Pilgrim’s Bounty: A Guide to this easy Holiday!

Who knew when the Pilgrims met the Indians it was this hot?

This week the newest Holiday of Azeroth started: Pilgrim’s Bounty. Its a super easy Meta-Achievement that awards a Turkey Pet and “the Pilgrim” Title. Other bonuses include Festive Outfits, an awesome 10% Reputation Bonus, easily obtainable/cheap Food Buffs and an equally cheap equivalent to the Fish Feast.

Pretty much this Meta-Achievement is obtainable in as little as 2 days. Its really just a lot of travel (Portals are a HUGE time saver – Be extra nice to mages this week!), a lot of planning ahead and a LOT of cooking. If you’re cooking isnt high enough don’t worry! You can level it all the way to 300 by simply making the items required for the Holiday. Already a master chef? Your Chef Hat is going to come in REALLY handy here, so equip it!

The first day you venture out you will want to start in Undercity. You’ll find the first few achievements at the tables located around the area. There is a quest to eat every food available at each table. Simply have a seat and eat the food in front of you, stacking it up to five. You can pass this dish to someone else to acquire the “Food Fight” achievement. Move to another chair to eat another dish again stacking it up to five and passing… repeat until you’ve gotten each dish complete and you should also achieved “Sharing is Caring” as well as a buff that boosts Rep gains by 10%.

While you’re there, pick up the Bountiful Cookbook, which gives you every recipe you’ll need. Be sure to pick up 25 Tirisfal Pumpkins at the vendor as well. Theyre used for the Pumpkin pie, which you’ll need 20 of for a daily and then you’ll need 5 more for later. You can get Autumn Spices and Honey anywhere, so don’t worry about stocking up on those. You can also find the Bountiful Baskets here, which are required to make Bountiful Feasts, the holiday version of Fish Feasts.

There are 5 dailies each for this: 1 for each city and 1 that sends you to another city. At first you’ll want to get either 5 Turkey Shooters or 3 Turkey Shooters, the chest of your choice (Pilgrim’s Robe, Pilgrim’s Attire and Pilgrim’s Dress all count) and a Pilgrim’s Hat for the “Terrokar Turkey Time” achievement. Grab up the 2 dailies located in UC – cook whatever is needed there first, you’ll get the other materials at other city vendors and you’ll end up back in UC when you’re finished anyway. Turn in at UC an d then take the portal to SMC. There isn’t much to do here, but make sure you eat every food at their table for your “Pilgrim’s Paunch” Achievement. Head back to UC and out to Tirisfal, you’ll need to hunt up some Wild Turkey’s!

The Wild Turkey’s are lvl 1 Beasts you can find all over Tirisfal Glades. You’ll need to kill 40 of these in a row while working on a timer for your “The Turkinator” Achievement, but you shouldnt worry about that while you’re farming up these little guys to cook. At first you’ll just want to kill the ones you need, loot them until you’ve gotten 25 and then head to Org.

In Orgrimmar you’ll find the material needed to make your Cranberries, again make sure to get 5 extra for later! Grab the 2 dailies for Org, again cooking what you need for them first. Don’t forget to sit at the table there and obtain your Spirit of Sharing buff before moving on to Thunder Bluff. You’ll find the materials for the Sweet Potatoes there, don’t forget your extra 5. Also you’ll need the pumpkins you picked up from UC for the quest turn in there. Cook them up, hand them over and the last quest should send you back to UC. Again – Don’t forget to get your Spirit of Sharing buff, which should award you the “Pilgrim’s Paunch” achievement.Once back in UC, cook up whats needed for the last Daily Quest there. You should achieve both “Now we’re Cooking” and “Pilgrim’s Progress”.

There is a side quest chain once you’ve ran to all the cities to replenish supplies at other towns. This is why you grabbed 5 extra of each item, as each quest takes 5 of each recipe. It ends by giving you an item called Turkey Caller which calls out a Wild Turkey that you can kill and loot, saving you some time if you need to farm for these later or maybe buy you some time for Turkinator. Plus the turkey has a cute animation! This isnt part of the Meta, but its a neat little item and keeps the holiday fun going.

Once you’ve completed your dailies for the day its time to move on. If you chose all Turkey Shooters then start working on finding all those pesky Rogues. They can be of any level, so it helps if you have friends who can trade making alts with you – helping you both get the achievement easily. You won’t have enough after the first day, you need 8 Turkey Shooters for “Turkey Lurky”, but the next day you can easily run the same routine you did today and get everything you need for your Meta. It should only take 2 days of dailies to get all 8 Turkey Shooters and both pieces of gear needed.

