Introducing Mardaah

After levelling a Paladin on Classic the last few weeks, I found myself into a situation I was so often before, what now? Should I continue playing her into TBCC? I was preparing for it, including being on the Epic Charger quest, but, do I really want to Pally TBC again? And if not, what then? Level another char to 70 on classic, although faster due to the pre-patch, still...  well.. enter the Dark Portal Pass, and let's do the logical thing:

I even joined a guild which is doing, and planning to do some raiding, so now I am doing high level quests to get gold for the epic mount, and it got me into a trip through my blogposts of the past, where did Mardah came from... yes, this is going to be so funny Mardah and Mardaah.

Cooling Down

This is the earliest blog I could find that mentions me playing a Druid, 7 January 2009. I know it is Mardah due to posts following this one, but she is already level 3 here, and I mention she existed for 2 years prior, which is impossible... that would place her birth in January 2007, a month before I actually started playing WoW. She most likely spawned somewhere just after I started, to see the Night Elf start movie and zone, after which she was forgotten about for a long time. I didn't even levelled her out of the starting zone...

...just a little update.

It took some more blogs and more then a month before I actually named her Mardah in my blog, when I changed her spec to Balance. Now if you read the blogs of me around this period, you'll notice I was not in a good mode. IRL it was my first winter not married, and in game that reflected on me not knowing what to do, leaving XII, joining BaT, leaving that again, playing more Alliance, joining XII again... I was in a mess that January, not as bad as at the end of 2009 though...

It's done

What had I done? I transferred Mardah away from Khadgar to Argent Dawn..an RP server.... oh my, what a mistake  :p. 19 days later Mardah reached 80, and for the next 1.5 years I was basically doing a lot in WoW with a lot of different chars, although, at the beginning of January 2010, about 11 months before I would join Innovation, I almost applied to them, but considering that I also mention Lamars, my depression-rogue, it is probably better that I didn't back then

So..am I done in retail? No, but what I do in retail is Raid, and if you don't like to do Mythics, when you dislike Thorghast and the Maw a lot and you don't really care for transmogs/mounts/pets, then Raidlogging becomes a thing.

But you can play alts? Yes, but I really only should finish the last covenant campaign on the Roons-master Tiramuria. Because levelling is not that much fun in Shadowlands, and I have more fun levelling a random lvl 20 dwarf mage on TBCC now.

I think retail will pick up again when 9.1 hits, but when you don't like rushing dungeons like me, only raiding is left.

Covid Journey

 At the beginning of April I was tested positive for Covid-19, just before the may break, which basically meant I would not work for about 6 weeks. So, I had a lot of time to kill, and what better way to kill that, then to play Classic, that is one big time sink after all. 

I already had a Undead lvl 60 Priest, which was basically parked, because I stopped playing. So I dabbled around with various alts, until after a week or two, I found a goal to reach, Verigan's Fist. And here is some of what happened afterwards in pictures.

Verigan's Fist aquired

Level 39

Level 60-ding

My UI was not prepared for a 40 man raid.

So, I levelled a Paladin up to 60, part Retribution, part Holy, and I even had the good luck to sneak into a Molten Core run with PuGLife on the last day before the pre-patch.

It took me about a month with lots of free time, so no idea how I would be able to level a new character in two weeks while working... the two weeks that Blizzard thinks is enough to level a new char to lvl58 in pre-patch... pre-patch for TBCC... which seems to become one of the longest patch-days in memory.

Innovation versus Castle Nathria

I think it was Januar 12th that Innovation started poking Heroic Castle Nathria, and it took us till the 8th of April to clear it all. Thee months inside Castlevania and I hope to forget it soon. Not that the fights where that bad, it's just this whole starting patch of the expansion that just not hits me. And in that feeling I don't have many fond memories of the Castle.

We also had a lot of turnover. If I look at the first few kill-pictures on the Innovation site, there are a lot of players around. I even remember saying that it would be a long time before Synthea and myself would put on the healing-set again as the guilds reserve healers for the last decade, considering we had such a consistent team of healers showing up....

Well.. that didn't last, on the killpic of the generals I am even in treeform, and Synthea was healing on our Denathrius kill, where we even pugged a healer. There are all good reasons where the healers went, mostly RL. And one went Loktar Ogar on us and probably costed us two more wipe nights on Denathrius.

But, it's now April, and all news I am getting, it may be a while before the next raid drops. So I guess we will be farming this for a while. Although, maybe I can play some TBC in the meanwhile.... all that leaves us now are the killcounts for the bosses...and.. *Gasp* a kill video.

Number of pulls per boss in Castle Nathria:

Shriekwing : 4

Huntsman Altimor : 10

Hungering Destroyer : 6

Lady Inerva Darkvein : 15

Artificer Xy'mox : 9

Sun King's Salvation : 7

The Council of Blood : 11

Sludgefist : 33

Stone Legion Generals : 23

Sire Denathrius : 105

The Burning Crusade, or why I doubt I can spec 0/40/21 again.

 Those where the days. 

The days I fell in love with this game.

The days I spend to much time levelling.... as protection Paladin.

The days of the legendary forum of maintankadins.

And still on-going blogs like Honor's Code and Blessing of Kings where I learned how-to

And it will not happen again.

Yes, TBC-Classic will launch, and I will level a Horde Paladin, and I will spec him protection somewhere, this time with the posibility to have the Alliance-seal. But after all those years, nothing new will come along, there will be no surprises.

I will not be ported of the boat to the Exodar on my Dwarf Hunter because I didn't had the expansion yet.

I will not run into a cow shaman called Spectre several times during leveliing.

I will not be invited to the guild he is in, and leaving that guild with him.

All those things are past, the new things the game gave me back then. Those are all memories of people I long lost touch with. Spectre who stopped playing due to real life. Placebo, Hellcatherin, Cochana, Nagkeen, Morhen, to name but a few.

I am still in touch with Orkishna, Jorky and Kemwer. Those are the only ones I still know what they do these days. So many years have passed since I was a Bloodelf Maintankadin. And I still look fondly to those 2-3 years, long being smothered by new memories as Innovations Boomkin.

And yes I will level, and do a lot of those dungeons from memory. But I am afraid this time no one will do it like back then. A lot less CC will be used...and if used, will be broken, beause who knows CC these days. And I will play it for a while, but probably, or certainly no raiding. I can only fit so many hours of WoW in a week.

And so I will not get that axe you can throw from Kara, I will not get the T5+ almost T6 gear to actually NOT spec into Captain America's Shield. So I will not spec into the "Wordlie" Spec I really liked back then, 0/40/21.

I will use the next script:

/script DEFAULT_CHAT_FRAME:AddMessage("Need 102.4 combined avoidance. Currently at:",0.8,0.8,1)
/script DEFAULT_CHAT_FRAME:AddMessage(GetDodgeChance()+GetBlockChance()+GetParryChance()+5+(GetCombatRating(CR_DEFENSE_SKILL)*150/355 + 20)*0.04,1,0.5,0)

And for the new tankadins, starting Kara with 11.8k health and a little under the 102.4% is not a sin.

And remember...

When in doubt, round them up, and consecrate.