Respected / Loremaster / Gear

Just to let you all know, while I am sad to see me doing this, I find that I rarely ever use my Holy spec anymore. The guild that I run with ((and more specifically the 10-man group I go with)) has two druid healers who come along, and they both can handle the raid heals quite well. Because of that, I have made Discipline my main spec with Shadow as my off.

Now, I haven’t played in Shadow since I first hit lvl 80 and got myself duel spec, so I will need to get back into playing it ((as well as start to gear it up some)). I can say with the ease it is of getting Triumph now in the game, I already have the 5 tier sets for my shadow set, just need to gem them and get some trinkets / rings that are more tattered to DPS rather then heals.

I’m not sure if I will be keeping the shadow though; even if I decide not too, Disc will become my main focus with the other ((shadow or holy)) becoming my off.

I think this is a good move for me, and I will need to start practice in using more shields and less renews. That is where I am having the most trouble right now.

And in other news, with the release of 3.3, I've decided to spend more time working on the Loremaster achievement ((at least the ones for Eastern Kingdoms and Kalimdor)). I know that the next expansion isn't due for a while now, but I want to try and get as many of the Vanilla achievements as possible before then. Who knows what will happen when Cataclysm does come out.

As of right now, I am just a few hundred away from having the Kalimdor achievement, and around 150-ish for the Eastern Kingdoms one. I'm not worried with the Outlands / Northrend ones since Cataclysm isn't suppose to mess with them that much. But once I do get the Old World ones, then I will start on Outlands then move to Northrend.

As for gear, the only new gear I got myself was a new belt: Braid of Salt and Fire from Ick in The Pit of Saron.

I still have not completed Halls of Reflection on Heroic yet. I did it on normal for the quest line, but I want to get though it on heroic to see what drops are there. The group that we normally go there with are having some trouble just dealing with all the mobs that are ranged. We are trying various theories and trials to see which works best with us. So far, we did the best while staying in the middle of the room, but once one of the casters ((mainly the mage)) focus' on me, then we tend to wipe, so we are working on ways to deal with that.

Paladin Power FTW!

I know, I know, I haven't posted in like the past two weeks or so. Things have been quite hectic here with work and the holidays ((woo! Christmas is upon us!)), and truthfully, not that much is happening in the game right now.

There are a few things of note to mention though:

1) Our guild can now almost one-shot all of Trial of the Crusader (10-man). We are still having problems with people not understanding when to swap vortexes in the Twins fight, and we are trying various styles of doing the last boss to see which works best with us.

2) We can one-shot the first 6 bosses in Ulduar (10-man) now; still having some problems with Freya and Thorim though. Just can't get the coordination together for some reason.

3) I've been leveling my paladin like a mad woman. XD

Yep, #3 is right, I've been working on leveling my paladin the past week or so. I can say that she is extremely easy to level; I basically don't have to stop for any reason, just swap between two judgments depending on if I need more mana or more HP at the current time. And the two heirlooms I gave her help with the leveling of gaining 20% more XP.

I am running some instances and various other things with Liénda though in order to get myself the 2-handed Axe Heirloom for her so that she can start leveling with that instead of the 1-handed sword +shield combo she has right now. I'm sure that will help some with the DPS and going faster.

One of the good things about leveling another toon right now is that she is finding many things that Liénda never found; such as enchanting & cooking recipes, various blue items that sell well on the AH ((thanks Lilléo for dealing with that)) and tons upon tons of random green trash that Liénda is DEing into dusts / shards / essence that sell well on the AH.

The only thing I haven't gotten use to yet is all the buffs ((seals / auras / blessings / etc)) that the pallies use. I'm having trouble just managing them all and knowing what's on at what time. :3 I'm sure I can figure it out eventually, but just haven't found the way for me that works.

Plus, I can't figure out how to use Pallypower ((the add-on)). I will just need to play with it more and figure it out, but for now, I am just going to ignore it and deal with other things that are on my mind. Like where to go now. :3 Just finished with most of the Wetland quests, now looking into moving north with her.

Fun times, fun times.

New Helm & Staff

We just finished running a guild Trail of the Crusader [10-man], and I got myself some new gear. :3 I'm quite happy.


As you can see, some things have been updated from my previous gear post; mainly the addition of a Royal Moonshroud Robe, and then the two new things I just got today.

The Moonshroud Robe was quite difficult for me to obtain. I had enough of the Moonshroud and the two yellow gems from just the various materials I could gather and obrtain, but the Crusader Orbs was where my trouble came from.

However, the price for the Crusader Orbs has dropped substantially over the past few weeks. Because of this, I was able to get most of them for around 400g each ((with a few going as high as 550g)). While this drained me of all my gold, I was able to get a good friend of mine to make this robe for me, and now I love it. :3

As for the other two new things I got, I got a new helm; the Helm of Clouded Sight.


The main thing I don't like about this helm is that it covers all of my face. But I can live with that. It's just looks, and I got it for the stats and how much better it is then my older one; the Conqueror's Cowl of Sanctification. I'll be keeping the cowl for my set, but won't be wearing it anymore unless I get more of that particular set and use it for RP reasons.

The last thing I got was a new staff ((the Enlightenment)) to replace my Mariel's Sorrow & Antique Cornerstone Grimoire combo.


From the calculations I made, I loss some healing power and intellect, but I gain much more critical hit and almost double my haste. I will be keeping the Dagger / off-hand combo with me though; at least for a little while, till I decide if I like this staff more or not.

