Ok, so just a general update as far as what I’ve done in PVE content since coming back to Horde and before 3.1 popped.

I can’t remember whether I already mentioned Nax or not, but I’ve cleared it with our little group a few times now. Not an achievement as such, or anything particularly exciting, but I’ve managed to survive every fight at least once without watching it from the floor now, so I’m happy. As far as I’m concerned that’s Nax ticked off my list as done.

The last two fights were of particular interest to me, I liked the mechanics involved. The first Sapphiron fight we did I survived no problem. I died during the second one, even though I was definitely standing behind the ice block thingy on my screen. I was told this happens sometimes though, so no big deal I guess. Kel’Thuzad I died early on in the fight the first time. This was due basically to me being unaware of everything that was going on in the fight. I died to one of the red void zone thingies, or whatever they’re called. Second run I managed to survive the fight, just. My DPS was a bit weak though, as I was focusing on trying to stay alive most of the time. I find the “keep 10 yards away” thing a touch tedious in quite a small space, but whatever, it wasn’t that bad.

The next boss in my attempt to get as much done as possible pre-3.1 as Satharion. I’d seen a few videos of this guy, so I knew roughly what was to be expected. We took the easy option (of course) and killed the three drake dudes first (I’m pretty sure they’re called drake dudes…) and then engaged the big boss by himself. I did get caught in one of the flame wall things, but I survived so it was all good. The fight was fairly unremarkable aside from that, and I didn’t get any loot.

My intention was to try and do Malygos too, and we were planning on doing so the night before 3.1 was released. However we were a bit low on numbers, so I still haven’t done that encounter yet. Hopefully I’ll get around to that at some point soon. The fight sounds quite fun and involved.

Lastly, although technically I did this after 3.1 came out, I’m going to include it in here anyway. We did Culling of Stratholme a few times, and I got my Reins of the Bronze Drake. One of my friends had a tiny emo strop because he’d decided he wanted it first and that I shouldn’t have rolled, but he got his the next day so no harm done I suppose.

Much prettier than the turkey skeleton I’m used to flying…

I’ve been a bit slack at updating this blog as of late, predictably mainly due to laziness, but also general business. I’ve still been playing my DK regularly, in fact I’m pretty surprised I haven’t flaked off onto something else completely yet. I have started another class (more info on that in a post coming shortly) but I’ve managed to maintain regular activity on my DK, which pleases me.

In the last few weeks I’ve managed to tick off most of the pre-Uldar content, which is something I wanted to do just so that I’ve seen it all. I’m not at the “bleeding edge” of raid content, whatever that is, it sounds painful, and I have no desire to be… I do want to stop missing out on even seeing content though. My not-so-friendly little posse seems to have found another similar group of people, meaning that between us we usually have enough bodies around to do some 10 man content. It’s all very relaxed, and we seem to have gone a week without doing anything as a group, and no one seems bothered by it. At least not on our end. This pleases me greatly, I’m completely up for doing stuff once or twice per week, but it’s nice to know I’m not going to be under any substantial pressure to do so.

The number of gear changes in the last few weeks are pretty minimal, but a few small steps in the right direction are always a good thing. The number of blue items on my character are slowly reducing, being replaced by shiny purple ones. A few more weeks and Nax clears and I should be good to start thinking a little more about 10 man Uldar.

Recent acquisitions:

Heroes’ Scourgeborne Battleplate – picked up from some boss in Nax, rather than bought with badges. Does that make me slightly more imba? I assume it does. It allowed me to spend my badges on Tattered Dreadmist Mantle for my new alt instead. Oooooh, bit of a clue there for you as to what I’m leveling, exciting huh?

Glyph of Dark Death – Picked up from the AH just this morning, I’m pretty sure this was a recent addition with the 3.1 patch. Either that or I’m an idiot and just completely missed it before. It replaced my crappy  Icy Touch glyph anyway.

