That was then

more about “Argent Eve and co. vs. The Soul Flayer“, posted with vodpod

The news about Onyxia made me go all nostalgic so I did a google search for “Argent Eve” the guild I started my raiding career with. It mainly threw up old recruitment threads of players who had once been in the guild, but I also found this gem of a video. The quality is pretty poor (don’t run it full screen it makes it worse) but it is definitely us.

I’m there in Cenarion leggings and my Animist  shoulder healing someone. Though you need to know its me to realise its me.  It was fairly early in my raiding career, not so much that it’s Hakkar we’re slaying (as Zul Gurub was one of our favourite  raids and we ran it forever) but the tabard I’m wearing is Shadow Sentinels the heavy RP guild I was in when I dinged 60. Argent Eve ran a raid group bringing in players from other guilds. I did eventually join them, just in time for them to rename themselves Fir Samhain for The Burning Crusade

I did also find this tribute to the priest tier sets done by Morthgael who transferred off Moonglade when Fir Samhain broke up ( or maybe slightly before). Good to see she’s still playing and still collecting  priest sets, and of course it brought back memories of helping her collect some of that gear.

Good times then and good times now.

Enter stage Right….

Her she is in all her revamped feral glory. We raided tonight, three druids and we still all had the same cat skin. As it was a resto, balance, kitty trio it didn’t really matter though. I struggled to spot the kitty amongst the hunter pets, just to used to looking for a purple blue lynx I think.

Thats Ari in bear form, next to a random whitehaired druid in cat form. Seriously couldn’t they have been the same shade of white? They’re not exactly a matched pair.

And of course when it comes to the important view of bear form I think the butt is even bigger!

Calli did have the light blue hair, but after seeing the bear that came with it I popped across to Stormwind and  changed it to dark blue so she now has the black bear  and will soon have a matching (I hope) black cat, screenshots will follow but I’m hoping a black butt will look smaller than a white butt, espcially as I’ll see it a lot more often than I will Ari’s.

Ulduar

Raiding for the first time since my hard drive crashed and on a patch day. My UI was a mess. For some reason Quartz decided to show all the debuffs on the mob rather than just mine. In the Razorscale fight  the column of debuffs went straight up the middle of the screen, blocking my view pretty comprehensively. Damned if I can find the setting to have Quartz just show just my dots on the target.  Revamping your UI as you go isn’t particularly fun and does nothing for your dps, especially if you’re trying to come to grips with a new eclipse rotation at the same time.

I cobbled something usable together by the time we got to XT-002 with the help of Icehud, but all in all my raiding  UI needs some serious work done on it.

Eclipse Rotation

It’s going to take some practice to get used to this, and it still needs proc watching to pull it off, and the gods of RNG smiling down on me to get maxdps off it. I did get a few runs where wrath eclipse procced straight off the last Eclipsed Starfire, then Starfire procced again off the last Wrath. I also got a few runs where I refreshed  MF/IS twice before wrath procced a starfire eclipse. So the dps is still going to be spiky and weaving, and a couple where I missed the proc all together because it seemed too soon – though my messed up UI didn’t help with that as I had DBM bars hiding my castbar at one point (fixed that post raid).

So between checking out he new druid skins,  getting everyone sorted with mounts and raiding I only really had time to do the new orphan daily on Ari & Nia, oh and the cooking daily which netted me the  Delicious Chocolate Cake recipe.  Now that was a nice surprise. I’d pretty much given up on ever seeing that.

I have a job interview tomorrow and a family wedding Saturday so I’m probably going to be a bit slow exploring the latest patch, and talking of job interviews I should be away to my bed

What I did on my Holydays

Highlord Tirion Fordring: “Combatants of the Alliance and Horde! You are welcome under the banner of the Argent Crusade. To the south lies our goal
We will march to the Citadel and cut out the heart of the Scourge where it dwells.
But this is no task to be taken lightly. A massive attack with every able-bodied man would end in needless slaughter. Every soldier lost would rise as the enemy.
Azeroth would be left defenceless against the undead threat. Instead, we require a small, concentrated strike force for the attack to succeed.
For that reason, we have created the Argent Tournament. Within these walls, you will be tested. Your skill in combat will be matched against the fiercest dangers Northrend has to offer under the watchful eyes of your leaders.”

Arian:
A strike force of the best? I can try for that, I’ve killed Gods and Titans and Aspects already, and laid more undead to a final rest than I can count.

Arian walks off to present herself to Justicaar Mariel Trueheart Mariel:

Mariel: We have invited you here to test your skill and valor against others who have bravely opposed the Scourge. Many have been our divisions, but the time has come for heroes fighting under all banners to test their blades against one another in preparation for facing our mutual enemy.

Arian: I can bring down the fires of the stars and the moon on their head, or have the stars fall from the very skies themselves if its needed

Mariel: No we want you to take this lance and joust against other possible champions to see who is the best in combat.

Arian: I can call the trees themselves to do my bidding. I can command the winds to blow them off his feet, the roots under the earth to cage their mount, I have at my fingertips natures wrath and you want me to poke someone with a big stick?

Mariel: Yes this is how we’ll test your combat skills

Arian: Let me get this straight those who are best at poking people with a big stick are the ones you’ll choose for this strike force? You don’t care what experience we have or what combat skills we have you’d pick your strike force based on a completely non-lethal game of whack a mole?

Mariel nods

Arian: Aviana give me strength!

***

So as you may have guessed I’m not overly impressed by the whole jousting thing that came with 3.1, it certainly didn’t draw me back into the game.  Uldar has to a certain extent but like so many guilds this time of year we’ve been plagued with Real Life taking priority and struggling to put together  balanced 25 mans.

