Defense Minimum Hard to Hit as a Casual

So hopefully this doesn't turn into a QQ post, but damn, the Defense Minimum is hard to hit. Or at least, harder to hit as a totally casual player than I thought it would be. Oh, and yeah, it's NOT a Cap.

I've been buying gear and enchants and such. I've been looking at all my gear and the gear that I still haven't gotten that has defense on it. If I switch out a ring that I have in my inventory, one that is a much lower-level item but has defense on it, I get within 2 points of the heroics defense minimum of 535. Not good enough, and I refuse to wear gear that is less beneficial overall. I shouldn't have to anyway. Just because it has defense on it doesn't mean I should be wearing it, especially in starting heroics (I mean, it's green for gods sakes...). Still, I have to do something. So what will it be..?

Frankly, I was really hoping I'd be able to run to Outlands, to the Hellfire Peninsula and finish a quest to get a Regal Protectorate. Damn if I hadn't already done the quest and destroyed/sold the trinket some time ago. I don't remember doing it and I don't remember getting the trinket, but Nazgrel or whoever isn't giving me the quest and I don't have a trinket. Gah! Why does my life have to be difficult.

Of course, that really only leaves me one option. And, you know, this is what I should have been doing anyway: I have to run Halls of Lightning. Instead of wasting all this time trying to find some easy way out, I should have been running instances, especially HoL. You'd think as a tank I shouldn't have any issues running instances. That's what tanks do.

I've realized that I'm not aggressive enough, though. I hate going into instances, especially with a PuG group, when I don't feel familiar with the instance. As a tank, I'm usually supposed to be the leader. I run the instance, how fast we pull, how fast we go, which direction we take... and if I've never been in before, I often feel very foolish trying to take over that leadership role. I guess it's time I grow a backbone, though, and get some runs under my belt.

Why Halls of Lighting? Simple: The Seal of the Pantheon. It's the only tanking trinket with defense on it (and that's some good defense) outside of Heroics and Naxx. The Eternally Folded Blade is icing on the cake, in my opinion. The RNG comes into play, though. I've already read plenty of horror stories regarding the drop rate of the Seal. I'm going to have to hope that I have better luck. I don't mind running an instance over and over to get something I really want, although the poor guy who's run it 20 times and still hasn't seen it may want to take a break and come back to this.

If I can get the seal, I'll be golden. And surely that sword will drop for me while I'm running for the trinket. You know what sucks, though? Once I do all that... I'll need to start stacking Stamina.

/sigh

The Argent Tournament!

So the PTR has a new event called the Argent Tournament that I think I'm going to become obsessed with. I've downloaded the client and updated it and all, as well as copied Yrovi (although that is still taking around 4 days to do right now), so I want to check this out. Mostly for the new mounts, like the one to the left (thanks to MMO-Champion). DO WANT. I never thought they would think of making a white skeletal warhorse, but that thing is just sexy.

Also, the other amazing gear/goodies you can get from the tournament make me giggle with glee, especially the tabards. I'm already exalted with all the horde factions, so the reputation gains you'll get don't matter to me as much, but the Undercity tabard and banner are just so cool looking. The Darkspear, or Sen'jin, stuff looks really nifty as well.

Also, it appears they are creating some vanity pets for this tourney, and I love those. One day I'll get that crazy achievement for having 50 of them (then maybe 75?). According to what has been datamined, it looks like they will have "squires" for you. Essentially they look like the old orphans from Children's Week, wearing a Argent tabard. There are also images of them with backpacks... could Blizzard be trying to implement a way for you to hold more stuff? Like extra bag slots on vanity pets? I remember seeing a vanity pet that had been data-mined called a "pack mule" or something some time ago. Maybe these little squires will be able to carry a few things, such as having a one- or four-slot bag. I say one or four because those numbered slots are already in game ( see? see?) and they are small enough to not be much of a burden on the server.

Regardless, this entire event looks like it's going to be insanely cool. Totally something I can get into.

