A History of Me

So I started off, a wee little troll mage running around, having played only one online RPG (it was a Neverwinter server, up to 20 people online at a time!), and never having played a spell casting character... properly, that is.

At Vox's suggestion, I attempted to level as arcane. Leveled to about 16 putting points into Arcane before I realized I always used fireball as my spell of choice, almost never touched Arcane Missiles.
So I respecced over to fire, and found it much more awesome. Impact was, like, the COOLEST THING EVAR.

At level 18, I wandered into one of those Warsong peoples on the vacation weekend. I thought to myself "What's PvP? I wonder if it's any good". So I tried it out. I was very sad.
My best ever attempt was dropping a rogue to 93% life before getting killed. I mostly got killed by everybody, couldn't get a spell cast off ever, and then got killed again. Ganked in seconds.

So I thought "this is stupid. Never doing this again", and went on my merry way, leveling up.

It was about here that I did my very first instance. Wailing Caverns, with a PuG group. We failed on the 6th pull in, wiping catastrophically. So I didn't do that again for a very long time.

Things changed at 29. Oh, how they changed. Namely, I got Burning Soul. Pushback resistance. Things changed a lot at 29. Those rogues who used to gank me? HAH! Eat fire, bitchez! And so it went. I was doing quite well at 29. I was never the best, but I was pretty good. Usually about 5-6 on the damage meters, about there.
I spent a good couple of weeks at 29, doing nothing but Arathi Basin over and over again. Vox was harassing the hell out of me. "Level up! Level up! Fuck, LEVEL UP!"

So I did. I leveled up. And at 36, gave PvP a try again. I discovered I was even BETTER now! All these new fire abilities was turning me into a god of damage. It took one and a half months to level from 36-40, because I spent so much time doing PvP.

Again with Vox harassing the shit out of me, I leveled up into the next bracket.

I have frost a try at level 44, and Blizzard promptly nerfed the tree into oblivion the next day. Went back to fire, and it has always been my favorite tree.

Lo and behold, 49 was the best bracket yet. At this point, I was glued to the whole idea of a glass cannon. I barely had over 1k hitpoints at this point, but had enough spell damage to consistently drop 6 or 7 enemies before I was killed, assuming nobody healed me ever, and I was always in the top 3 for damage dealt, and had a ton of killing blows (and as such as always gifted with heals every now and then). Almost 3 months were spent happily killing stuff at 49. Hell, the release of the Burning Crusade came and went in this time period, and I didn't even notice until I encountered a Dranei Shaman for the first time.

See, at 49, I had never, not even once fought against a dranei shaman. I had no idea what to do about them at first. It was like, this thing is running at me, holy crap Earth Shock, what the hell is that? Holy crap! What was that? Stormstrike? I got one-shotted! Holy crap! HOLY CRAP! They can heal themselves too? Fucking overpowered!

For about a week I got raped by shamans before I figured out how to kill them. After that, everything settled down back to normal. One of my PvP buddies turned into a blood elf, but other than that things went smoothly. I ganked, got ganked, and so on.

So, yeah, almost three months at 49 doing nothing but PvP. I had this little tight knit group of people I always PvP'd with. People like Nismofreak, Olintharg, and a bunch of others. PvP is what we did. It's just what we did. And we were hard core.
We even reached a point where we would all spec around each other, to get to the best possible fighting unit we could get.

As such, I found myself in the dreaded PoM Pyro spec. Well, it was at 49, so I was basically a one trick pony. Well, except for the fact that I had a ton of spell damage (for my level) and as such I could easily three shot most people.

Oh, yeah, and I did Uldaman a few times around here. Oddly enough, I was quite good at it, and I don't know why. I had done... like, Wailing Caverns once before, but for some reason I was good at instances. My sheeps were good, my DPS was good, and aggro was never pulled. Sorry, guys, I was never an instance noob.

I could go on and on here, I mean, me and these people played together for nearly three months. I kinda have a lot to say on the matter, given the chance. But this post isn't about 49 PvP, its about me.

So. I go on a band trip for a week and a half, get back, and discover all my friends had moved on. Every one of them was between level 53-58.

Was I disappointed? Yep, yep I was. I was very sad.

PvP just wasn't the same without them.

So, off I went, back to the whole leveling thing.

Meandered around WPL, and ended up at 51. Then I tried out the fabled Alterac Valley.

One month later... I had gained 2 levels from doing nothing but AV. So, yeah, level 53, and I thought "Ehh, better go back and do some real stuff".

Vox had hit 70, like, 3 months ago, I think.

Anyways, so, gradually leveled from 53-58. Took bloody forever. Then hit up Outlands, and leveled from 58-59 in the same amount of time it took to get to the Outlands from STV. No, seriously. That bloody fast.

So I picked up all these Outland greens and quest rewards, leveled as close to 60 as I dared, and went back to PvP.

Oh, it was glorious. I discovered the use of stamina for the first time. I was still very much a cannon, except I had fitted myself as an iron cannon. I was still able to 2-3 shot most people, and consistently was in the top 1-3 for health in the entire battlegrounds. This included Alterac Valley.

I mean, I had 4 items that were 59 greens "of stamina", so I was far ahead of the competition.

Ridiculously high stamina + ridiculously high damage output = WARLOCK MODE ON.

Averaged 1 death per BG versus ~50 kills. It was damn good times.

Oddly enough, I never actually did some serious PvE until halfway through my 60's. Before running Underbog with my guild at the time, I had almost never run actual instances. Zul'Furak (?) once, Wailing Caverns, and Uldaman a few times. That was the extent of that.

And then all of a sudden, all this Outland stuff. Instances up the wazoo.

Good times, really. Wiping in Underbog, wiping in Sethekk Halls, wiping in Mechanar, wiping on Murmur for 3 hours straight, yeah. It was fun.

Needless to say, thats why I am extremely jaded towards PuGs, even though not ALL of my experiences were terribad.

Well, whatever. Played plenty of battlegrounds on my way up from 60-69, and as was usual for me, dominated them all. What can I say? I was designed for slaughtering the innocent. It's just what I did.
At 64, I respecced for frost, fully expecting my beloved fire spec to be next to ruined by resilience, until my gear came up to par, and even then...
Needless to say, I was proven right. Fire is sad, and is largely self-defeated by resilience. A loss of ~12% (I forget what the exact cap is) ruins a lot of the damage fire depends on to be competitive. And entering 70 arenas with barely 7k hitpoints, and not even 100 resilience, its ruinous unless you max out your spec to try and cover it.

Regardless, spent a good month at 69 as well, so there. I had fun. Killed stuff, and had actually gotten 4 pieces of my 70 honor gear before getting that last level.

And at 70, promptly hopped onto some arena teams, and we generally had our asses kicked all over the place. But oh well, thats kinda where this blog started off, at the tail end of arena ass kicking. After that, my teams dried up, and some major changes occurred.

For one, I joined an excellent raiding guild (Hydross went down tonight, Grats to us!), and as such, a raiding spec was needed. I have used all 3 major specs now, and am happiest with fire. Go figure, huh?
Anyways, took my arena'ing to PTRs, and here I am. Raiding and PvP.

And doing a blog, because I'm that lame.