Soldiers Arise, Stand and Fight!

Finally! Faerune's Loot-Filled Pumpkin contained The Horseman's Horrific Helm! She now has all the horseman accessories to annoy friends and randoms with.

So Not Fair

Faerune got a second pair of The Horseman's Reins. *sigh* These things should really be Bind on Account.

Surprise! Heroic Sindragosa

Was pleasantly surprised to get Heroic: The Frostwing Halls (10 player) done tonight. Faerune is in a casual guild that has few hardcore people in it, so our progress through Heroic encounters has been pretty difficult. Yet after an hour-and-a-half of face grinding we managed to down her on our last attempt for the night. If we can somehow pull the Heroic Putricide rabbit out of our collective hats, we might get some Bloodbathed Frostbrood Vanquishers before the expansion.

Having both raiding experiences does help me not take Aenara's progress for granted. For instance… tonight she cleared 10/12 of the heroic 25 encounters in two hours—all one-shots. The officers actually called it early to do the weekly raid so we'd have something to do tomorrow. Heh.

On a completely unrelated vanity note, I really love the Ninja DK on a Horseman's mount. Here she is waiting with Sindragosa circling and Peddlefeet keeping everyone company.

Green Hooves!

In all the years of doing the Halloween event I've seen The Horseman's Reins drop once. Didn't have it on any of my toons until today. Faerune DC'd twice getting in (damn patch!) yet when she opened her pumpkin, there they were! Now if only Aenara can get so lucky…

Wow WoW

Head is still spinning from all the changes. Aenara is doing insane Moonkin damage and pulling aggro off instance tanks with ease, single-target and on packs. Didn't end up reforging anything as I was right on with hit. Mana was a slight problem. Will see how things go in raid tonight if everyone is ready. Could get Grid running so I refused to try out my healing spec in a pug. Really like the flaura spawn from Swiftmend though. *smile*

Faerune has fared pretty well. Too much talking and reading to get the tanking configured (SO MANY CDs NOW!) yet Frost DPS is looking pretty amazing. The built-in Power Auras made reacting to Rime and Killing Machine procs very easy. It's sad that KM doesn't affect Howling Blast anymore, but DPS was fine. Pulled instance aggro a number of times so not looking forward to tanking.

Biggest problem with loading Professions, namely Inscription and Jewel Crafting. I suppose everyone needs those right now so it's taking a toll on the servers. Sure is frustrating. Takes a few minutes for the categories and cuts/glyphs to load, especially in Dalaran. My gouging plan didn't really work with Glyphs. I didn't realize that they work like spells now... once you learn one, you never need it again! Did sell a bunch of Druid and Rogue ones at inflated prices. But it wasn't worth the time and materials. I'm going to have to make a bunch for my toons, and they bumped up the cost of each glyph from 1 to 3 Ink of the Seas.

Still have so much to figure out not even sure where to begin. I really need Grid to work, so I'll prolly start there. Then maybe Favor? Scheme? Feraline? Sloosh? *sigh*

PTR, Round 1

The maintenance was taking too long so I decided to play around some on the PTR since it was up. Last week I wasn't able to transfer Faerune because the service was busy. Instead I transferred one of the pre-made Death Knights so I could see what tanking was like. Ugh.

There's still a problem with trade skills so I wasn't able to gem any of the "ZOMG FREE EPICS!" gear they give you. Nor did I have any glyphs. So it wasn't going to be the best test. Yet it was fun to look at the new talents and see that I now have even more defensive cool-downs, namely Bone Shield and Dancing Rune Weapon. BS has always been BS because it gets eaten so fast, but might as well take it now since it's in the tree. DNR was always novel but impracticable yet now it adds 20% parry while active. Good times.

Was really strange being in Blood Presence, which now adds the stamina, armor, and damage reduction along with threat increase that Frost used to. Started creating my usual macros, binding Rune Strike to my four main strikes. Thankfully I tried this out on Coren Direbrew first. None of my strikes were landing. Looking closer, it turns out that RS no longer function like Heroic Stike and landing "on next swing." It's now it's one strike and eater of a GCD. *sigh*

Trade Chat was filled with whining, trolls, and garbage—more plentiful as there's only one PvE server. People claimed that the LFG tool didn't work but I got one readily as a tank. Zoned into Drak'Tharon keep and immediately apologized, explaining that this was my first tanking experience with the new talents.