As for Yrovi, she's currently hanging out in Icecrown, doing quests there for gold. I managed to get those boots I'd been wanting, but I still haven't managed to hit the defense cap. It's very annoying. I'm really close, too. It seems I'm just going to have to bite the bullet and start PUGing some instances whenever I can to get the better gear with defense on it. Even with enchants and a gem with defense I haven't gotten there. And, of course, since I've spent all my extra gold on gear/gem/etc. I'm still nowhere near the 5000G I need to get epic flying. It's starting to get a little discouraging. Still, epic flight is less important than getting ready for raiding. I really, really want to finally see some end-game content, since I never have before. Keep your fingers crossed.

PTR = 3.1 on this Maintenance Tuesday

Yep. 3.1 is on the Public Test Realm. I'd love to check it out, but I think Blizzard is messing around with the account log-in pages because it absolutely refuses to recognize my log-in name. Very frustrating, as I desperately want to download the PTR client and the new patch to test out all the new content. And I'm not even talking about Ulduar. I'll just cover the stuff I'm interested in... although this will still be a big post... you want to see the full notes? Check this out. Now, on to the patch notes (oh, and I'm paraphrasing this stuff hardcore):

General

• Ground mounts won't bolt when they get wet.

It's about time. Our mounts will stick around and swim with us, it seems. I think that's cool, although the only time their disappearing act bothered me was when I was fording a river. Having to mount up again, just because I hit one little spot of deep water would frustrate me. Well, no more! I can't wait to take my mounts swimming.

• Level 80 toons can pay a one-time fee to activate the dual spec feature.

I want to see how the new dual spec system works out, as well as how much it will cost. I'm really itching to try out a fury build that I've been toying with, as I've been diligently putting together a decent set of fury gear from quest greens. Plus, sometimes it's just fun to really see the big numbers and burn something down so fast, it doesn't know what hit it. Maybe that's why I've been loving my mage so much lately. At any rate, this is something that we've been waiting for, and I'm practically humming in anticipation.

• A new Gear Manager is being implemented to aid in switching gear fast.

Interesting. I already use Outfitter, so this may be entirely moot for me, but I'll at least try it out to see how it works. If it's anything at all like Outfitter, I may just end up using this due to the fact that I have way too many add-ons... it's starting to bog me down, I think. I really like the automatic switch that Outfitter brings, though, and they've already said that this Gear Manager won't do anything automatically. We'll just have to see.

Classes - General

• Various damage bonuses from different class talents no longer stack.

Things like Enrage, Tricks of the Trade, Wrecking Crew, etc. no longer stack. I haven't been raiding or grouping at all, really, so this hasn't affected me, but I bet raiders are interested in this change and how it might change dps.

Death Knight

• Looks like Blood got a dps buff, which is nice for me

Purah will always going to be Blood, no matter what. It's the principle of the thing. So the buff to blood makes me happy. Blood boil now does damage to all enemies, even if they don't have a disease on them, and more damage to those that do feel under the weather. Bloody strikes increase blood boil damage as well, instead of pestilence. It almost looks like they are making diseases less important for Blood spec. Blood worms heal for more, that's cool. Scent of Blood will now proc more often, as they changed it to also potentially proc on dodges and parries, plus the internal cooldown is lower. And the icing on the cake? Sudden doom now just procs a free Death Coil. Automatically. No pushing the button or missing the proc. Nice. There are enough changes that it looks like Death Knights will probably get a free talent respec.

Mage

• Change to Water Elemental

I am looking forward to getting my water elemental on my mage in the future, so the changes are interesting to me. Improved water elemental has completely changed to Enduring Winter, a talent that has a 33/66/100% chance on a frostbolt cast to increase mana regen for up to 10 people your group/raid.

Rogue

• Combat got some buffs

Reduced cooldown on Adrenaline rush, increased damage for Killing Spree and Savage Combat, and only 3 ranks for Lightning Reflexes. My rogue isn't quite there yet, but these changes make me happy.

Warrior

• Heroic Throw missile speed increased

Yay! Faster pulls!

Professions

• Damn. No love for Engineering.

Heh. I don't know what I was expecting, but nothing for engineering. Blacksmithing has been rebalanced to be more useful from 1-300, though. Too bad NONE of my toons have Blacksmithing.

User Interface

• New Advanced quest tracking

Looks like they are trying to make the basic quest tracker not suck. I have no idea what this is all about or what they've changed. I doubt it will make me stop using QuestHelper.

