tiertiertiertier.. tier on you!

Today, I picked up my third T10 item, the shoulders. For those of you not completely up to date on the looks of the rogue t10 set:



Here it is. I'm still not sure whether I like it or not. The helm.. makes me look like a scuba diver. The pants.. remind me of a badly mended fence. (But that's probably just because of the colour.) The shoulders.. are really too haphazard to look nice. Let's face it. I look like a scuba diver who just crashed through a fence and had to glue her shoulderwear back together without looking. With a glue gun.

When patch 3.3 landed, I was really excited about the new gear, but thought that it would take me ages to get my t10 set together. I mean, let's face it, 95 frozen badgers for a helmet is an awful lot! Now look where we are. I've got 3 t10 pieces and the Recovered Scarlet Onslaught Cape. The LFG system and the random dungeon finder make it so easy that any idiot with a lvl 80 can get frost badgers. It's not as special to be walking around in t10 as it was when it was still t8.
Do I mind? I don't know. I like to be able to get new gear quickly so I can perform better in raids, so in that aspect, I love it. But now that experience or capability are no longer shown by the type of gear you're wearing, how can we know for sure that the person we recruit for Vintage really is as good as they say they are? It concerns me slightly that, now that achievements can be pugged so easily and people get carried through instances all the time, we have only word of mouth to rely on.

Anyway, those are my thoughts on the new tier and the frost emblems malarkey. Anyone else care to chip in?

I'm on a mount!

A 310% flying mount, to be precise!
After what has been the longest grind thus far, both Tim and myself finally finished the Lunar Festival yesterday and with it, the What a Long, Strange trip it's been achievement! It's done! No more frustrating running around and flying around the whole of Azeroth to get achievements, no more getting ganked repeatedly in the Alliance capitol cities because some jerk thought it funny to kill me just before I got to say hello to an Elder or light a fire or throw a snowball at their leader's face. Never again!

It has been fun, though. As the apprentice to our Vintage Loremonkey, I was delighted to see all the little nooks and corners of Azeroth that were either designed for the World events or re-assigned to fit the event. It has been terribly frustrating and funny at the same time. I remember our first actual World Event, Winter Vale, where we tried to kill the Grinch at the same time as 250 other players. Before they upped his spawn rate. Or when we tried to desecrate the Alliance city flames and were allowed to run through Ironforge without trouble and reached the flames with a host of guards chasing us, only to run out, and get ganked on the way out by some players. Or when we went to Scarlet Monastery to kill the Headless Horseman and decided that puking all over each other was way more fun than killing the horseman. Or how frustrating it was to chase all those bloody turkeys, only to reach 30 and see another player coming from the other side, killing off all the turkeys you had planned out to kill to reach 40. If I remember correctly, it was 3:30 am when I finally got that achievement. And that wasn't the latest we ever made it when trying to get a World Event done.

But now that's done. We finally got our Violently Pink Proto Drakes to soar through the skies with. And I need to find something else to amuse me in-game.. Guess I should go for Loremaster now...

Hmmm.. Salty

After doing the fishing competition more than I'm willing to count, including losing a few times with a few seconds to spare, I finally won the booty bay fishing competition, granting me the salty title. And even though salty kavash sounds like some kind of snack, I still like the title.

In other news, since ICC seems to drop only hunter loot, Kavash is currently wearing a mail belt. The fact that there isn't a plate belt that's any better at this moment in ICC 10,doesn't really make it better.

And I try to keep real life stuff out of this blog, but since this might have an impact on my game time, I would like to note that I'll leave my current job somewhere in march, and that I'll start at my new workplace shortly after. While I look forward to it, it's a bit scary.

To leave on a light note, I only need 9 more mounts, done all of the valentine's stuff and now only need the lunar festival for my violently pink proto drake. I'll be soaring around on a 310% mount before our dear Colin will have his epic flying.

The DK.. It's.. Damnit.

Yeah. It's not too bad to play a Death Knight. There, I said it, it's out in the open, I do not loathe playing the DK as much as I said before. I kind of like and hate at the same time the fact that I can walk up to a bunch of mobs, gather up 5 or 6 of them, and just nuke the shit out of them without taking lifethreatening amounts of damage. After playing a rogue for more than a year, not dying is a refreshing change.

Proboscidea is approaching lvl 65 and is currently in Nagrand, helping Hemet Nesingwary get rid of the entire animal population of one of the more interesting zones in Outland. Nice man, that dwarf. Very environmentally friendly, too. I'm still getting used to the differences between a leather-wearing meleeclass and a plate-wearing tankclass, and apart from the staying alive part, I'm having a blast deathgripping giant mammoth-like creatures and make them soar through the air towards me (which, by the way, would be so much better if they'd make that MUHHHHH-sound they make when they die when you deathgrip them..) and then just blast the crap out of them, Sly Stallone-style. That is, if Stallone were a DK.