If you chose to get your Chest and Helm you can work on the other Achievements requiring those, “Pilgrim’s Peril” and “Terrokar Turkey Time”. “Terrokar Turkey Time” is straight forward – a quick clear through Setthek Halls, normal mode works fine. This is easily 2manned or you can bring more to make the trip faster. Just don’t forget to equip your holiday chest and helm before killing the last boss, Ikiss.

For “Pilgrim’s Peril” travel around to all the alliance tables and simply sit at them while wearing your holiday chest. Neither eating each food or the helm is needed for this achievement. For some cities the corresponding starter town’s tables also work, but not for all of them, so make sure you have your achievement tracker on. I play on a high-population server and found very little resistance while doing this. You can’t sit at a table while in combat, so try to avoid guards and players as best as possible.

Once all of these achievements are completed you’re left with only one to get before that shiny new title and suicidal pet are yours… “The Turkinator”. This one took a bit to get the hang of, but there are lots of tricks to it if you’re having trouble.

First off – You don’t want to risk looting the corpse in case you don’t find another Wild Turkey in time. You need 40 kills and you have roughly 25 seconds to move between each kill. Pick an Instant Cast ranged Spell if you can, this is a competitve achievement!

Secondly, try to find an open space thats out of the way. I went to Venomweb Vale in Tirisfal and found very little people there, plus it was easy to spot new turkeys as I ran along. The most important key is to keep moving!

If you’re still having trouble don’t worry! There are other things you can do to help yourself out:

• Try pairing up with a friend to spot out the turkeys with you, two sets of eyes are better than one! You can do the same for them in return.
• Go late at night, early in the morning, when people are normally raiding or even when the dailies reset. Anytime where you have a better shot of having those turkeys all to yourself.
• Tracker Snacks are a Northrend Food Item that give you the ability to track beasts. Since these little guys count as such its very helpful. Track beasts for Hunters also works.
• Don’t get frustrated! Its supposed to be fun. If someone ninjas a kill from you just keep moving to the next one. Same goes for you! Don’t waste time trying to ninja other players’ kills, it will just slow you down. Stay focused and keep moving. You’ll get it in no time!

Thats all there is to it! All in all a pretty easy and fun achievement… even if it does make me super hungry.

Enjoy your new pet and title!

Quick Post on Fun Stuff for the Week

Mari pities da foo! ...totally

Earlier this week they placed Night Elf Mohawk NPC’s outside all the starter area’s. Talk to one, get your Night Elf Mohawk Grenade, toss at your entire guild at raid time and enjoy the horror.

Watch de Whelps!

Log in today and get your new 5th Anniversay Pet, the Onyxian Whelpling. Much like last year’s Blizzard Bear this little guy is BoA and arrives in your mailbox. Aww!

AMG Meals on Wheels!

Also Pilgrim’s Bounty just started! So get working on your Turkey Pets before you eat his parent’s this Thursday. More info on that later! Time to go start working on mine!

3.2 BiS Loot Lists… I can has?

Today was extended maintenance and I’m nowhere near sleeping so I decided that I should go back over my BiS gear list for Laeyla. I lucked out and the same person who got me through 3.1 with their fantastic list on PlusHeal also posted one for 3.2. I highly suggest you guys check it out if you need any help with gear. After about 15 minutes I realized that I’m only 3 drops away from having all my BiS pieces pre-hardmode and outside of the dreaded T9.5.

I’m kinda torn on what to do about this T9.5 predicament. I have been doing lots of reading on PlusHeal about their thoughts on the set bonuses and most people have said that they’re not all that interested in them. They’re focusing on getting the off-set pieces first before trying to obtain the highly sought after trophies. I think thats the route I’m going to take. I have one trophy sitting around in the bank with my legs, which I won in a lucky VoA25. I’m just in no rush to move into my next tier set.

I seem to always be behind a tier set. When Ulduar came out I was good in my all gold T7.5. While working my way through there I had collected my T8.5 gloves and helm and also got the T8 shoulders from Uld10 since I didnt think I’d be getting Yogg25 down anytime soon, but I was always one piece short of being in my 4pc T8.5 set. All I needed was the pants. However when ToC came out and was so damn easy, no one was doing Ulduar25 anymore. I realized that wow… I’m still wearing this gold getup in ToC >.> It was kind of embarassing. I took an entire day doing theorycraft in my Popink notebook. I didn’t know if I should just get the chest with my badges or what. Eventually though I made the decision to go with the T8 legs from Hodir10 and luckily they dropped that week. I also went the new Bubble Spec which works really well with that 4pc bonus.

So now here we are again. Another set of Tier to move into. This time though I could easily get it, its just so lackluster to me. Yeah I’ll get more cusion from the bonus to the FoL HoT, but I’m losing the HoT from Holy Shock. I think I’d much rather have the shield proc more often and as I said before other Holy Paladins tend to agree. I would kill for a better 2 set bonus on the T9… then I could replace my 10manT8  pieces for the 25man T9.5 pieces.

