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

Got unexpectedly pulled in to tank in ICC-10 when a spot opened up and I was on standby. I probably should’ve passed to the other person who could’ve tanked and was also on standby, because holy shit I am not ready for that place yet. Especially Deathbringer Saurfang. After several valiant attempts, including two glorious screwups by me (one of which involved Heimdall tanking Saurfang solo for about 3 minutes straight while I chewed on the pile of bones that was accumulating at our feet), we wandered over to ToC-10 instead so that I could work on gear and Malak – the aforementioned other tank – could work on tanking experience (along with me apologizing copiously for not being ready yet).

Apparently ToC-10 is more my speed! Definitely felt less like I was flailing like a roper at my keyboard. Gormok is a decent way to learn at least the tank portion of the fight – obviously it doesn’t compare on the DPS end, but the coordination of switching off at X time is pretty similar, but less of an emergency. Malak and I seem to be able to out-threat each other when we have to when switching, as well, which is nice. Made it to Faction Champions before a variety of non-fight-related issues (sleepiness, weird lag issues, etc.) knocked us out for the night.

So yeah. It was a learning experience! This weekend, since SNOWPOCALYPSE 2010 is supposedly on its way, I’ll be taking the opportunity to do things I want to do that don’t include raiding, including grinding mass numbers of badges, trying to pug a VoA or something of that nature, possibly transferring and leveling my shaman or warrior, or … other things. I dunno.

Oh! Before I forget: does anyone know how to get Skada to show threat? I switched from Recount to Skada since Recount seems to be all over the boards sometimes, and while I was able to get it to show DPS, Skada has never once shown me anything except a blank window when I’m looking at threat. I suspect I may have a setting switched on that is causing it to get ignored or somesuch, so if anyone has a good intro to using Skada, I’d appreciate it.

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Still alive

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

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

1. I wanted to make sure I could get Sigrat’s keybindings set up ahead of time, and
2. It’s easier to pull with a mage, on account of having a ranged attaack with a range of greater than 10 feet, and
3. There have recently been changes that made dual-boxing a melee character … well, possible.

It’s still a touch awkward (namely if you try to attack with the melee character while the monster is still running towards you), but it’s a far sight better than having to run through the mob and flip it around. Here’s the guide. (Thanks to the folks at Dual-Boxing.com for figuring this out well before I ever needed it.)

• Besides the required keystroke passing app (I use Keyclone), you’ll want to have an addon that allows auto-following after combat. I’m currently using Jamba, last time I used TwoBoxToolkit. I can vouch for both; though Jamba’s got features above and beyond TBTK, and makes configuration a lot easier (plus has some graphical niceties like a small window on my "master" character showing how close everyone on my Jamba Team list is to leveling, whether they’re following, etc.), TBTK will get the job done.
• On the character or characters who will just be following you around, turn ON click-to-move (Main Menu > Interface > Mouse > check Click to Move).
• On the same character(s), go into the key bindings and bind something to Interact With Target. As the name implies, this is essentially a keybinding for right clicking. I set mine to the same key that, on all my other characters, makes pets attack. It’s fitting.
• And last but not least, you’ll want a macro you can hit to make this character assist your "master" character. I use a simple macro that says "/assist party1" because my dwarfadin will actually be following two different people. For ease of use I actually worked this into my other macros – I macroed together "/assist party1" and Judgement of Light, for instance.
• On the "master" character, combat goes like so:
• Engage target. For ranged classes, pull, for other classes, wade into combat.
• Once the target’s positioned, hit the keybinding that corresponds to the assist macro on the follower, then the keybinding that corresponds to the Interact With Target keybinding on the follower.
• ???
• Profit!

Because of the way that assist, click-to-move and the Interact with Target keybinding work, your follower will target your target, then "right-click" it – i.e., pull out their weapon and run into melee. This way you’re not strictly limited to having a ranged follower or healbot follower for ease of use. I was actually considering having him level up holy and using my rogue to do all the damage, but it’s just more fun this way.