It's immediately apparent that AoE threat has been nerfed. While it's nice that Death and Decay only uses on Unholy rune, it doesn't do much. Pestilence has also been nerfed, doing only 50% damage to the targets it spreads diseases too. Not having any addons, I don't know for sure but it felt like Icy Touch isn't doing as much threat as before.

It went pretty well considered. The warlock with us still went wild with AoE. He pulled the whole room before Trollgore and I could do nothing to save him. Yet I was able to hold Trollgore with no problem when I pulled him. The healer and two of the DPS DC'd as we killed King Dred. The remaining ret pally, Dyley, was game to continue. Was dicey at a few spots but Death Strike and Rune Tap kept me going. Felt accomplished to two-man the rest of the instance.

I'm still unsure if the Death Strike change is a nerf, the whole "healing you for 30% of the damage you have sustained during the preceding 5 sec (minimum of at least 10% of your maximum health)." When I was getting hammered it did nearly 20%. Yet without meters or parsing addons, I can't be sure. It doesn't mention that having one or both diseases is required for the healing so it may be a buff overall.

Anyway. Will have to get Faerune transfered for some real testing. Having to work in another key for Rune Stike is rather annoying. And people are going to have to re-learn restraint when DPSing groups. Hopefully the live servers are back and I can get my last day of Direbrews in.

Flame On!

The Midsummer Fire Festival started up today. Hate how these stupid events suck up my time; Blizzard really know how to keep me reeled in. Thankfully Martini, Aenara, and Sloosh already have it done. Dragging Decimate along as Favor does the Honor/Extinguish the flames things in the old world for the Mage ports. Followed the comments in Flame Warden of Kalimdor, getting them all done including Stealing Thunder Bluff's Flame. Going to save Stealing Orgrimmar's Flame for later when it's less popular and less active.

Only had one PvP encounter when Decimate and Favor got separated. Favor didn't have the flight path so she had to hoof it from the Exodar. Crossing the bridge to Bloodmyst Isle, some stupid cow warrior, Kuitrurah, charged my Pally in full tanking gear! Killing this pathetic Arms Warrior was easy. A Shadow Priest, Fynnlee, happened upon us as I dealt the killing blow. She did manage to get me to half health, but I ended up out running her with Pally speed.

The Lord Ahune encounter is the same once started. With the cross-realm LFG tool it was pretty easy to run on all my 80s except for tanking with Faerune. All of the adds are immune to Frost which is conveniently a Death Knight's primary form of threat. The cloak drops are mostly useless but it's any easy two Frost Emblems. The only character to get the updated Frostscythe of Lord Ahune was the Warrior. Of course.

Death Knight OP? Why Yes!

Spent entirely too much time on the Death Knight. Decided I wasn't in any rush to look around so I read through the quests and enjoyed the content. It was really fun starting out at 55 with a full set of green equipment along with 270 in First Aid. Got to steal a horse, duel others, and all manner of nefarious deeds. The final quest where the Lich King's thrall is broken was very fun yet4 I enjoyed flying around on the bone drake the most. I mean… you get to eat people for health and mana!

It was difficult figuring what talent tree to take. With all the chatter in General Chat it seemed that Blood is PvE, Frost is for Tanking, and Unholy is for PvP. Finally went over to the Wiki and went with a Zephire's Deep Unholy DPS build (16/0/55) since I figured I'd do PvP first. The only diversion I made was picking up Summon Gargoyle because that sounded way too cool.

The mechanics of the class are very interesting. I never understood what the runes meant until actually seeing them in action. It's also not very clear what each type is for initially but you get a better feel for it as you us the attacks. All of the numbers seem so small individually so it takes a while to see how they work in tandem. It's certainly interesting to have a tanking class that can't use a shield and isn't mana-based yet has abilities that are both melee-based and mana-based.

PvP ended up being wild. The DK started quests give you the basic PvP trinket and all of the final blues are superior to the starter Outlands questing, so right out of the box you're ready to gib. Unfortunately the Horde absolutely suck AV in our battle group so I only tried two games before giving up. Two native class abilities, Death Grip and Ice Chains, made Warsong Gulch a living hell. The game I got in had nineteen Death Knights and one Alliance shaman. After almost two hours we did win, but it was exhausting. I expect lots of outrage and QQing from the other classes so it was fun to get some killing in before the nerf bat starts swinging