Carpets and Buffs, Oh My!

Look at that neat-o carpet! It's fast and pretty. In order to make it, I had to have a piece each of Spellweave, Ebonweave, and Moonshroud, and then 4 frozen orbs. Note to the left of my character bar, all three buffs from the cloth are present. Could these be necessary raid buffs for tailors, now? There is no location requirement or cool down on the cloth, and frozen orbs drop left and right, making the reagents for these buffs fairly easy to get. If this is intentional, then I may have to make sure to have at least 6 each of eternal fire, eternal life, and eternal shadow with the cloth required to whip up a piece of each every time the thirty minutes are up on all raid days.

What do you think?

So Long And Thanks For All The Fish

(or How The Kal'uak Spend Winter's Veil)

I got a Christmas Present in my mail today! Jaedia of the Lazy Sniper was my Kris Kringle from the Blog Azeroth post exchange this year. You can check out the other posts on the exchange by visiting this thread and following the links in the comments. She was right thinking that I have a strange obsession with the Kalu'ak. Thanks Jaedia! What a great gift!

The Kal'uak of Southern Northrend spend a lot of their time fishing, at least they did before the Lich King became prominently active in Northrend. These days they spend most of their time attempting to set the balance of nature right, and fight back the Kvaldir from their homes by the Frozen Sea. However, despite the hardships of the year, they do keep up Winter Veil traditions.

While not ever really seeing him, aside from tales, they do believe that Greatfather Winter casts his wintery veil across Northrend over the winter period. It is thought that Greatfather Winter is an emissary of the titans, come to Azeroth to bring comfort and snow at this time of year, though again, this is just a tale. Rather than worshipping him, they will gather around on Winters Veil Eve, to a huge banquet between each individual tribe. With masses of food, this is the one time of year they will eat anything other than fish. They even get a little merry. They tell such stories, tales of legend, over the fires and candlelight.

The idea that they eat foods other than fish at Winters Veil is mostly to wave goodbye to Greatfather Winter as he passes by the continent of Northrend, and to thank him for a good fishing year, in the hope that he will grant them once again the ability to catch good food over the harsh cold year.

With morale quite low in the Tuskarr people at this time, keeping up their almost family-like traditions keeps a small sense of normality within their communities. It is the one time of year they can get together and forget about the hardships they have had to forego, and may have to worry about in the coming year. As such, they welcome in the New Year in the hope that it will bring better things.

Belated Merry Christmas and Happy New Year,

//Jaedia - http://www.lazy-sniper.com/

Shawndra Returns!

I pulled Shawndra out of the mothballs to try and get the Halloween achievements done. Why Shawndra and not my latest loves, Anselma or Halinka of the Alliance? Because the Horde of KNR seem to be rising out of the ashes, again. Being that Delgada is the guild mistress, a representative should at least be on for the members. Delgada did all that Hallow's End stuff last year, so she stepped back to let Shawndra try and get hers done. Shawndra did very well, but in the end lost to the RNG boss. No Sinister Squashling means no Sinister Calling achievement, and it was all she had left. She did get her helmet, however. Better luck next year.

Since Shawndra had been dusted off for the event, a little play time was in order. Shawndra was sitting at the end of 74 when I started playing with her again, and trick or treating in all of Azeroth and Outland got her into 75. While she was out, she did some questing, and by the end of the event, she was 76. Somewhere in that time period she was given the Cold Weather Flying tome and a pair of heirloom shoulders by Delgada (with the knowledge that she would be sharing with Anselma the blood elflette paladin), and gifted the money for dual specialization. Shawndra loves her primary specialty as a Titan's Grip fury warrior, but felt it was in the interests of many of the returning members to have a secondary specialization as a tank. She was a pretty good one before Northrend was discovered, but was still a little afraid that she would let her group down when she was called to take the lead.

She was asked yesterday to tank Drak'tharon Keep. I started the instance with an announcement that I had not tanked since Karazhan, and to please watch their step. Shawndra pulled, and surprisingly only lost aggro for a second on a stray mob that one of the dps decided to take care of out of order. Doesn't everyone know to assist the tank's target? The mob was taunted and put back into place, and the rest of the run was pretty ho hum. Shawndra, despite her admitted rustiness, seemed to be keeping aggro pretty well, and the healer didn't seem to be losing a whole lot of mana healing. Of course, it helped that the healer was 79. Shawndra noted in party chat that one of the dps was complaining that the tank out-damaged them on a fight. I grinned. At the end of the instance, a pair of plate pants dropped, which, after close inspection, were disenchanted. It is amazing how long Shawndra's low level raiding gear has lasted her into this expansion! Even her tanking gear is mostly from Kharazan and badges.

After the run, I asked in guild chat if I had been terrible. The healer said I was the easiest tank he had had to heal yet. My buddy, the best death knight tank ever, and part time warrior, said I had held aggro fine. I was so excited! I had tanked my first successful regular Northrend instance. Woot!!

Later on, Shawndra went to Dragonblight and did the Wrathgate, then went to battle for the Undercity. The Battle for the Undercity is a great boost to any character's self esteem, as their dps gets a boost of at least 10 times the normal. Special abilities make themselves available more often, and rage bars never empty. Not only that, but I love the lore that is presented. Varian is an ass. If he took a few minutes to get aquainted with Thrall, he would realize that they were in the same situation. Thrall made the best of a bad situation, and Varian became a bigotted jerk too quick to jump to conclusions. Shawndra threw a rude gesture at him as he was ported to safety by Jaina Proudmoore. She then packed up her axes, nodded to Thrall and Sylvanas, and returned to Northrend.

Shawndra is back. I'm gonna have fun getting into the mobs faces again.