Not to say I haven’t been busy. You may remember a human mage I rolled way back last September, even with help from friends her squishiness was driving me mental so I rerolled her as a Paladin at the beginning of May. My little Pally leveled all the way to 78 by the end of May, which is when she too reached the Argent Tournament and came to a screehing halt.

Thats the fastest I’ve ever leveled anything in realtime (about 7 days played time I think) certainly the heirloom shoulders helped and a more experienced  paladin friend cheering me on from the sidelines for the first 30 levels.

Seems I was so busy charging ahead I forgot to stop for screenshots. Going from the boots that was taken around the 40 mark.

If I’m honest some of the screeching halt is because I’m feeling guilty about Dax, my hunter, who is still stuck at 72 in the Tundra. It seems right and proper that she should ding 80 before this whippersnapper, but I can’t get back into hunter gameplay at the moment.

I have a plans for a new druid though, one thats going to grow up pure feral, at the moment she’s level 6 and sitting in Dolanaar waiting for Ari to collect enough stoneshards for the heirloom stormshroud shoulders. They’re the same model as the Animist shoulders from Zul’Gurub Ari loved so much at 60.  So I know I can look at them for 74 levels, I may not do anything much with her till 3.2 comes out and leveling is even easier than it was in 3.1. I guess my rogue can borrow the shoulders till then. Or they can both wait, mounts at 20 oh how easy they have it.

Better late than never

Yes I know it’s Sunday, part of being at home is I completely lose track of time, throw in the  confusion of Christmas and I only have the vaguest idea when in the week it is.

So lets round up last weeks targets

Level Dax to 80 (aiming high here) I’m not sure what the issue is but I’m feeling very bored with Dax at the moment. I jump on her run around aimlessly for a bit maybe do one or two quests and then log out. Leveling Ari through Northrend was a doddle, also a bit on the boring side but with T6/sunwell gear I  accepted I overpowered areas tuned for fresh 70’s in greens and blues. Only Dax *is* that fresh 70 and its just as easy for her as it was for Ari. Maybe I’ll pop across to Howling Fjord and try the Eastern side of the continent again.

Use the mats she farms to get Ari’s professions up to 450 We’ve not farmed enough mats but we have visited the AH for them. Inscription is at 426 and out of trainer recipes so I need to mill the ink for Northrend Discoveries but the prices for herbs are pretty high still.

LW is lagging at 414, again no easy skill up recipes and I’m finding the whole 5 borean scraps = 1 borean lather, 6 Borean leathers = 1 Heavy Borean Leather annoying when I need between 3 and 4 HBL for each recipe.

Get Gwen’s mining & engineering up to 300 so she can start leveling in Outland I decided to vary this so Gwen is in Outland working towards level 61 and then she’ll pop back to the Hinterlands for some more mining skill ups, she’s currently at 225 so not far to go but endless circuits of Hinterlands was doing my brain in. Especialy as it seemed whatever hour of the day I picked I was following behind some other DK (it always seems to be DK’s) also mining for skill ups. Engineering is at 208 I need more mats to push it further and decide if I want to specialise in goblin or gnomish engineering, or if it’s worth specialisng at all.

Complete the Merrymaker meta achievement on Ari Yay I did it. In the end the hardest bit was getting hold of a hat, or rather a group wanting to do Nexus. I’d read that some 80’s had soloed her on normal so I tried it, and to my shame couldn’t find her and got clobbered by adds. When I did it with a group I realised I’d prowled past her disc a few times thinking she was somewhere else. It’s done now, we found a dark place for Ari to don the costume and eat the mince pie, it’s really not Ari’s “thing” dressing up like a Christmas elf.

Sort out the fishing achievements Ari needs Well this ended up as a post all of it’s own, a sort of mini guide. Ari has completed The Lurker Above, 250 Fish, Outland Angler, The Scavenger, Northrend Angler, Old Crafty (a total of 7 casts with the crocolisk daily) and Old Man Barlowned, since last Friday.  Meh its  4pm server time & I haven’t even logged on yet, so no winning Booty Bay this weekend. Still got a ways to go to complete the achievements but I’m on course.

So what have I been doing, well messing about on alts mainly, not that I’m sure any will survive past the festive season, working on Cooking achievements alongside Fishing. Though as I’m missing the chocolate cake recipe, a rare BOP drop from cooking dailies, I’ve no hope of completing the Meta.

Oops nearly forgot I also achieved Hemet Nessingway: the Collected Quests, backwards as I’ve had the Northrend ones for a while, then I went and finished off the Outland ones before  finally picking up the missing pages for the Azeroth one. I still think not doing that to avoid having the book foisted on the world of Warcraft was the right decision, back in the day, but as theres’s a published copy in the Nagrand camp I clearly failed.

Oh and picking up pets with the help of the Oracles. I’ve had two eggs hatch now (and a third in my bag already) so have a White Tickbird Hatchling and a Cobra Hatchling bringing my small pet total to 48 of the 50 I need to get Stinky.

I’m not setting any new targets this week, the three undone ones will stand but I think it may be a week of messing about rather than focussing.

Echoes of Future Past

Its about as official as it gets 3.0.2 is coming Tuesday. So as promised in this post I’m archiving my level 70 stats so I can look back on them from the giddy heights of 80, not to mention on Wednesday when I respec.

First off my ‘naked’ stats. No buffs not even MOTW

and now the raid ready ones. Hmm that haste rating is pathetic, but then its not my haste gear. Well haste ‘gear’ may be a bit over optimistic as all I really have in the way of haste gear is the Belt of the crescent moon so even at my best that less than 3% haste

The gear I’m wearing

going behind a cut as it gets very long