Purple Trophy Tabard of the Illidari - “That’s not an upgrade!” I hear you cry… well you’re wrong, so how about you shut up? It’s an upgrade to my looks, which anyone who’s played a number of MMOs for a good amount of years knows is the SINGLE MOST IMPORTANT PART of your character. This is one of the cooler looking tabards, so I decided to quickly do the quest one afternoon. There are some other cooler looking ones out there, but you don’t see quite so many people wearing this one since WotLK.

Current targets:

There’s a couple of things I have my eye on as far as my next upgrades go…

Greatsword of the Sin’dorei – From the new Argent Tournament, or whatever it’s called. Getting this I think (though I haven’t fully investigated yet) is just a case of doing the dailies and what not every day until I have enough tokens to buy it. I’m not too sure whether technically this is an upgrade over my current weapon. I’d be dropping 23 Strength but gaining 45 Haste and a little more hit rating. Having a quick read round, it seems Haste has been improved slightly for melee classes come 3.1, so I’m assuming this weapon might actually be a pretty decent investment. Also it puts me even further over the special hit cap. I think I’ll then be in a position where I could drop my Sphere of Red Dragon’s Blood without dropping below the cap. What I’d replace it with right now I’m not 100% sure, maybe the Oracle trinket, unless I can find something better. I’d need to work on Oracle rep for that though, meh.

Heroes’ Scourgeborne Gauntlets – I’m planning on buying these with badges, as I don’t imagine I’ll be getting lucky with a drop of them (or anything better) anytime soon. I currently have about 25/40 of the badges required I think, so another week or two (depending on how many heroics I can be bothered to do) should net me some new gloves. The 2 piece set bonus will be nice too… hmm, maybe I’ll work a bit harder on getting those.

Just a few more gear updates on the DK so far, both form badges/heroics and from Nax itself…

Flame-Bathed Steel Girdle – From heroic Nexus. Got lucky (presumably) on the drop and got this the first time I ran it. Very nice waist.

Mirror of Truth – From badges. Pretty good trinket from what I can tell, and a nice proc. I haven’t actually paid attention to how often it procs as of yet.

Shoulderplates of Bloodshed – From Nax itself, Heigan I think. First piece of really decent loot I got there, I was well happy. Love the DK armour models too, so I’m most pleased with these.

As far as Nax itself goes, last week was my first full run. The last time I’d done it some of the bosses had already been killed, and we stopped before we got to the end. I think I’d ended up completing two quarters. Last week we did an entire run in one go, from start to finish, and it went really well. The final boss was the only one I got myself killed on where we weren’t wiping anyway. This was mainly due to the fact I wasn’t really sure on the strategy. I didn’t know I was going to be going to Nax though, in my defense. I am also very lazy.

My DPS was respectable and I picked up on all the strategies quickly enough anyway, so I was pleased. Plus its always fun to bug Dan by making him give me details on how to do things when he’s trying to concentrate on other things.

I think I’m pretty much as well equipped as I can be right now anyway, give or take one or two lucky drops and a few more badges to chuck around. So now would be the right time to start another alt, I mean why not!? More on that next time…

That’s right little Oracle guy, shinies!!!

After my unexpected shift back to horde, and my subsequent respec, I decided this Friday to try and improve my Death Knight a bit. I was basically wearing greens and the odd quest blue, with a single epic cloak I’d got from my one run in Nax months ago. Not really a DK cloak as such I don’t think, but it’s pretty decent. The following is what I’ve managed to round up Friday and the rest of the weekend when I’ve been around:

Sigil of Arthritic Binding – After looking up specs, catching up in Death Knight news and checking out the new Sigils, this was my first target. Basically it involved collecting 30 tokens from the PvP area in Grizzly Hills. As I had Friday off work I decided to do this mid-morning. Getting the tokens was pretty straight forward, some of the quests give 10 at a time, so it only took me 30 mins tops. One of them involved riding a torpedo and blowing up a ship, which is awesome.

