So that’s been making the rounds, so there you go. I love it, especially Illidan’s little cameo, and – oh God – is Archimonde humping the World Tree? What has been seen cannot be unseen.

After finishing up my Fool for Love requirements, I finally took the jump yesterday and made my second spec a tank spec. My primary spec for raiding, at least for the last two weeks, has been a variant of Gravity’s single-target raid blood spec – somewhat adjusted for AOE, by moving 3 out of Spell Deflection and into Morbidity, like so. I may just end up copying Gravity entirely, though; I just informed my raid that my AOE would suck, and they adjusted accordingly. Second tank was a bear, and the two of us took it up to the plague wing, so I’d call it at least a moderate success. Also through Sister Svalna and, for a change, took a poke at Valithria Dreamwalker. I can also DPS in this spec if I absolutely have to, like last night when we 7-manned (or 8-manned, my memory’s fuzzy) XT for the weekly (just under the wire).

My other spec is now a pretty stock 2H Frost with IIT build. This one is explicitly for five mans; it ends up with about 1000 less health than the blood build, and in my opinion feels moderately squishier, but in heroics that hardly matters – it’s just being able to build snap AOE threat, and that’s one thing this build excels at (barring, of course, stupid DPS – like the fury warrior I ran DTK with yesterday who insisted on, if I paused for a second to get HB or DnD, pulling himself with Heroic Throw > Charge > Whirlwind. I should’ve let him tank, by which I mean tank the floor, more often than I already did).

I guess that’s that, then. No real progress to speak of, a few new shinies on my equipment list but I still can’t get rid of those damned blue boots. It’s starting to get a little ridiculous. At this point I’d put just about anything in that spot. Wish me boot mojo!

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The World (of Warcraft) Is Just Awesome

In other words, it was a great experience. I did feel a little bad soaking up that much loot on day 1, but there was only one piece that anyone else even rolled on – Ramaladni’s Blade of Culling – and as a ret pally, he was kind enough to defer it to me so that I could gear up my … wait for it … tank set.

That’s right, yours truly is working on tanking. I’ve had a long history of DPSing. I originally intended to roll my death knight to tank all along, but once he hit 80, my first raiding guild found that they already had enough tanks (a pally, a warrior, another DK, and maybe even a bear?) and so I was shuffled into DPS. And thus my DPS set grew leaps and bounds ahead of my tank set, while I still soaked up pieces from 10-man Naxx as well as the stuff no one else wanted. In every other guild I joined, the story was the same: I was needed for my DPS, because there were sufficient tanks. And so it continued: my DPS set continued to get constant upgrades, while my tank set suffered for it. For a while I didn’t even like tanking, or so I told myself, but the random heroics have changed all that. They reminded me of the times in Naxx, in OS, even the few off-tanking opportunities I had in Ulduar. But the intention and the skill (and the learning from Gravity) don’t mean much if you don’t have the gear to support it…

…but hey, you can always buy, craft, or farm new gear.  

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A regular Loot Hoover

So the holiday lull is over and the new year begins. My real life resolutions for 2010 aren’t anything impressive, and I’ve been cheating on WoW with consoles so I could really use some goal setting… so let’s take a look at what I intend to get done in WoW this year.