Now, my jewelcrafting, on the other hand.. *deep, exaggerated sigh* Let's just say that levelling jewelcrafting is like learning to use a pottery wheel. It takes ages and ages and ages until you are able to create something that is not completely pointless or ugly but actually worth anything, and all the stuff you make in between can just be dumped in the trash because it's not worth anything whatsoever and even the AH won't take your stuff.

Mining is entertaining, though. Frustrating at times, especially when you're after the same nodes as that annoying fucktard of a gnome rogue on his flying mount and you get caught up fighting off mobs who stop you from getting to the node in the first place while that jerk flies in and steals it from right underneath your nose. Twice. GODDAMMIT I HATE GNOMES.
*twitch*
I'm okay. I'm good. Sorry about that.

Good news, everyone! I've fixed the poison slime pipes!

After a rather uneventfull trip fast the first 4 bosses in ICC last thursday (aside from our short venture into the new wing), Vintage was planning to go into the plaguequarter for real last night. Since almost half our raidteam was running late, we started a full hour later than normal, only leaving 2 hours left to raid. Stinky and Precious were no problem this time, and we managed to get to Festergut rather quick.

While we had tried him once already with 9 man, after losing our maintank halfway through the trash last time, this was our first real attempt at him. Quite to everyone's suprise, we roflstomped him with about 20 seconds left on the enragetimer on our first go. The lot proved to be huntard loot once again, which has me wondering if this instance drops anything else.

While Festergut is a real gearcheck fight, his brother Rotface is more a control fight, with a rather steep learning curve. While the time we had left for him wasn't enough to really master the fight, our last attempt (which ended in a 30% wipe) leaves me confident we'll get him next week.

In other news, I'm still doing the argent tournament dailes, and almost got enough for yet another mount. And while the dailies give me quite a nice income of gold, since last night, I'm pretty much broke again. How come? Well, I got fed up with running Pit of Saron heroic and Forge of Souls heroic, and when I saw a battered hilt for "only" 10k on the AH, I pretty much clicked buyout before I had time to have second doubts. While I don't have the weapon yet, I'm sure I will after tonight. I'm quite positive this weapon will aid my adventures in arena aswell, but we'll have to see about that when the new arena season starts.

Because my printscreenbutton really is too far away from my hands when I'm gaming..

I did not, in fact, take screenshots of the Vintage-exploration-run into the new wing of ICC, also known as "'What do these bosses do?' 'I don't care, just hit them and find out!'". Pity, really, because it was hilarious. Or, as Jen put it, probably the fastest wipe in the history of Vintage.

Here's when all was fine and dandy and we were positive that we could just down those mobs and oneshot the vampire princies (don't know if they sparkle).




Exciting, innit? We were all BOOMPOWTAKETHATFILTYSCOURGESCUM! And then those vamps woke up and went BOOMPOWTAKETHATYOUSTUPIDVINTAGESCUM!.

No big deal, though. We'll get them next time.


In other news, I decided a couple of weeks ago to go and level a DK to use as a mining/jewelcrafting tool. She's a troll, she's called Proboscidea, she's covered in heirlooms, and I have already figured out that I will NOT be using her to actually play with after she's dinged 80 and has all the recipes needed. Why? Well, because DK's are annoying! My rotation doesn't make sense, the voice is godawful, and those freakishly icky worms that crawl out of.. where, exactly? irk me to no end.

But oh well. Who knows. I think I said almost exactly the same thing about PVP a couple of months ago.

Except maybe that part about the worms.

Goldfever

Monday again, don't feel like working (as seems to be the general feeling here at the office) so time for a weekend recap.

My weekend was mostly about earning gold. Besides doing the argent tournament dailies (getting quite good at soloing chillmaw), I started questing with my death knight again. Since he's levelcapped, that's earning a fair bit of gold aswell. The fact that the quests are rather fun helps a lot too.

Ofcourse, questing isn't the only way to make money. I reinstated my bank alt this week so I can play the AH again. What Am I selling? Well, if you're a bit like me, you have been doing a few heroics lately, and have earned a lot of emblems you don't really need anymore. Well, you can turn those into Epic gems, which go on the AH for quite a bit. Won't go into specific values, as they will be different on every server, but I made about 1.5K gold from auctions alone.

So now for the big question: Why am I saving up? Well.. In the new heroic dungeons, there is a random questitem called the Battered Hilt. After a long questchain, it will eventually give you a choice between a few weapons, of which Quel'Delar, Might of the Faithful would be an obvious choice for a Ret pally. That baby would singlehanded (or twohanded, since it's a twohanded weapon) increase my dps by 500 (about 8%). I've been running those dungeons for quite a lot lately, and I've yet to see one drop, let alone win it. Luckily the questitem is BoE, so it's on the AH quite frequently.

Karma dictates that it will drop for me the very first time I run one of the heroics after I bought it, but I'll leanr to live with that.