Items

• White Tickbird Hatchling is now considered a pet

Um... I don't have one, but plan to do so in the future. What the heck was it considered before?

So, those are the changes I'm really focusing on. Can't wait till Blizz fixes the log-in so I can get this stuff downloaded. :D

One Down, One To Go. Also, SFK, not RFK

I mentioned last post that I was looking out for the tempered saronite bracers and boots for Yrovi to get to the defense "cap" for at least Heroics (535). I was messing around on one of my alts that I haven't touched in awhile, my lady belf rogue, Untainted, when I decided to do a quick look-see on the AH since I was already in Undercity. Sure enough, there were the bracers. They were the first ones I had seen on the AH since I started looking for them two weeks ago. They were also the only ones on the AH, so I logged fast and switched to Yrovi, then hearthed and portaled to UC to buy them. The whole time I was thinking, "gaming gods, if you love me, you won't let anyone else buy them 'till I get there." Yrovi is now the proud owner of the bracers and only needs the boots. Of course, I'm not nearly ready for Heroics. My stamina is just retardedly low now, so I'll have to gem up and get some decent enchants to enhance my health pool. I really should stop being a lazy bum and get my Engineering leveled up in order to get the epic goggles and such.

Of course, I'm starting to fall in love with my mage. I joined up with a PUG group to run Shadowfang Keep (one of my favorite instances, by the way) to take care of three quests I had there. It was fun. We were all belfs (two paladins, two mages), and I even managed to walk away with Arugal's Robes. Of course, that was my second group. It was a great run and you guys rock.

The first group I got in, though, I had to leave... Look. If I join the Looking for Group queue for SFK, that actually means I want to run SFK. So when I hand you the leadership of the group to find more people when you say, "hey, I can get us some more people, give me leader" I'm actually doing it in good faith, thinking you're going to find more people for SFK. NOT some other instance. NOT RFK. I'm sorry that mister hunter doesn't get experience in SFK and would rather do RFK and we'll all get better experience there. I'm sorry that I have three quests to do that no one else cares about, and I'm sorry that I don't care as much about the experience you gain, but the reputation I'm trying to get with Undercity. I was polite. I said, "Thanks for the offer, but I really want to run SFK. Maybe some other time," and then left the group. DPS is easy to get, I know, so find someone else. Damn.

That little incident actually made me switch to my rogue for a bit, who at level 33 is just finishing up in the Hillsbrad Foothills. Also a belf (yes, I like them), she is fun. Sneaky. And she rides a pink chokobo. What's not to love.

Blinky

It's been awhile.

Honestly, I haven't been working on my main the way I should. I feel a bit sheepish. Maybe I'm a little burned out? Or it could be that I often feel like I don't have enough time to run an instance when I log on. Instances are so important right now to get gear in order to get to the defense cap... and I just never seem to have the time to run them. That's just an excuse, though. I should just make the time. *sigh* We'll see what happens. Maybe I'll try running the regular level 80 instances, like Utgarde Pinnacle. The defense cap is less imperative there, and I think there are drops for me, plus I can work on getting Wyrmrest Accord rep.

I suppose the other option is, of course, to buy up a few more items with tons of defense on them, like the saronite boots and bracers. They are my last two greens I need to replace (other than my gun... but I would rather wait to replace that with something I can craft). That may just get me to the first defense cap for heroics... I don't know.

Since I'm feeling so indecisive about Yrovi, I've been logging onto an alt: a Blood Elf mage by the name of Xapha. I had created her ages ago and never got into the groove, I supppose. Now, though, I'm really feeling her... and I LOVE Blink. I don't know why. It isn't that impressive. 20 yards doesn't really do much, and it doesn't have a really cool animation or anything. But I'm addicted to that spell. Every time I'm going somewhere, I blink on every cooldown. Every. Single. Cooldown. It's unhealthy.

Anyway... Xapha is level 21 currently, and I'm running her as Frost, naturally. I think one reason why I had a hard time with her when I first created her, was that I was trying to level Arcane. Not so good. Regardless, I've yet to kill Dar'Kahn or his lieutenants, as I seem to always be on when no one else is around, so I'm currently running around the Hillsbrad Foothills until I can find a group.

