think it suits a lock), Henri (human paladin, suitably normal for a human), Boppit (lol, silly name, but you gotta love Boppit). That's all I can remember as I type. A lot of the time I don't really have good reasoning for my naming, but I like what I come up with sometimes and if I don't I tend to delete them. As long as you play a character for a long time and enjoy playing it, you should find you grow to like your name as you grow to enjoy the character you are playing.

Fuzz

Macrotastic!

Just thought I'd share some of the few macros I use with you. I don't use many macros but they can be very useful and I'm sure there are more out there that I will find and wonder how I ever did without. These few are mage specific.

Since the introduction of patch 2.3 and the great change to Mana Emeralds, like me you may have been frustrated about having to find and destroy a gem with used charges before a boss fight, to conjure a new one with 3 charges. Try this:

/run for i=0,4 do for j=1,GetContainerNumSlots(i)do if(GetContainerItemLink(i,j)or''):find("Mana Emerald")then PickupContainerItem(i,j)return DeleteCursorItem()end end end
/cast Conjure Mana Emerald

This will destroy your current Mana Emerald and conjure a new one with one click, excellent!

Need to get off a quick spell interrupt, the following will make sure you never miss one, before I used this I'd be jumping to cancel my current spell casting whenever I needed to interrupt, much easier with a macro. It basically cancels whatever you are doing to immediately interrupt.

#showtooltip Counterspell
/stopcasting
/cast counterspell

The '#showtooltip' part of the macro just means that the usual spell tooltip will appear on mouseover of the macro button.

It's extremely handy to have a macro for sheeping in raids and instances.

#showtooltip
/clearfocus [mod:ctrl]
/stopmacro [mod:ctrl]
/focus [mod:alt]
/stopmacro [mod:alt]
/cast [target=focus,nodead,harm][]Polymorph

Using the alt key with this macro will set your focus to your current target, ctrl will clear your focus. Once your focus is set you can click the macro to sheep your focused mob without having to change your target. So you can be targetting the mob you are dpsing and if your sheep breaks or needs renewing simply press the macro to resheep. No trouble retargetting the mob amongst several other mobs and your group members. It may be confusing setting and clearing your focus at first but you should get used to it.

That's all the mage specific macros I use at the moment, but feel free to enlighten me on others I should be using.

Fuzz

Alt update

After about 2 weeks at level 64, I managed to complete the rest of my Zangarmarsh quests and ding 65 :) Hopefully I'll breeze through Terrokar and the next few levels. Or alternatively I'll switch over to my Troll mage, he needs some loving, he's only level 15 and I'd quite like to explore Ragefire Chasm at some point. I need to level something, I feel like I'm going no where at the moment.

Fuzz

Does WoW need another party role?

Another shared topic on Blog Azeroth asks the above question. My initial response would be no. Currently there is the standard tank, healer and dps trinity of roles, CC/utility is arguably another but there is no pure utility class as of yet.

There are suggestions for new class roles, but while they sound plausible they would be difficult to implement due to class balance and whether they would fit into WoW in it's current state.

It would be nice to see another class role in the future if Blizzard were able to implement it well, but for now I'd say WoW is suited to the current party roles and until I see a flawless suggestion for another class with a different role my mindset will likely stay that way.

Check out the forum to have a look at other views on the subject.

Fuzz

Frosty Fuzz

I think now is a good time to experiment with specs, I've been deep fire long enough and now I'm unguilded I can try any spec I feel like without having to worry about my dps. Time to try out Frost I think, or maybe arcane/frost, next time I feel like going on my main I'll respec and try and get a group for a heroic. I need to broaden my horizons, as a mage blogger I only really know about 1/3 of the mage class.

Fuzz

/gquit

I left my guild today, why? Well after a terrible Gruul run, starting late, taking 2 hours for two HKM attempts with nothing down I was a little pissed off. Also I didn't really enjoy the guild, guild chat was full of bitching, whining and immaturity and I didn't really like a lot of the people in the guild. The raiding was ok, it was nice to have a little peek inside ssc and tk even though nothing was taken down.

Also I don't really feel like raiding at the moment, I need a break from raiding for a while, so now I'll log on when I want to play and do what i want. I probably won't be on my main much for a while, I'll focus on my troll and maybe do the last few levels on my druid.