Oh well though! Moving on…

Since it took me a short time to go over the BiS Holy List, I tried to take a peek at a similar list for Retribution. Oh yeah I guess I never mentioned that! I decided to dual-spec as Retribution a few months back just to make it easier while farming, doing my dailies, etc. Plus it gave me a whole new closet of gear to collect and kept me pretty occupied for those last few months of Uld10 runs. Her set really isn’t all that, which is why I was looking for a ranking list. Unfortunately though I couldn’t seem to find one as good as my Holy List. Naturally Elitist Jerks has a pretty good list that seperates Harmode from ToC25 normal… but I don’t think a lot of melee dps gear is going to be rolled for offspec. So if anyone knows a good place to check one out, please let me know! I might make a list of my own if I have the time, if so I’ll put it here. I’d also like to add a nice Ret Pally Blog to my Blog Roll so I’m looking for one of those too.

I’ll be honest though, I havent really been putting as much time into my Pally as of late. I raid with her through the week and do her cooking/fishing daily (when I remember at least >.<) and then I’m always on my mage the rest of the time. Mainly because my mage needs so much more work than my Pally. I do a lot of things on my mage and actually have fun with them.

Like omg Sons of Hodir dailies! I never had to do those on Laeyla, she’s an inscriptionist. Mari is on her own though and I’ve been doing those every day. She needs REP again… and not just rep.. but EMBLEMS. Tons and Tons of Emblems! Heroics have a point to them again and I don’t even mind doing them. Not to mention the cooking/fishing daily on her. Argent Tournament too! When AT came out the first time Laeyla already had her Ambassador title. Now I can actually benefit from all that free city rep.

I’m having the same problem with her as well though with a definitive gear list. I found a couple for Fire Mages but they don’t really coinside with Arcane. I have most of the badge pieces and I’m hoping to start getting her into some ToC pugs (argh! more on that in another post) so I’d like to know what I’m looking for.

I’ve checked out MaxDps but a lot of people frown upon that site. I used it a little for both Laeyla’s Ret set and for Mari, but my main complaint is that it seems really outdated. I think it was listing Retribution as using Seal of Command and Arcane as being ABx3 + Frostboltx3… both are way off.

I’ll keep looking though and post any updates I find here, at least until I find more Arcane Mage/Ret Pally blogs to lurk!

*taps the mic* Is this thing on?

A majority of patch 3.1 and 3.2 has been hectic for me and I’ve been incredibly busy. On top of being busy there hasn’t been much going on in the Holy Pally world.

However, after a lot of changes to my WoW life (and lots of prodding from Abi) I’ve decided to dust off the ol’ blog and hopefully get to writing again.

For now: An updated banner showing off the Pally’s new look and my shiney new Mage as well.

Soon to come: Updated Character info on the sidebar and a major update.

I’ll do my best to update more frequently on the progression of these toons, as well as other going ons in this crazy game.

Meters, Meters, Meters: The Paladin P.I.T.A

Since the demise of most of my holy paladin sources (Feraro’s Scandal, BoK going Prot and Siha… where are you woman?) I’ve been doing a lot of reading on Plusheal.com about my class. I used to not especially like this site. Its more of a community for discussion on a more…. casual (? thats not the word, but whatever) level. Not to say that there aren’t some fantastic theorycrafters and great knowledge swapped around, but more that its for paladins (and every healer for that matter) of every level of play.

Anyway! I’ve been lurking their paladin forums pretty frequently recently reading on some of the problems that have been plaguing my fellow healadins and also myself. It actually made me feel a bit better to see that I wasn’t the only person wondering if they’re doing something wrong since stepping a plated-foot into Ulduar.

I’ll start off by talking about my paladin-past. When I first started healing Heroics and 5mans I really loathed Paladin healing. I found it to be impossible at times. It got better and then I started raiding Naxx10 with Vae Victus and instantly I fell into my healing niche. When I was really wanting to showoff I could easily top the healing meter, besting my healing partner who was a standup resto druid. Before the Divine Plea nerf and the Glyph of Holy Light nerf, I could even go into Naxx25 Pugs and destroy the meters there as well. I remember one 25man OS where I came in 2nd, only being beaten out by a Resto Druid from the top guild on our server… in my lowly 10man gear. Even after the two nerfs I mentioned, I was still feeling extremely confident in my healing and was often sought-out for PuGs and various guilds in the raiding scene and yes, still topping the meters.