• Finish Insane in the Membrane before Cataclysm – or at least the goblin and Shen’drelar portions. Ideally I’d like to have all of this done by the expansion, so I can march into Deepholm and prove that I really am insane – see, it says so right above my head… Barring that, I’d like to at least finish the Steamwheedle Cartel and Shen’drelar reputations. Feralas is marked for some pretty heavy changes, and as it’s the easiest source for both of those (or at least the best for this title), I’d like to get done with that place while I can. Goblin I can do – Shen’drelar will be hell on the pocketbook… I suck at making money. This also has a sub-resolution:
• Get my rogue to 60+. This is the only way I’m going to be able to pickpocket all those Heavy Junkboxes unless a miracle occurs. The problem is, I really don’t like playing my rogue, so I need to use my remaining month of recruit-a-friend time and power-level her.
• Finish The Loremaster on my warlock. This is the title I originally wanted for him back when he was a little Forsaken warlock. Then he was a gnome warlock on Kael’thas and I’m sorry, I just can’t play gnomes. Now he’s an orc warlock back on Feathermoon and is only a few levels higher than he was at the end of Wrath. He’s halfway done with basically all of Loremaster, barring Northrend, so I guess I should also add:
• Finally (FINALLY) finish Higher Learning. Do you know how close I am to this? I need one book. One. It is never there. I have seen its joke replacements for the last four months. I WILL FINISH THIS ACHIEVEMENT THIS YEAR. Finished on January 18, 2010.
• Get my warlock to 80 before Cataclysm. That way I can ignore him until it’s almost time for the expansion after that. Ha ha, I kid.
• Get my Violet Proto-Drake. As it stands, I’ll get this during the Midsummer Fire Festival – assuming I don’t get boned by the RNG again during Valentine’s Day. The Midsummer Fire Festival is the only event I’m not at least 33-50% done with, because it was the only holiday that passed during the time that I quit playing WoW. I’ve been cleaning up so far, and I’ve got no reason to stop. Hot Pink Drake of Speed, here I come!
• Level a druid, paladin, or shaman to 80. Really, just level anything to 80. I’m pretty sure I’m the last remaining person in World of Warcraft with one level 80 character. And I’ve really had the urge to level a kitty druid lately… and I do have the leather heirlooms for it… I’ve just been trying to hold off on it until I finish leveling my rogue, and I was also kind of waiting until troll and worgen druids were available. However, I’m bad at not giving in to temptation.

So yeah, that’s it. There’s my list. It’s a short list of resolutions (spoiler: I typed "reoslutions" again), but it should be enough to keep me occupied.

Especially Insane in the Membrane, which some days feels so overwhelming that I start to think maybe Battlemaster would’ve been a better idea.

Oh wait! I forgot one!

• Post informative stuff about Death Knights again. The death knight blogosphere shrank about as fast as it grew, didn’t it? And my old guides could really use a good revamp. So yeah, I figure 2010 is a good time for me to get back into posting about the art of death knighting again.

So what are your goals for the year?

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Shaking off the dust; WoW resolutions

Ah, December – that time of the year where I typically let my blog posts trickle to a minimum. Not out of neglect for you, O dear reader, all 3 of you. No no – I simply find a lot of other things to do that happen to coincide with the holiday season, plus I spend a good deal of time out of town and not playing WoW.

I’ve been running PUGs, like everyone else, but to be honest I don’t even have a good story about those. Oh, there’s the one where our tank ninja-quit during the fourth wave in the Tribunal of Ages in Halls of Stone, and me and the fury warrior ran around like chickens with our heads cut off, keeping the billion dwarves off of our druid (who kept us all up!) and our elemental shaman (who knocked them all down). And then we went and punched Sjonnir in his ugly face to round out the night.

And yes, I’ll be finishing up Winter Veil. I only have 4 achievements until the title that I couldn’t finish last year, so this year, Merrymaker is mine!

However, I’ve also been playing other games. Gasp, shock! Blame the Polygamerous podcast (episode 3 just came out! Check it out here, it’s a good listen), but I periodically play other games now. Finally beat Persona 4, for instance, and a little Modern Warfare 2 and Zeno Clash (which wins hands-down for weirdest friggin’ game of the year). However, the game I can already tell is going to eat a lot of time now that I have it again is Mass Effect.

I’ve said it before, I’ll say it again – the only people who can match and, in my opinion, far exceed Blizzard’s ability to create a fictional universe down to the niggling details that don’t affect gameplay are the fine folks at Bioware. I’d love to know how many of them are frustrated ex-tabletop GMs.   Mass Effect was one of my favorite Xbox 360 games, if not the favorite, back when I had a working Xbox 360. However, due to complications with the 360 itself, I never quite got to finish it… and so when I saw it was only $20 on Steam….

Well, Merry Christmas to me.

(Incidentally, if you’d like to be friends with me on Steam, here’s my profile.)

So that’s why you may not hear much here in December. Now you know!