I'm not sure what I'll do in the future, I'll stay unguilded for now, I would like to see more of ssc and tk, so at some point I'll look for a new guild. Maybe see if I can get into one of the guilds with better progress in a few weeks.

Fuzz

Servant's Quarters: Attumen the Huntsmen

Welcome to my second installment of my series looking into Karazhan, looking at the first and easiest boss Attumen the Huntsmen and his trusty steed Midnight. Some of these posts will be relatively short, others much longer, depending on the complexity of the fights.

The fight isn't particularly long or mana intensive, so unless you tend to have mana problems you will want to be buffed to increase your damage. For paladin buffs I prefer to have salvation for this fight as there is an aggro reset during the fight and this will allow you not to have to hold back too much on dps.

The fight starts off with one of your tanks enganging Midnight, begin dps as soon as the tank has some threat, being careful not to overaggro. When Midnight is at 95% Attumen will spawn and should be picked up by the second tank in the raid. Raid dps should continue on Midnight at this point and continue until Midnight is at 25%.
At this point Attumen will mount Midnight and all threat will be wiped, dps should be stopped at this point until the tank has picked up the boss and started to build up threat. Now he simply has to be nuked down until dead.

The one thing you have to watch for as a mage is Intangible Presence, about every 30 seconds Attumen will cast an AOE curse targeting multiple random raid members. It reduces their chance to hit with melee, ranged and spells by 50% and as a mage you have to help remove this. I recommend you dispell the tanks first to allow them to continue with their threat generation, then any others who have the curse. There are add-ons such as Decursive which are helpful when dispelling.

Once he is down there are a few pieces of loot that a mage may be interested in. Harbinger Bands are nice entry level epic bracers, he also drops gloves that are great for the hit rating and a ring that you may want to pick up. You will be able to pick up better equipment further into Karazhan, but any of these will work well for a mage in the meantime. He drops one Badge of Justice for everyone in the raid.

If you get really lucky there is a very small chance he will drop a rare mount and you will get to ride around on the huntsman's steed. Rare mounts such as this have a certain cool factor to them, mainly due to the drop rate of about 0.5%. Also if you happen to have engineering this Schematic may drop for you as it did for me just a couple of weeks ago :)

Fuzz

Blog Azeroth: Shared Topic

If you haven't already been on Blog Azeroth, it is basically a forum for WoW bloggers, to advertise your blog as well as to pick up tips on improving blogs. It is also where the few people who have visited my blog would have come from. Thanks Blog Azeroth!

Anyway, one of the posters Siha came up with the idea of shared topics for bloggers to write about. Everyone agreed it was a great idea, which lead to the first question posed to WoW bloggers everywhere.

What do you enjoy about the class you play the most?

Obviously the class I play most is the mage, but what about them makes me tick?

I ended up with a mage as my main after levelling a dwarf Paladin to about 15 or 16, followed by a nelf Hunter to level 26. After that I didn't play any other class till a while after reaching 70 on my mage. I'm not entirely sure what was right about the class that allowed me to stick with it from 1-70 without ever feeling I should reroll.

My main focus with Fuzzbip is raiding at the moment, so what I enjoy most is optimising my dps. I enjoy improving my gear, every slight increase in crit or spell damage I can get while staying hit capped makes me happy. I enjoy running around in raids trying to get as many fireballs off as I can, making sure my scorch debuff is up, managing my mana and trinkets/cooldowns, all to do the best I can and help the raid towards it's goal. I realise I could do something similar to this with any class, but I know my mage well, I know what I'm doing, it feels right and most of all, it feels good.

I enjoy never having to worry about running out of water or food, I like the freedom of being a mage, not being governed by the cooldown on my hearthstone, being able to go to any major city whenever I feel the need to. I enjoy slowfalling whenever the need arises, slowfall has a relaxing feeling to it. I like being valuable to a group, bringing reliable CC and buffs that make the class in demand for heroic runs, making it easy to get a group for one if I desire.

So that's what I enjoy about my class most at the moment. Sometimes I wish I'd rolled a class that was able perform more than one role, but I'm happy to leave that to my druid now (Still stuck at 64)

Fuzz

Zeppellins > Boats

Tonight I took my first ever zeppelin ride, much more exciting than boats. I like the fact that they are run by goblins and the look of the goblin engineering, would be cool if the Alliance got some sort of Gnomish flight system, boats are boring.

I went from Orgrimmar to the Undercity, but more on that visit later.

Fuzz