Today is Tuesday. Today is the day that we have extended maintenance for Patch 3.1, and, boy, has it been long in coming. Ulduar, dual specs, the Argent Tournament, tons of new items including armor, weapons, pets, and mounts, and plenty of class changes are all included in this patch. Also, everyone gets a free respec! Hooray for free respecs. It's a chance to clean up that spec if you made a minor mistake and couldn't be bothered to spend the 50G to fix it.
As evidenced by earlier posts I've made, my focus will be on the Argent Tourney, at least at first. I'm no raider, not yet ayway, and there are plenty of rewards I want from the Tournament, like the tanking axe from the trolls, a little squire gruntling, and the ever-so-beautiful white skeletal warhorse from the Forsaken, not to mention all the various non-combat pets available from each racial faction.
Since I haven't even stepped foot in the Vault, Naxx, or the Obsidian Sanctum, Ulduar seems a million years away, although all of the lore associated with it has my interest. Check out the trailer if you haven't already, just for kicks if nothing else. Varian is being a total ass again, as is Garrosh (not that this is unusual behavior for either one of them); Thrall and Jaina still have that total vibe going (I still haven't decided if it's adorable or creepy as hell); and the Kirin Tor are all pretty much just sitting there going "WTF? Get your sh!t together, morons, or we're all gonna die." It's fun. I giggled a bit. I also have a pretty sick sense of humor.
Becuase I'm so very behind the curve, even when it comes to casual players in general since the consensus is that you can PuG the entry-level raids, I'll be taking Yrovi to Icecrown to participate in the tournament. She recently (while helping prepare the way for Mål's eventual move up in the Blood Knight ranks) achieved exalted status with the Argent Dawn. One of my first goals with the new patch is to do dailies for the Argent Crusade. Once Yrovi is exalted with them as well, she'll get a nifty new title: "The Argent Champion" Nice, huh? I find it amusing, seeing as she was theoretically once a member of the Scourge. It's appropriate, though, since the Forsaken hate the Scourge and Arthas so thoroughly.
The tournament holds lots of rewards. Most of them are more vanity items than anything else, like shirts, tabards, banners, minipets, and mounts. There are, however, both rare and epic-level weapons available provided you have enough Champion's Seals. Now, as much as I love me some minipets and mounts, I feel a touch obligated to do all I can to upgrade my gear, especially if it is easy. All it takes is a small rep grind over maybe 10 days or so to get enough seals for a very nice tanking axe that actually looks pretty sweet. It is better than my current weapon in just about every way, and will help me on my way to preparing for raiding or even just running more heroics, since I'm woefully behind in that department as well (*cries* I only have 6 heroic badges so far, how sad is that? The resident Holy Pally just got the achievement for 500! *cries again*). Of course, that's entirely my fault for not wanting to PuG Heroics due to being nervous and not being familiar with instances. It's all a catch 22, though, so I'll stop there. I've qq'd about all this before anyway.
So, I guess my goals are as follows for 3.1:
1. Begin the Argent Tournament and work my way up the ranks, earning Seals.
Results in more reputation as well as opening up more rewards, like mounts.
2. Do Argent Crusade daily quests to reach exalted as quickly as possible.
Results in gold and a very nice title: Yrovi The Argent Champion
3. Purchase my Second Spec from my warrior trainer.
Results in a chance to play as DPS instead of the more intense tanking role.
3. Earn enough Champion Seals to purchase a sweet axe.
Results in a better weapon to aid in tanking, thus preparing me for harder content.
4. Run more heroics... for real, this time.
Results in badges to purchase gear upgrades, thus preparing me for harder content.
5. Eventually become a champion of all of the Horde factions in the Tourney.
Results in cool achievements, rewards, and another cool title: Crusader Yrovi
So, provided everything goes well, I'll see some nice upgrades soon as well as an entirely new way to play the game. I've been really lax in running heroics. I need to quit talking and start doing, but I really do feel uncomfortable running heroics when I haven't been in an instance before. There are days when I wish that I hadn't rolled a tank because playing as DPS is so much more fun, hence all the time I've spent on Mål. Thankfully, dual specs can help with that. It'll be interesting to run instances as dps, if I can manage to find a group. Notice I said "instances" not "heroics." I've been saving up all the plate gear I get from quests and such that is geared toward a warrior dps build, but they aren't heroics standard stuff. I've been in enough bad PuGs to know better than to think I can just switch specs and jump right into heroics.
I'm wanting to go Fury, of course, dual-wielding Two-Handers with Titan's Grip. It looks like a ton of fun. The only real drawback at the moment is that I'm going to have to level up all my two-handed weapon skills, seeing as I haven't touched any since around level 62 or so. I think I played around with the Hellboar Carver in Zangermarsh a bit, but once 3.1 hit and prot could actually do some damage, all my two handed weapons got vendored.
As for heroics, more and more members of the guild are hitting 80 and gearing up. That's good news for me, because it means I can tank for them. In fact, one of our mages who hit 80 about two weeks ago, is ready to start running heroics and I think he's tired of all the PuGs, too. He set up an event on the guild's calendar to run heroic Utgarde Keep later this week. He has the unfortunate circumstance of being unable to play weekends easily due to work. That means he can really only run stuff through the week. Fine by me, as long as we don't play too terribly late. I'll run heroics with my guild anytime, because they have to love me, even if I screw up. lol ;-)
And hey, over the next few weeks, maybe I'll just run all the instances on normal, to get a feel for them. It's a normal thing to do, and I feel that it's sort of my job to at least have a basic idea of each of the Northrend instances. In the end, I eventually want to be able to say, "Hi, my name is Yrovi and I'm one of the Main Tanks of Cradle of Filth." I think that would be really cool. :)