Now its not to say that I’m no longer confident in healing, because I am. I’m still one of the better Holy Paladins on my server (albeit its an RP server, with only a handful of “raiding” guilds) and my gear is falling into place in the Tier 8 Content. However what continues to haunt myself and other Paladins is that while in Ulduar10 and even in Naxx25 still, I am still up there on the meters, but once in Ulduar25 I plummet all the way to the bottom of the list, usually tied or on par with our Discipline Priest.

What could cause this? I could understand a sliding scale… I’ve just joined a more “serious” guild full of very competent healers in amazing gear. I could see if I didn’t measure up as well with them as opposed to 25man PuG healers. As I mentioned though, I go with those same healers in Ulduar10 and while I’m never 1st, on occasion I can pull 2nd and on the nights when I’m last its not by a marginal amount, only maybe 2-3%.

Its something that worries a lot of Paladins and it makes them start to slip into the devious habit that infected a lot of DPS in BC raiding, the dangerous habit of letting the meters distract you from your job in the raid. I remember being the Mage Lead: We’re hitting up Mt. Hyjal, squealing gleefully at our inflated AOE numbers on the meter. Suddenly a Lock pulls ahead (Nerf Seed!) and there goes the Fire Mage… tossing that Flamestrike a bit too early, frantically hitting Dragon’s Breath and then when its too late, trying to Frost Nova and get out there before all those ghouls chew through the tissue paper of their armor. And then they’re dead. And no one tops the meter from the floor. They knew better… they knew to wait. They had waited all the other times. But the competitive nature of the meters suddenly made them go stupid and mistakes were made.

The same thing can happen when healing. Hell I won’t even lie… I’ve done it. You’re standing there at Ignus healing your tank as normal. Everytime a Flame Jet goes off you see your entire Raid at half health. You start to think to yourself “All those people need heals… I could Beacon the Tank… I could snipe all those raid heals… nothing will happen.” Except you weren’t counting on that pesky CoH Priest who instantly heals up the 5 people you were just about to heal, causing you to overheal and therefore leaving no heals to go to your Beacon Target (THE TANK) and then oops… tank goes splat… raid wipes. You don’t care though, you suck up to that CoH priest and throw him a DI… the bastard!

*coughs* Sorry I got a little distracted.

Seriously though while I like to be overdramatic and tell a funny story, there is a lot of truth to those two scenarios. I’ve read countless stories just like these and yes, maybe even engaged in a little extra-curricular healing myself. To be honest though, I have stopped doing that. For one, it doesn’t even put a dent in the amount of healing that your Druids and CoH Priests are doing – not even close lol. For two, all it does is stress me the hell out! Because if the tank dies – thats my fault and no one is gonna pat me on the back for healing that Shadow Priest who just used SW:Death and was probably about to heal themself up with VE anyway. The risk doesn’t come anywhere near the gain and therefore I don’t bother anymore. I save my Beacon for the OT or even myself on fights like Hodir. I sit back and keep my focus on the tank. Meters be damned. That really is our job as a Paladin. Its what we excel at… its what we do.

As you get further into Ulduar your tank is going to get better geared. Better Gear = Less Damage and Less Damage = Less Healing. Luckily for me I have an amazing Healing Lead who understands this and I have not once been called out for having low numbers. The tank lives through the fight and the boss doesn’t. Loot is had by all and thats the point of the encounter for healers, not the flippin’ meters.

Moral of the story is this: You can’t judge the worth of your healer by any meter aside from the health meter. You may have that Paladin who is putting out higher numbers, but chances are that Paladin isn’t sticking to their assignment and theyre letting someone else pick up the slack on the tank. Not to mention wearing out your raid healers by stepping on their heals, their job. No one likes a showoff anyway!

All you healadins keep this in mind while moving through Ulduar and don’t let it get you discouraged. And if it comes down to a wipe, go ahead and give that CoH Priest your Divine Intervention – they’re probably way more stressed out than you are anyway.

AMG I’m alive, lets talk about gear!

I know I’ve been afk from my blog for some time, but I’ve been a busy busy bunny. I have a point to this post, so I’ll keep the backstory short, but lets go ahead and go over the necessary content.

It took about a week to get my account back in order after being hacked. Blizzard restored everything to every toon I have – I lost nothing. *kisses whichever GM handled my account*

Before my account got the ol’ hackeroo, some things got shaken up with my guild situation. Vae Victus had recently lost a lot of members, so we merged with a guild that we had done some runs with and that I’ve talked about here. After sticking it out with them for a few weeks, we realized it really wasnt a good fit. I won’t bad mouth them at all, they have the potential to be a fantastic guild, as I stated, it just wasn’t a good match.

Flashback to every post I’ve made recently and I’m sure you’ve heard me mention Hid: dailies partner, fellow achievement whore, super-leet priest healer and amazingly close to me in general. Hid is an Officer in a guild you may remember me mentioning from when I did Malygos25 for the first time, Catalyst. It turns out that they were in need of  a few good people and after much negotiation with their GM (and lots of begging and pleading from Hid and the other officers) the Vae Victus crew made the decision to raid with them.