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Dualboxing melee

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

• Currently my reputation with the Steamwheedle Cartel is as follows:
• Ratchet: 9138/36000 Hated
• Gadgetzan: 8578/36000 Hated
• Everlook: 8055/36000 Hated
• Booty Bay: 8055/36000 Hated
• I’m totally a popular guy. So here’s the facts. For the first part of the reputation grinds:
• I’m not grinding Knot Thimblejack runs. I may regret it later, but I need to be able to set foot in goblin towns, and honestly – doing speed runs through DM to kill just the bosses to get Gordok Shackle Keys is not getting me any more librams than just wandering in and slaughtering everything willy-nilly – in fact, it’s getting me less.
• Killing pirates outside Ratchet nets me approximately 6000 rep per hour with Ratchet, because I can do it at top speed. Also, Baron Longshore is kind enough to simply count as 5 pirates. They also stop giving rep once I hit Revered with Ratchet. Keeping that in mind, I’m looking at having to kill approximately 10,771 Southsea Freebooters outside Ratchet, which will consume nearly 9 hours of my life.
• Since these pirates also yield 2.5 reputation with the other 3 Steamwheedle factions when killed, I’ll gain approximately 26,926 rep with the other 3 as well.
• So after finishing up Ratchet, where does that leave us, approximately?
• Ratchet: 3/21000 Revered
• Gadgetzan: 35504/36000 Hated
• Everlook: 34981/36000 Hated
• Booty Bay: 34981/36000 Hated
• Well, uh, almost 1/4 of the way there!
• Now it’s off to Gadgetzan. Here, killing the Southsea Pirates again nets me 5 rep a pirate until revered; again, Andre Firebeard is nice enough to count as 5 pirates. If I get bored I can go kill Wastewander Bandits, but unless there’s something I’m forgetting, they’re actually more spread out and would slow down my rep gain in Tanaris (3000/hr max) even more. Plus, Caliph Scorpidsting only counts as 3 pirates. Borrrrring (comparatively). Southsea it is.
• Once again, we kill pirates! Luckily, it’s a lot fewer pirates to get to revered with Gadgetzan, thanks to all that grinding in Tanaris. I have to kill exactly 5500 pirates in Tanaris – approximately 10 hours. This tips me over into Revered with Gadgetzan, and adds another heap of rep to the other 3.
• How much, approximately?
• Ratchet: 13,753/21000 Revered
• Gadgetzan: 4/21000 Revered
• Everlook: 3731/6000 Friendly
• Booty Bay: 3731/6000 Friendly
• Well, not bad. Ratchet is well on its way. If I killed another 2900 pirates in Tanaris (and really, after I’ve killed five and a half thousand, what’s another 2900?), that’d finish off Ratchet – netting me 7,248 rep with the three non-Gadgetzan cities (roughly 2 and a half, maybe 3 hours). Now, approximately:
• Ratchet: 1/999 Exalted
• Gadgetzan: 4/21000 Revered
• Everlook: 4979/12000 Honored
• Booty Bay: 4979/12000 Honored
• At this point, I have two choices: go back to doing Knot Thimblejack runs, or go back to Ratchet and grind their super-fast pirate rep grind until Everlook and Booty Bay ding exalted. I think I know which one I’m going to pick, don’t you? That’s 28,022 rep (roughly), or another 10 hours, or, in pirates, 11209 pirates. Putting me at:
• Ratchet: 1/999 Exalted
• Gadgetzan: 999/1000 Exalted
• Everlook: 1/999 Exalted
• Booty Bay: 1/999 Exalted

Oh, and then I still have to get exalted with Shen’dralar, exalted with Ravenholdt, and exalted with Darkmoon Faire.

Total Body Count: 30,380 pirates
Total Time Spent Just On Steamwheedle Reputation: 43-44 hours

Spot the madman!

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Plans; or, suck it, pirates