Catch Up Gear For Shadow Priests

So, you are behind your guild by leaps and bounds. Your gear is pre-heroic, and theirs is post Ulduar. You feel left behind, but you don't want to burden them by asking for runs in Naxxramas when they really don't even care to dance another round with Heigen. What can you do?

Well, with the new Trial of the Champion instance, you can bag some i-level 200 epic pieces to help flesh out a good heroic ready set of gear. Everyone is running it, and if you are lucky, you'll find a group that is running it multiple times. Once you're in, stick with it. Here is a list of the gear that a shadow priest can use in this instance.

Belt of the Churning Blaze
Bindings of the Wicked
Handwraps of Surrendered Hope -yes it's a healer piece, but we like the spirit, and the red socket!
Leggings of the Haggard Apprentice -another healer piece, gemmed with a hit gem if you need hit, and a spirit gem, why not?
Mantle of Inconsolable Fear -this piece works well for healing as well.
The Confessor's Binding -this is a healing belt. If you get this one and not the other, it's not so bad, is it?
Signet of Purity -a nice ring for healing and dps
Brilliant Hailstone Amulet
Abyssal Rune
Tears of the Vanquished -I know it isn't a dps trinket, but if the healer doesn't want it, who would laugh at you for wanting all that intellect?(I believe that all my spells are helpful. I boycott the exception of my spells from Blizzard's idea of helpful. Phooey!)

These items don't cover all your gear slots. That's okay though. This is where you use the best item from Shadowpriest.com's beginning raid gear list. Let me throw up an example here. HolyNova, who is kicking herself for her bad choice in naming right now, has been building her shadow set, in hopes that one day she can be as dangerous and beautiful as that fire mage over there (we'll call him Larry). She was able to get the wrists, hit belt, hit neck, and the dps trinket from a few runs in Trial of the Champion. She is thrilled. She gems the hit neck with hit, enchants her bracers with more spellpower, adds a socket to her belt to put another hit gem in it, and puts on only these items. She has 107 hit rating now, and some other nice stats. Right now, we need to make sure her hit rating gets closer to cap. I have found for heroics, cap is not necessarily the same as it is for raiding. Still, we should aim for as close to that magic 289 as possible (assuming you have all points spent in misery and shadow focus). She found The Argent Skullcap kicking around in her bank, getting her to 168 hit rating. She healed a heroic Violet Hold and was lucky enough to get Mark of the War Prisoner, which boosted her hit rating to 241. At this point, some people might just run off without a robe and happily be able to complete Utgarde Keep on heroic mode, but we like well dressed priests. It's cold in Northrend! Speaking of cold, Nova has been working with the Ebon Blade (probably where she got her affinity for the dark side), and they liked her enough to sell her a Dark Soldier Cape. Her hit rating, now at 270, is looking more worthy of heroics. Now, our gal has been cooking and fishing and doing her regular daily dungeon quests without fail, and the Kirin Tor love her. They let her buy Robes of Crackling Flame, which make her think of Larry. Another item the Ebon Blade let her buy are Sterile Flesh-Handling Gloves. Her boots and pants have been hard to replace. She's just using her healing rings now, nothing special about them. They have haste and intellect and critical strike chance and stuff like that.

Now, we were talking about farming heroics for gear to catch up with, weren't we? With the set we have assembled, Nova should be able to hold her own any about any heroic. This is where the fun begins. You see, everyone, and I mean everyone, is farming heroics for the new badges right now. How does this impact Nova? As a healer or as a damage dealer, she will find more groups as she is flexible. More groups = more badges, and more chances at upgrades. Should she still run regular instances? Probably not, unless she is uncomfortable walking into a heroic not having done the regular version. Badges are the key, because the items that can be purchased are i-level 213 and 226, which is fine to jump into Ulduar with. Here is a list of items a priest can use, purchased with Badges of Conquest. Pair that with items you can get from heroics (here are some nice i-level 219's from ToC), and Nova can dazzle Larry with her new role as a damage dealer. Fireball? That is so yesterday. Eat a few of these dots and tell me how you feel in the morning. :)

I hope this is helpful for people, like me, who are trying hard to catch up as a new level 80 to people much further progressed. Comment if you found something fun that I missed. I love shopping for new gear!

Where's The Cake?

Been busy the last few days, and today is just one in that same run. Yesterday our family drove out to spend time with some guild mates and their family who live close by. Who would have thought, on an East Coast realm, you would find West Coast friends? We had a barbecue, the kids played with the Wii and the several computers in the house, and we chatted about everything, with a little WoW splashed in. I got drowsy around 5, so we left, grudgingly. When we got home, we loaded up WoW and headed out to kill Archavon, then tried out Ulduar for giggles.

Today, I am rushing out a post to say I have posts waiting on the back burner, but it's my birthday, and we are going out for dinner, then maybe dessert! Sorry to the pug Nexus run Halinka ducked out of prematurely. She explained first! After all, I didn't know I was going out until I told them. I hope you were able to find another healer.

I'll be back tomorrow with something fun. Working title? "I'm Not That Kind Of Hunter!"

Hurry Hurry!

In the interest of getting to Northrend more quickly, Halinka has set aside her reputation grinding until she reaches 80. She can't have everything she wants. As the server was being shut down today to increase instance capacity, Halinka hearthed to the Sewers, just a smidge into 67. She has changed her plans of sticking it out in Outland in favor of starting Northrend at 68. Her gear is less than fabulous, but her trade skills are up there where they should be. Gear is pretty much a non-issue, as we all know the starter quests pretty much gear you out for your start in the area.

Tomorrow, Halinka should be on a boat to the frozen North, in a leotard and ripped linen slacks. She'll be so cold she will be questing like a mad woman to get a warm robe!