Good Gravy...

Gah. I would have logged on last night, but I burned my pinky finger while cooking! D: Boiling gravy sloshed on to my hand, and that made for a very painful evening. My left hand was forced to spend several hours in cold water. Thank you WebMD for telling me what to do/not to do (I would have made it worse with the lotion I had, but was spot on with the water).

I'm just grateful that it wasn't too bad and more or less healed overnight. I'll just make a simple sandwich tonight, and stay away from the kitchen as much as possible. ;)

Maintenance Tuesday today is supposed to bring patch 3.0.9, or as BigRedKitty calls it: "The Patch to Patch the Patch" Patch. Various fan sites have the patch notes listed, although they don't seem to directly affect any of my characters that I'm playing currently. They aren't on WoW's site, though, so I'm taking them with a grain of salt anyway. To see them courtesy of WoWhead, click here. Remember, they aren't on the official site, so they may not be true, but I think it's possible. I guess we'll find out today. :)

Ding! 80

That's right. Yrovi is officially at the level cap! Just hit 80 today and had a great time training up those last skills and buying new gear to attempt to come at least a little closer to the defense cap of 540 (535 for heroics). I purchased some gear with the gold I had saved up for my epic mount. I figured that getting to the defense cap is more important than running heroics/increasing rep with various groups in order to begin raiding. It was emotionally difficult until I actually got my new shield out of the bank. That thing is beautiful... all glowy and shiny. :D It's worth it, as my defense is now at 500-plus and on it's way higher.

As soon as I hit 80, I went back to Zul'Drak to take on Ragemane again. That dumb seal had killed me before when I attempted to solo it, but at 80 all it took was a health pot and burning my enraged regeneration and bickity-bam, he was dead, and I was able to pick out this very nice axe to slice and dice mobs with. I did have to work on my axe skill for just a little while, but everything worked out okay. I hearthed back to Dalaran and finally took the Orc that's been standing in Krasus Landing for ages up on his offer of heading to Icecrown and did some quests there for the Argent Crusade. They're decent enough folks, I guess.

Finally, I did a quick run through regular Halls of Lightning with Tyra (damn, you're such a good healer) and three other players in a PuG. I died on Ionar thanks to a freak crit and then the stupid shocking debuff, but our DPS druid shifted to bear and took him down. Most excellent playing, thanks for being a good PuG group. Unfortunately, neither one of the tanking items dropped. I guess I'll just have to keep trying. Now that I've been inside once, I feel more comfortable PuGging it and not feeling like an idiot, so I may run it more often now when I have the time. As a tank I should be able to get groups often. Oh, and I was wearing my Wyrmrest Accord Tabard, so I earned a bit of rep with them for the run. That was groovy. :) I have shamelessly stolen a very good gear wishlist that I'm following thanks to Kadomi's blog, and I'm working my way towards getting each slot filled with something on that list.

Oh, and from what I hear, we're in talks with another guild leader to eventually get together to raid. Sounds cool. Hopefully that all works out, because Naxx is calling, and I wants it, precious. I wants it all.

IRL: X-Men and PvPOnline, plus Database

Yeah, so, I haven't actually played WoW for the past two days. I came home on Wednesday after listening to the newest Instance podcast with the PvPOnline creator and decided to read the comic. Like, all of it. The whole thing. I didn't stop till bedtime, and I still hadn't completely finished. Regardless, it took up all my WoW time. Last night I came home, helped with dinner, and then watched X-Men and X2 one after the other. Wasn't really in the mood for WoW after that, either.

So. I guess I'll get on tonight and this weekend. I really should get to level 80. I'm so freaking close at this point that it's stupid that I've taken this long (50% through 79). And I know that the guild wants to start raiding and I want to raid with them. And 80 is mandatory for that business. So. I guess I'll get on tonight. And this weekend.