Let me preface by saying, I love this guild.

So many things about this guild reminds me of my very first progressive raiding guild. Its a remarkable match and within slightly over a week of raiding with them most of the Vae Victus members have been put on the core team. Its nice to have a home in the 25man raiding scene and I honestly don’t think I could find another group of people I’d rather raid with.

With all of that said, we are hard working in Ulduar (both 10 and 25) and have made it up to Mirmiron10 and Hodir25. Granted its not the most amazing accomplishment on the progression ladder, but it makes me happy. I pretty much raid 7 days a week now though, but it keeps me busy and I have fun.

I was doing some research today for a BIS list for Ulduar gear and found a list on Plusheal.com. I looked it over some and decided which items I want and which ones I probably won’t get to for now. Since I’ve last updated, lets take a quick peak at recent upgrades and a stat-snap.

Studio Apartments are Win.

Lots of upgrades since I last posted:

• Horologist’s Wristguards – 25-Man XT-002
• Soul of the Dead – 25-man Sapphiron (Which I actually am not using, I’ll explain in detail later)
• Signet of Manifested Pain – 25-man Kel’Thuzad
• Pyrelight Circle – 25-Man Ignis
• Valorous Redemption Gloves – 25-man Sartharion
• Valorous Redemption Headpiece – 25-man Kel’Thuzad
• Voice of Reason – 25-man Kel’Thuzad

Whew. Lots of upgrades there >.< Starting from the top, I was really lucky and happy to get the Horologist’s Wristguards since they are rated the BIS Plate Bracers. When I got Soul of the Dead, I was excited at first, everyone knows how I feel about Crit, but unfortunately I really felt like it dropped me extremely low in the Spell Power department (barely hitting 2k before I got the rest of my upgrades) and recently I’ve felt like I really want the haste buff from my current trinkets. I might start wearing it again eventually, but for now I’m sticking with my BIS 10-man trinkets. The Signet of Manifested Pain was good to finally get as well as its the BIS ring from T7 content, but I was really excited when the Pyrelight Circle dropped as its the current BIS ring.

Of course its finally a relief to get my Valorous Redemption Gloves after all this time as well as the Valorous Redemption Headpiece so I could switch out of my Valorous Redemption Tunic for the Chestplate of the Great Aspects and have my gear situated properly to get the 4pc. set bonus as well as have most of the BIS items from the T7 content.

Wrap it all up with getting Voice of Reason and you have one very happy Holy Paladin.

I still really need to get The Turning Tide not to mention the highly sought after Forethought Talisman and I think then I’ll be content with my T7 choices and be set on filling out my BIS Ulduar upgrades, which finally brings me to the entire point of this post.

I started to look at the list for Holy Paladins and I wanted to make a sure list. I’m not 100% happy with the itemization of Ulduar gear and I want to state that this list is purely what -I- think is best in slot for my personal playstyle and gear choices. I havent yet decided how many pieces of T8 I want and I might go back and edit this list when I have more time (and sleep) to actually compare the stats with what I’m wearing.

As for now though this is what I’m looking at:

• Helm: Conqueror’s Aegis Headpiece – 25-Man Thorim, Tier 8.5

Hands down BIS. Must have… gotta have… Rets/Prots/Priests/Locks be damned. The  Valorous Aegis Headpiece from 10man is rated higher than the t7.5 helm, so depending on a few things, its possible I would take that as well. I’m not quite sure yet.

• Neck: Frozen Tear of Elune – 19 x Emblems of Conquest

The BIS neck actually comes from Uld10 Hard Mode, but I’m sticking with normal drops for now. This is actually only ranked at #4, but the rest come from hard modes or have wasted stats. I’m gonna look at the actual stat comparison on this first thing tomorrow. I’m not 100% sold on those stats, which I’ll get into in a later blurb about these choices. 2nd to this is the BIS T7 neck, Life-Binder’s Locket from the Maly key quest, but honestly I find it to be a side-grade to what I’m already wearing. I stick to one basic rule when looking at these upgrades… just because its a higher item level, doesnt always mean its better, especially with mid-content gear such as these.

• Shoulders: Conqueror’s Aegis Spaulders – 25-Man Yogg-Saron, Tier 8.5

Another must have, got to have item. I’m hoping to get these and the helm for that 2-set bonus. Seeing as how I’ll probably get through 10man before 25man, I’ll be taking Valorous Aegis Spaulders from 10man if they drop.