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Letting it languish

Then Pea and I decided to do the new Icecrown instances; it’s not random, but we still wanted to see it. Picked up Nighthawque and, well, there’s our DPS.   Tank and a healer joined in (the healer, amusingly, was the only one not from our server – and he was from Alexstrasza, where I once had a toon, once upon a time). We completed the Forge of Souls and Pit of Saron, and while I’m sure I’ll be sick of them eventually, I absolutely loved them. They were different, they were actually challenging since none of us knew any of the mechanics, and Bronjahm is a treat to fight. Sadly we didn’t make it past the Halls of Reflection; we wiped on Falric when he had virtually no health, and never managed to do that well again (it was about 2:30AM server time, so I’m going to blame it on that).

UI redesign: I spent a couple hours last night redoing parts of my UI from the ground up. Several of my addons were unnecessary or could be rolled into smaller, more efficient versions. Just for comparison, here’s what my UI looked like prior to yesterday (click to embiggen):

Several new addons later, I got something I like. I’m still fiddling with the precise layout, but at least I know I like all of the addons themselves – except maybe Magic Runes. I may switch back to SimpleRune or its successor. And I’m not a big fan of TidyPlates – I find that in groups of enemies they tend to completely overlap, making targeting an enormous pain in the ass. Here’s what it looked like, from the beginning of the evening until near the end (again, click to embiggen):

Since I know someone’s going to ask – the thin white circle you see around me in several of the combat pics is from Power Auras (specifically, that one’s letting me know that Unbreakable Armor is ready for use).

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Random dungeons and UI redesign

1. Get into LFG and finish the 5-mans, straight off the bat. I was blathering Ratshag’s ear off again this morning on IM about how there’s 1, maybe 2 drops in all of the first two instances for me… and then I can replace damn near most of my gear in heroic Halls of Reflection. (Plus I kinda wanna see Uther.) In fact, "PUG randomly and constantly" is on my list of things to do because I need – need – to get rid of this crappy mix of T7, T7.25, and T8 that I’m sporting. Ugh. Just… ugh.
2. Figure out where the hilt for Quel’Delar drops, and get started on it. Papa wants a brand new legendary (as in its place in the lore, not its gear level – don’t be overly literal) sword to dual-wield with his beer mug.
3. Log onto my rogue and enjoy the 70% walk speed stealth! And, maybe level her or something.
4. Wish that "bind on account" actually meant "binds to battle.net account" and not "binds to WoW account" because I would really like to send my paladin some heirlooms suited for following my rogue around healing her, but unfortunately that won’t happen. One step at a time, I guess. (Cross-faction BOA! Woooooo~)
5. Keep working on Insane in the Membrane, since I’ve been slacking lately, kinda. (As far as I’m concerned, leveling my rogue is working on Insane in the Membrane. Those junkboxes won’t pickpocket themselves.)

So what are you going to do first when the patch drops?

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The first five things I’m doing after 3.3 drops

On the up side, cooking all of the holiday foods got me from 1-330 Cooking (well, 285 to 330 on my main) with little effort and only a few gold, then 330-342 with only slightly more (yay turkeys!). Then I bumped Raj up to Northrend level cooking by making the ingredients (and a little extra) for some Super Hot Stew. Progress! Doing one alt a day sounds good, I figure, then they’ll all be self-sufficient up to a certain point – at least as far as food goes.

Today: dailies, get a hat, kill Ikiss, somehow kill those blasted turkeys, then hunt down rogues for the rest of the week (by which I mean "make level 1 rogues on my second account and shoot them with turkey shooters").

Oh, and for anyone wondering: yes, Spirit of Sharing stacks with the passive human rep boost. This is the week for you to get your rep grind on. I can now get 420 rep for freeing Knot, 605 rep per libram turn-in, 90.75 rep per Gordok Ogre Suit… you get the picture. If I play my cards right, I might actually be able to step into goblin cities again by the end of the week. If you’re trying to grind rep for tabards, achievements, or anything else, now’s the time to do it.