In other news, the weekly raid quest this week was noth in Naxxramas. We have sunday planned for these raidquests, and even though a few of our regulars were unavailable, we went with 8 people(including a maintank who had never tanked it before and a healer who had never even been inside a raid before). Since we were doing alright, we figured we might aswell try for a full clear. Besides one healer dying on saphhiron and a wipe on kel'thuzad (due to me and Tec disconnecting on the pull) we pretty much steamrolled the place (even 8 manned the 4 horseman) and managed not only to get the dedicated few achievement, but also (for those who hadn't done it already) the safety dance, the hundred club, momma said knock you out, arachnaphobia, substraction and make quick werk of him. All in all not a bad night, and we had fun doing it, which is the most important part ofcourse.

Oh, and since all the cool kids are doing it, here is my armory

OMG, what's that on your back?!

Oh, nothing. It's nothing, really! Just a giant Cleaver, that's all.

*hysterical laughter* It's HUGE! it's ON MY BACK! It's THE FROST GIANT'S CLEAVER!
I have got to say, when Bliz first introduced the one-handed axe as a rogue weapon, I was sceptical. I mean, a rogue, a creature of the night, a thief, a sneaking assassin, a wearer of.. black.. things.., wouldn't go around swinging a giant axe, would they? I mean, how ridiculous does that sound?! Yet here I am, swinging my axes, and loving it. And it actually looks really cool when you see Tec waving that axe around like she knows what she's doing.

In other news, the Armory now has a 3d model viewer option which allows you all sorts of cool stuff. I'm not going to explain it all here, just go and check it out yourselves, but here's an option that was too awesome not to use: you can link the 3d model viewer! Here's Tec in her full glory.

Get Kraken!

As I stated in my last blogpost, the 100 mounts achievement is not too far off now, So I started looking into which mounts I'm missing. Not counting the mounts that will cost me more than 2000 gold, I narrowed the list down to:

• 3 PVP mounts that will cost me 30 marks form the 3 "original" battlegrounds
  
• 7 mounts that will cost me 100 champion seals each
  
• 2 mounts that will cost me 150 champion seals eahh
  
• 3 mounts that will cost me 5 champion seals and 400 gold each
  
• 1 mount for 1600 gold
  
• 1 red proto drage for the glory of the hero achievement (missing 1 achievement)
  
• 1 violet proto drake for the What a long strange trip it's been achievement
  
• 1 green proto drake from the oracles egg
  
• 1 blue drake from the occulus
  
• And the fiery horse from kara
  

As I need 14 more mounts, and I really can't count on the random drop ones (as I don't have much luck with drops. See my adventures in Stratholm). I'm faily certain I'll get both proto drakes from the achievement, so that will mean I have to get 12 more. No matter how I look at it, the fact of the matter is that I'll be doing the argent tournament dailies again.. Probably untill somewhere in februari..

On the bright side, that will give me some cashflow.

Welcome to the twilight zone

Vintage returns to Icecrown Citadel! And wipes twice on Marrowgar.. After which we woke up, focused and oneshotted Deathwhisper, the gunship battle and the heart of Dreanor (or Deathbringer Saurfang). We've yet to face any of the bosses of the new wing, so can't really comment on their "hardness", But I'm quite confident we'll be able to do those in the near future.

As sunday is our weekly raid quest and loose ends night, we had a short trip into Ulduar, and headed into Obsidian Sanctum afterwards to try it with three drakes up. We had done one drake up successfully in the past and had some goes at 3 drakes before, but failed miserably on those occasions. Not this time though. Although most people just "zerg" this encounter nowadays, we didn't have the right group markup to do so. We settled for the "old" tactic of having 3 tanks and 2 healers. A few wipes later, Kavash is stuck with making the decision whetever he likes “the undying” or “of the nightfall” better.

On the other hand, this run made choosing which mount I’m going to use for the next few weeks a bit easier. As on every OS+3 kill, the black drake dropped, and yours truly happened to have the highest roll (after reroll, since tony got a 99 on the first go aswell). That takes my total amount of mounts to 86. Only 14 more to go until I can get my red dragonhawk mount..

Oh and thes small victory's ensured that vintage is now back in the top 10 10 man strict progress on turalyon EU

Storming the gates

First of all, to all a happy new year. I hope you have all your fingers still. You might need them.

After Vintage had some time struggling in december (due to people not being available) we started storming the gates of icecrown citadel last week. Lots of fun was to be had. Lord marrowgar went down rather quickly, even though AoE damage works like a magnet some people. Lady Deathwhisper (of which I'm sure is just Kel'thuzad in drag) provided a bit more of a challenge, but was put to rest when we figured out the trick.

Onwards to the airship. Which was a bit too much fun. WTB permanend jetpack. When the alliance schip was brought down, we encountered Deathbringer saurfang. Did you know his name meant heart of dreanor? Cause we all know now. Unfortunatly we weren't able to take him down further than 16%. I'm pretty sure He'll go down tonight though.