• Back: Pennant Cloak – Sarth+Drakes

According to what I’ve seen, the rest of the cloaks in Ulduar are pretty blah. Outside of hard more capes, the Pennant Cloak is still the best out there with the Shroud of Luminosity being rated at a very close 2nd. I have the Shroud and I’m happy with it for now. We do still go in and do Sarth+Drakes on a regular basis so if it drops thats good as well, but until we get into hard modes, thats one last thing to worry about on my list.

• Chest: Chestplate of the Great Aspects – Sarth

More lackluster Tier pieces ftl. Astonishingly the T8.5 chest was rated at a lowly #6 with the Chestplate being rated as the BIS Plate piece. I don’t think the research has been done yet on which piece to drop from the set to get the 4set bonus, but I think its obvious which one will not get picked up. I’m still not sure if I even really -want- the 4pc set, although I’m sure I do. I’ll have to wrack my brain over that later though, as for now its just another item to not worry about on my list.

• Wrist: Horologist’s Wristguards – 25-Man XT-002

More crappy itemization, but once again the BIS for plate. Already have them thankfully, my drop list is looking pretty low huh?

• Hands: Gloves of the Pythonic Guardian – 25-Man Kologarn

I see a pattern forming… ranked at #4, but BIS plate outside of hard mode. Conqueror’s Aegis Gloves were listed right about where our T7.5 gloves are, which makes me wonder if I’ll be keeping my 7.5 gloves to keep that 2pc bonus. Signs point to yes, but lets see how the rest of the list goes.

• Waist: Girdle of Unyielding Trust – 28 x Emblems of Conquest

Another lackluster Emblem item and its not ranked that highly over the Waistguard of Divine Grace which I’m already wearing. Something else for me to check out when I log on next… but its not looking too good.

• Legs: Debatable

All of the legs from Ulduar have completely horrid itemization. Conqueror’s Aegis Greaves were rated as #1, but the T7.5 are a close tie due to the itemization alone. It leaves me wondering if I should stick with only the 2pc T8 bonus and still get the 2pc T7 bonus… I really don’t know. With that being the last piece of tier 8 and it all being crap aside from the Helm and Shoulders, is it really worth it to sacrifice stats and a useful set bonus (10% crit to Holy Shock) to get the other (Sacred Shield every 4 seconds instead of 6)? To me, I honestly thinking having both the T7 and T8 set bonuses would make sense, but everyone is saying that the 4pc set bonus is a must have. So that leaves me to really wonder which piece to swap out, Chest or Gloves. Part of me wants to say Chest, since I already have what can be considered the BIS Plate Chest outside of hard mode and then I can just focus on getting the T8 gloves, it just makes it hard because both the chest and the gloves are rated so poorly. Argh I dunno… I’ll keep you updated. Lets continue on.

• Feet: Greaves of the Rockmender – 25-Man Auriaya

I’ll spare you the QQ about the itemization. These are probably a direct upgrade from the Faithful Steel Sabatons which I’m currently wearing, but I’m still hoping that the Poignant Sabatons drop for me while I work on getting my other Naxx upgrades as they are still rated better than the BIS from Ulduar.

• Rings: Pyrelight Circle and Signet of Manifested Pain

Signet of Manifested Pain is actually ahead of the Pyrelight Circle, but I have both so nyah! No rings needed for me!

• Trinkets: Pandora’s Plea and Eye of the Broodmother

Um yeah. I want Pandora’s Plea… very badly. Eye of the Broodmother puts me in the same situation as I mentioned above with Soul of the Dead, but the proc on it makes it worth while imo. Those are the two trinkets I would prefer to have… at least on paper.

• Main Hand: Val’anyr, Hammer of Ancient Kings

Oh yeah I guess I forgot to mention that I’ve started collecting my shards to get this! It will be mine eventually, but I know its a long ways off. Until then The Turning Tide is still the BIS outside of hard mode and I plan on getting my hands on that thing and keeping it until I get the Legendary.

• Shield: Voice of Reason

Wisdom’s Hold from 25-Man Thorim Hard-Mode is the best, but I’m looking at a “for now” basis. After they fixed the horribly low spell power on the Pulsing Spellshield from 10-Man XT-002, its a VERY nice shield, but Voice of Reason still outweighs it, so I’m glad I have it =X

• Librams: …are still crap if you don’t do Arena.

Libram of the Resolute drops from 25-Man Auriaya but everyone uses the trusty iLvL200 Libram of Renewal and so will I until they give us something better.

/phew. How’s that for an “I’m back” post?! Not too shabby if I do say so myself. As always if you have any comments please feel free to post and discuss, especially about the T7/T8 conundrum. I will try my bestest to keep you guys updated as my raiding continues!

No witty subject today kids…

SO! For those of you who frequent Fear.Win, I’m sure the rapant news of how some filthy gold farmer raped and pilaged my precious paladin for all that she had (As well as about all that 18 other toons and 4 guild banks had as well >.>) has become old news. For those of you who don’t read it (You Should!) now you know.