You can also re-up your Spirit of Sharing in some weird places. I was at Honor Hold last night, and they only had 3 of the 5 chairs per table, so I guess that was out… but Telaar had a fully-stocked table right next to the flight point. If you’re an Ally in Outland, now you know where to go. I would wager that the tables at Thrallmar and Garadar are about the same, but I can’t confirm. Nagrand may be the place to go for those grinding Outland reps!

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Turkeys

Just a bit further to go… to be exact,

• 56 Pristine Black Diamonds
• 114 to 234 Large Brilliant Shards
• 60 Librams of (Protection or Rapidity or Focus)
• 1,230 Heavy Junkboxes
• 1,284 Rogues/Mages/Swords/Demons Decks, or 92 of any other Darkmoon Decks, or some combination thereof
• 172 turn-ins of Free Knot!, not counting turn-ins of The Gordok Ogre Suit

But hey – at least, I don’t have to go back to Durnholde Keep anymore!

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Small victories

• Baron Rivendare’s Deathcharger. As you can see from my armory statistics, I’ve killed Baron Rivendare 42 times. This means I’ve just passed the point where I had a 33% chance of seeing the reins drop at least once. Thus far, I’ve failed that chance. But hey! Only 24 more kills until I’ve had a 50% chance of seeing it at least once! My dedication to this was so great that my DK was the Argent Champion long before there was ever a hint of a tournament.
• Swift Zulian Tiger. This one has only recently joined the unicorn list thanks to my discovery that with careful tabbing and the occasional Mind Freeze (on what appears to be, on my screen, an invisible castbar…), I can in fact solo High Priest Thekal. Still, it’s on the list.
• Swift Razzashi Raptor. Luckily, I’m in Zul’gurub quite a lot anyway, trying to get the raptor boss to cough up the goods. He’s an easier fight than usual when you’re solo, if only because he tends to fear you out of his whirlwinds 90% of the time. Not that he’s that hard anyway. Silly Bloodlord. This one means even more to me now that I’m primarily playing Alliance.
• Bindings of the Windseeker. I’ve only recently discovered that with a minimum of trouble and trash-killing, I can work my way to Garr in 20 or 30 minutes. Unfortunately he has yet to drop the bindings. I have yet to be able to kill Baron Geddon solo, though, to try for the other half. When he’s hellfiring, I take too much damage to Death Strike my way out of; when he’s not hellfiring, he’s shooting me into the air. It’s very annoying.

  Oh, and if you believe Rawr, Thunderfury is #12 of the list of off-hand weapons available to me. Don’t think I won’t show up to an instance with it.

• Insane in the Membrane. This is the king of all unicorns. I initially thought about listing everything separately but let’s face it, that’d just be post-padding fodder. I honestly feel like I’m making some serious progress towards this goal nowadays. Last night I hit Honored with Shen’dralar (only 60 librams to go!), a week ago I hit Honored with Darkmoon Faire (only 1,200 mini-Darkmoon Decks to go!), Ratchet is nearly out of the Hated range and into merely Hostile (only a crapton of Knot Thimblejack rescues to go!), and my baby rogue only needs 42 or so more levels before she can start pick-pocketing the appropriate humanoids for me to get Junkboxes to get exalted with Ravenholdt (only 1,200-something junkboxes to go!). Progress! (Of course, I keep getting distracted by my pesky shaman, who insists on pew pew’ing his way across Outland and AV.)

So there’s my unicorns – what’re yours?

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Chasing unicorns

2) Got other upgrades, mostly from badges and ToC and suchlike. Is all good, but paying for enchants and gems is getting old.

3) Got Kallech ready to run Sunken Temple, then do one last leveling sprint in vanilla.

4) Grinded pirates for 4 or 5 hours. Noticeable progress made!

5) Completely invalidated all my numbers on pirates (some of which were wrong anyway due to a miscalculation about when the rep stopped – right BEFORE revered, not just AFTER revered) by changing Rajaat to a human for the duration of the rest of Insane in the Membrane. Bleh. Not super-happy about it, as humans in WoW are kind of… well, bland… but I think I’ll get more mileage out of Every Man for Himself and the expertise racials (and, of course, Diplomacy). I dunno. We’ll see if I stay that way or not – maybe being human will grow on me.

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Things done this weekend