Next I decided to see what I could do to improve my gear via Ah/badges (basically stuff that didn’t involve me putting any effort in). WoWLoot and WoW Insiders gear guides helped me here…

Pendant of the Outcast Hero – I was only a few badges short of the smexy trinket from my heroic badges, but I figured I may not be doing any for a while, so I picked up this neck piece. Not much else to say here, it was a significant improvement over my previous one, and a nice shiny purple colour. If only it had some Strength on it.

Vengeance Bindings – These I picked up off the AH. I can’t for the life of me remember how much I paid for them, but it really wasn’t very much. I think I had some rubbishy greens in that slot up until now, these are a pretty solid investment without stepping into an instance I reckon. Probably should have bought them sooner.

Titansteel Destroyer – Next was the big one, the weapon. I was toying with the idea of gathering the mats for this myself, as I know people who can craft it. However with my absence of luck finding titanium nodes, lack of frozen orbs, and general laziness, I figured I’d buy one instead. I managed to find one on the ah for just under 1500g, which I figured was a pretty good deal. And so began an epic afternoon of money making. I decided to go to Ice Crown, so that I could both make money and work on my Knights of the Ebon Blade rep (for Death-Inured Sabatons) at the same time. I ended up doing the majority of the quests in this zone (120/140 at the moment I think) and got the weapon from the AH, woo. I made just over 1,600g in a single day, which is by far the biggest day for me ever.

Signet of Bridenbrad – I wasn’t planning on this, it just happened to be a reward from one of the Ice Crown chains that was an upgrade over what I had in that slot.

Arcanum of Torment – Put one of these on my head piece. Nothing that exciting, but yeah, it’s still a gear improvement right.

By my standards, this is an epic weekend of upgrades, especially considering it was pretty much all done in a single day. The next two things on my list to get are:

Death-Inured Sabatons – about 4k rep left

Spiked Titansteel Helm – When I’ve made the money. I have about 700g right now, and the ones on the Ah are like 1,000g. I did see one for 750g though, so I’m holding out for one at a reasonable price.

I suppose the next step will be to start getting some enchants…

friends… apparently.

So after a month and a half of playing alliance (and actually frigging enjoying it!) I’m back horde side. I got online one day to a “how would you feel about playing some horde?” message from Dan, and knew straight away what would be happening. My closest gaming friends are flakes. I do not use this as a criticism of course, because I’m one myself, I will admit I was quite surprised though. I was genuinely enjoying playing Mage, I liked my Draeni, and was about as close as I get to being really angry/annoyed by something in an online game these days. That basically just means I spent 10 mins calling Dan all sorts of nasty names, then logger back over to my Orc.

Upon getting back to Horde side I was unsure of what to do. I hadn’t missed Death Knight that I was aware, and my Mage is only level 35 on Horde.

WHY OH WHY CANT I TO FACTIONS TRANSFERS!?

So I was umming and arring between referring a friend and trying to boost a Mage/Warlock up, leveling my Rogue (currently 70) or trying to get back into the Death Knight. I decided to gear up my Death Knight a bit and plod along with her until I made up my mind. First step was to try a new spec for real. I’d been Blood almost all of the time I’d been leveling DK, and 100% of the time since. I was tempted by Dual Wield, but it seems DW got nerfed a bit recently. Frost hasn’t interested me that much, so I decided to go with a cookie cutter (I think) Unholy build. I have to say I love it! My DPS is better, having a ghoul out 100% of the time is rewarding, and the rotation is much comfier than Blood.

So anyway, here I am, back where I was 2 months ago, but now with a level 72 Draeni Mage on another realm, whoop… I’m assuming I might actually be playing Death Knight for a while now, but who knows. I’ll just go where’s my buddies go. It’s interesting to see how different people handle these sorts of things actually, some seem to largely not care what’s happening, as long as they’re with the people they enjoy playing with. I’d put myself in this category. Others seem to have a massive emotional attachment to the investment they’ve made in a specific character, or maybe they just don’t like not being the one making the decisions. Either way I can’t imagine myself ever deliberately distancing myself from anyone I consider a friend due to an online game.

At least I don’t have to be friends with male Night Elves now…