And before one more person says it and I end up popping a vessel, YES I got a friggin Authenticator. I have been trying to get one for months now but Blizzard was always out of stock. I saw some on eBay and Amazon, but (because of situations like these) I wanted to go through Blizzard directly. That pretty much went out the window though and I ended up getting one from amazon for about $20. Just in time for Blizz to get a shipment in of theirs, for only $6.50. Oh well!

Its pretty died down now, though I’m still waiting on my gear to be replaced. I’m really not sure how long thats going to take though because I have so many freaking toons and they were all stripped of 99% of the crap they were carrying around.

Whichever sneaky little bastard did this sent all of the valuable items (enchanting mats, herbs, pots, fish, BOE Gear etc etc etc) to my lvl 70 Mage and somehow managed to transfer her off of my account entirely. It didn’t take me very long to get her back, which is a relief. It was weird to check her bags and see so many stolen materials. They even used my stash of Dalaran Cooking Awards to buy tons of Northern Spices, my Argent Tournament Seals to buy the BoE Pets and my badges to buy BoE Epic Bracers, Gems and Frozen Orbs. Along with all of that was about 8k in gold. So depending on how they go about matters I at least have my gold. And hey! Even if I don’t get my gear back I have enough money worth of stolen goods to pawn off for new gear yeah?

>.>

I realize that its the weekend and the email said it could take a few days so I’ve just been hanging around. I  figure it might take a bit more anyway since I had 18 toons spread across two different servers and all the guild banks invovled as well. Its really only been about 48 hours and I’m pretty confident that my paladin will come out almost unscathed and probably my BE Mage as well, but I worry about my alliance toons. I know I don’t play them, but I still worked really hard on their gear. It was nice when I went over there and looked at them, reflecting on raids, guilds, friends and other memories passed. I guess we’ll see.

Since I really can’t do much on WoW and seeing as how my computer was ridiculously infected with all sorts of nastiness, I’ve taken the downtime to reformat my hardrive. Good Times. I have some super guildies though who came over and helped me get all set up (<3 Kwatan and Lennore) After they helped me with the major stuff and took their leave I got cracking on getting my computer to how it was pre-virus. I’ve spent the better part of this evening/morning reinstalling WoW and other programs I use. Thank God for Last.fm! Its keeping me sane while I download all these patches. I havent gotten a chance to put all my music back on my computer and I think sitting here in silence might drive me bananas.

I pretty much had to pick everything up from 3.0 and on. It doesnt sound like much but 3.1 was a beast. The entire redownload process has taken about 4.5 hours so far, but I think its about done.

After staring blankly at my screen for about 2 hours or so I figured that maybe I should take this time to actually update about it. I have a lot of things that have gone on that I’d love to post about, more happy things lol. Unfortunately all my screencaps are backed up at the moment and I don’t have access to them while I’m letting WoW do its thing.

I’m really bored. I almost wrote this entire thing in Haiku form. I realized that might be a bit over the top though haha.

Aside from all of that I don’t have much else to tell. I suppose I’ll let you guys know more when I do! Back to staring down the WoW Downloader!

Argent Tournament, Ulduar and Achievements: A week in Review!

Today concludes the first week of Patch 3.1 and what a busy, busy week it was! Tons of buggy instances, server instability and major lag, but for the most part this patch has proven to be filled with win.

I didn’t play much on the first day due to the servers not coming up forever. I checked out the new fishing daily and also picked up the cooking daily again. Since getting my Chef title I had stopped doing it and I’m really kicking myself for that now seeing as how there is now an Achievement to get the new Chef’s Hat (100 Dalaran Cooking Awards). I really enjoy the new fishing daily and have so far gotten 3 of the pricey vendor trash rewards (17g, 25g and 100g) but I have yet to get either of the new poles.

What has really been taking up all of my time has been the new Argent Tournament dailies! If you haven’t done these yet (SHAME!) you really should. Even if you’re not interested in the mounts, pets or titles, its extremely good money and the quests are fairly easy, taking very little time to complete them.

Lok'tar!

I’ve teamed up once again with fellow achievement-whore Hid to work on these (and lots of other Achievements, which I’ll get to later) and its probably the most fun I’ve had in the game in quite some time. You start out by Aspiring for your race’s city, completing 3 quests a day for 3 days until you then become a Challenger. Once becoming a Challenger you then complete 4 quests a day for 5 days until finally becoming a Champion for your home city. After you become a champion, you can then go through the sequence again for other cities in your faction, though you start out as a Challenger instead of an Aspirant.