I may end up sticking with the staff though since it's been ages since I last had one, and I kind of miss having one with me. :3

Pilgrim's Bounty

Well, earlier this week, a brand new holiday was introduced into WoW: Pilgrim's Bounty. As you can see in the above screenshot, I have finished all the achievements, and got myself the title and the Plump Turkey pet. Bellow will be all the achievements for this holiday, and my thoughts on the processes on how to complete them, and how I felt about them.


This one wasn't that hard; just took a little figuring out to know that whichever chair you are sitting in ((each chair at the tables correspond to a specific food)) was the one you would pass if you had someone selected. Basically, just needed to pass the specific food more then once, so that when they already had some, it bounced off their head; resulting in a food fight.

Easy enough to get, so no complaints there; just no real challenge.


Now that I figured out how to 'pass' the food, I was able to finish this up. Not much to say about it other then having to rotate around the table wasn't too much fun; especially on the first day it started when everyone ele was trying to do it as well. XD had to rush to the chairs so that no one else would get them.


Now, while sitting at the tables, if you eat 5 stacks of each of the foods, you would get a Spirit of Sharing buff on you. This buff would increase your reputation gained by 10% for 1 hour; useful for when you are working on rep like I am with the Kurenai. But having to go to each of the faction's major cities in order to do this achievement was a little bit of a time waster. I did it since it was easy, but there is no real reason to go to each city. They offer the same buff regardless of where you were at.


Speaking of eating, this one was fun. I had just gotten my chefs hat right before doing this, so I was able to cook all these things real quickly; and since they are required cooking for the dailies of this holiday, this achievement came naturally.

Just like any other cooking achievement, not that hard to do other then gathering up the ingredients. That's about the hardest of it.


As yes, the 'daily' achievement. Can't for get this one. Just do the dailies, do them all, do them once or twice; doesn't matter, and you will have this one in no time at all.


Now we get into some of the fun achievements. This one was simple; just sit at each o the horde's tables. Orgrimmar and Silvermoon Cities was a joke; right outside the city gates; thus I wasn't PvP flagged for either one.

However, Thunder Bluff and Undercities was within the city limits and you did get flagged. Luckily for me, I was able to get in and out quickly enough that I didn't have any trouble with anyone.

Undercity was the only place I got close. Someone spotted me and right after I got the achievement ((since I saved it for last)) I had to rush out while they chased me. XD was great fun.

Just like the one with going to your own faction's cities, this one was kind of pointless. If it was something like stealing the food from them, it would be more interesting, but just sitting at the table had no thrill to it.


I don't know what they were thinking with this one. It was a pain to get and to do. I was able to do it after eating some Tracker Snacks and making a simple macro that would target them and shoot my wand, but was still a pain to accomplish.

Yet it was one of the funnest ones I've done in a long time. I really enjoyed it, and would love to see more like this.


I was able to solo Talon King Ikiss quite easily on normal difficulty in holy spec, so this one wasn't that hard to do. just took some time since I had to replace both my helm and my robe, I had around 12k mana ((compared to my normal 23k)), and so couldn't cast as many spells.

I mostly left Damage of Time ((DoTs)) on him while running around and avoiding his arcane blasts.

Yet another fun one to do, but not something I'd want to do each holiday.


Now this, this one was the most awful achievement I've seen. Many of them I was able to find easily, but then trying to find an Orc and a Troll rogue on my realm was like following the plot of LOST after watching season 3 before the first two.

The only reason I was able to get it was because I farmed the starting zone of the Orcs and Trolls till I saw some low level ones come and I shot them on sight. It was quite funny actually seeing them run away, but still...


And the do all the other achievements to get me achievement.

All in all, I liked this holiday. The way they handled the outfits was different, and I liked that. It wasn't about doing the dailies everyday in order to get enough 'tokens' to purchase the garb, but just do them once and pick which piece you want. I had to do it for several days to get all the pieces AND enough guns to shoot all the rogues, but it wasn't that bad.

I'll be adding this outfit with the rest of my holiday outfits; and hope that new things will be around next year.

WoW's 5th Birthday

'nuff said...

Naxxramas [10-man]

For some reason, I never finished this up till last night. Our guild was working on doing an Undying run of Naxxramas [10-man] ((which we failed miserably at XD)), and and I finally downed the stupid Dog, Gluth, getting me that Construct Quarter achievement, and the Fall of Naxxramas achievement.

Many of my raiding group don't really need anything from here anymore. Most of us are working on Ulduar [25-man], Trail of the Crusader [10-man] and various other raids like Onyxia [10-man] / [25-man] for the gear that we need.

However, there are some of us who are still trying to gather up some of the tier sets that do drop here. I was unlucky personally. Nothing from the priest tier sets dropped. It was all Warrior / DK / Shammy stuff. I did get the achievement though; so to me, that was worth it.

Now to work on the Undying again. We really need to get through that.

Netherwing

I finally, FINALLY finished up my reputation grind with the Netherwing Drakes. Out of all The Burning Crusade reputations, this was the first one I started ((because I just adore the mounts there)), but it wasn't the first one I ended. For some reason, I didn't like this grind that much, and so I would neglect it for other reputation grinds, like with the Sha'tari Skyguard.

I'm not sure what it was about this grind that I didn't like. I know that some of the quests were just combersome; grab his gland out of this animal to poison 12 groups, use the booterang on 20 people who are all spread out and never easy to spot unless close to the ground, etc. like that.

I guess the Sha'tari Skyguard rep was easier to me because I was able to simply kill these Skettis and gain reputation that way. Who knows.

Anyway, which one did I go with? I went with the black one; the Onyx. I think it's so cute looking; though I wish you could get them all instead of just the one. :(

Upon finishing this grind, I then gained another achievement as well. It is following, not much to really say there; beyond that I'm working on the next phase of it.