On a side note, I'm going to take at least part of this weekend to fix my media storage situation. I have well over 200 DVDs in my collection, maybe closer to 250, and it is sadly unorganized. I have no idea where some of my movies are. And when I get in the mood for a film, but then can't find it, I go nuts. For example, I know for a fact that I own the Bourne Ultimatum. But I can't find it ANYWHERE. I've looked. So I broke down and just rented it from Blockbuster. By the way, Blockbuster used to be cool. Really cool. 99 cents for an old film for 5 days and no late fees. Yeah, they don't do that anymore. They're back to their old, craptacular ways. Damn that they are the only rental place near my house. One more reason to reorganize my DVD collection. I'm going to use my database software, Delicious Library, to get it all settled and happy. Plus, I just bought something like 5 dvds recently that I need to put in there...

TL;DR: Haven't played; will play tonight and weekend in between organizing my DVD collection. Yeah.

79, Helmet, Helicopter, and Fish

Busy weekend for Yrovi: I hit level 79, upgraded some gear, and decided to work on… fishing. Gah! It’s like watching paint dry, I swear. If only it didn’t make leveling cooking that much faster…

So, I was diligently working on dailies in Sholozar Basin (I should even get the Simple Request achievement this evening), and decided to finish up the questline featuring the Avatar of Freya while I was hanging out with the puppy-men. Figuring out the second fight took the longest (funny, you should walk away from Urgreth when he’s casting shadow barrage to get out of range… why on earth didn’t that occur to me right at the beginning!) and after taking him down, Hailscorn was really easy with just blasting away the adds. Regardless, I finished the quest and got myself a Greathelm of the Titan Protectorate. As much as I didn’t want to replace my Tankatronic Goggles (with my nice meta gem), these were far too great an upgrade to ignore. Bye-bye engineering goggles! I hardly knew you.

Because my engineering goggles were gone, I needed to craft some way to see track gas clouds on my map. Practically free gold ftw! So, that meant either crafting goggles that I would switch out whenever I was flying around, or a belt tinker. A wonderful frost mage in my guild pointed out a plate belt that he had placed in there a week ago. It was a decent upgrade over my old one, so I grabbed it from the guild bank, put in some gold (I’m trying to put gold in each month), and tinkered it right away. Great, I can see far distances again and I can still see those gas clouds. Two upgrades and everything is still working. Check and check. (Speaking of engineering, I finally managed to snag some Elemental Seaforium off of the AH so I was able to craft my Flying Machine! Yay! YAY! I'm really excited. :D I love this thing.)

I ran Halls of Stone this weekend as well, which was fun. It was a guild run with some PuG mixed in, so it wasn’t as perfect as I would have liked, but it went pretty well nevertheless. Our guild’s holy Pally extraordinaire, Tyra, healed as I tanked and DPS was rounded out with the aforementioned plate-belt-depositing frost mage, Car, a Shammy and a Retadin. It was going well, although I really wish that I had had more time to read up on the instance before going in, as I had never seen it before or researched the boss fights. The Shammy and Tyra were very helpful, explaining the fights, although the Retadin wanted to speed things up as we were moving too slow for his tastes. Poor Car bit the dust right after the Retadin suggested we go faster thanks to a poor pull on my part. Sorry Car! Also, I was using a new mouse-over macro for Devastate during this run, and I think I’m still having to get used to the mechanics. I occasionally still use my mouse to click on more situational abilities, which means it isn’t moused-over a target… *sigh* Something tells me I may need to rearrange my UI.

I also loved the buff food that Tyra had on her during the run, so I decided I should really work on leveling up my cooking. And the best way to level up cooking is to level up fishing. So I’m fishing, and using El’s Guide to do so. I’ve just gotten the quest from Nat Pagle himself to find those four very rare fish, so I’m off to explore the far reaches of old-world Azeroth and get those fish. In the meantime, I’ll gather up the supplies I’ll need for the cooking quest, as I’m ready for that as well. I have the cheese and the clam meat (thanks to that quick quest in the Raventusk village in the Hinterlands, which also netted me a better fishing pole), and when I log in tonight I’ll run up the hill into the Hinterlands proper to take down some Owlbeasts for the giant eggs. All-in-all I’m doing well. I think I’ll even hit 80 by the end of the week.

Level 79, a new Helm and belt, a fancy-pants helicopter that I adore, and lots (and lots) of fish. Busy weekend for Yrovi. Lets hope the week is just as busy.