All of the quests are pretty simple and easy to do. The only one that really could be annoying is where you have to compete against Valiants and Challengers and win. It can be a little challenging at first and sometimes I would get annoyed with it. However I was standing there watching Hid do his when I realized that while you can’t help someone take down an opponent on a mount, you can use your character’s abilities while unmounted and help them that way. It was much easier after we figured that out and made it take less time as well.

Yay for Titles!

Now that we’re Champions, I believe we get 4 quests a day to complete for Champion’s Seals (The currency for rewards at the Argent Tournament) and also 4 quests a day for the next faction we’re working on, but I’m not entirely sure about the last part. The quests are pretty much the same as the Challenger dailies, just requiring more kills. There is a new Daily Group quest, but it didn’t seem too hard with the two of us since I can heal.

Aside from the Daily Group Quest, all of the quests for each rank are entirely soloable, but I think it makes it more fun to have a partner, much like many other aspects of the game. So snatch someone up and give them a try if you haven’t already.

While the Argent Tournament has occupied most of my time, Hid has also dragged me along to a few other things that the patch brought with it. We successfully healed the new boss in VoA10 fairly easily (no drops for either of us -_-). The strategy is really easy, but its heavily DPS dependant. I’m not sure how well PuGs will be able to do it, but anything is possible. We also completed all of the Outlands Heroics to snag the Achievements for Outland Dungeon Master and Outland Heroic Master.

After our Achievement binge we took a break to go and farm up this adorable new mini-pet:

See?! Isn't he adorable?!

Awww I love his pretty wings! He’s super tiny, but I still really love this new pet. This little guy is farmed up in Feralas for Horde Only. When Hid suggested that we go farm for this I wasn’t exactly willing… I know that for other drop-related pets it can take hours/days/weeks (/months!) to get them to actually drop, but he had said that tons of people in his guild were getting them super-fast so we gave it a go. It took us about 20 minutes to get one for both of us. Naturally his dropped first (grrr), but I got mine really shortly afterwards. I helped Abi farm one up for his new lock-lady as well a few days later and it took about 45 minutes for him to get his. So if any of you fellow hordies have some time to waste maybe that will give you something to do!

Wow, so what else did I do this week?

Oh Yeah! Ulduar!

Now I’ll admit that I didn’t go jumping into Ulduar as soon as the patch hit. While most of my raid team was still on vacation preventing Vae Victus from going in, a lot of my friends from other guilds were tromping through there. All I heard were the horror stories of bugged mobs, laggy encounters and not to mention the difficulty of the Raid itself! I really was in no hurry at all to do it, figuring I’d wait it out until Blizz got everything working as intended.

However come Monday night, dailies were all finished, what to do… what to do. Low and Behold the guild I’ve been doing 25man Naxx with was asking me to help them out in there so I figured what the hell. We were in there for 6 hours: 180g in repairs and 32 Fish Feasts later I had 3 spankin’ new achievements in hand and an all new excitement for raiding.

They had done Flame Leviathan and Razorscale throughout the week (all of which I was invited to, but I was so busy with other things) so we attempted XT-002 Deconstructor first. It seemed like we would always get so close, but just be off a pinch. Much like the new boss in VOA, all the bosses in Ulduar seem to be DPS checks.

The one thing I love the most about this guild is how they never get discouraged. We wiped for 4 straight ours on that toe-touching robot… yet still they were excited to go back in and keep at it. It was really inspiring and dare I say… contagious. It paid off though and we got him down, sealing two achievements for that encounter alone. No Pally loot, but I was just glad to down a new boss.

We gave a go at Ignus as well, which I found to be a very fun fight also. Everthing was so chaotic on those bosses! (OMG! They’re climbing up the walls! We can’t see them! Argh!) It was really a lot of fun.

From a healing aspect, I won’t really say that I found it to be all that difficult for the most part. The trick (for pallies who are MT healing at least) is to find a nice spot in LOS of the tank, yet still giving yourself a little distance from the raid team (about 20yds). In all honesty I wouldn’t suggest using a lot of Holy Light until your tank is more geared. I just couldn’t stomach the wait of Holy Light, especially without the benefit of Infusion of Light affecting it anymore. Thats just me though, and I don’t really stack a lot of haste. Other than that I healed as normal without noticing any real change to my healing-style from the minimal changes that went through with the patch.

I want to say that Ulduar is going to be more of a push for DPS classes and I’m kind of glad for that, though I’ll admit I’ve only seen two encounters and I’m sure the later ones get more healing intensive. Either way, its definately going to be a challenge and make ever boss downing worth the effort. I’m very excited about when Vae Victus gets in there.

So that was my week! I was a busy, busy Blood Elf but I had a great time. I hope the rest of you found it to be as productive. Good luck in your endeavors in Ulduar, drops from your Fishing Bags  and against those pesky Argent Challengers!

3.1 Patch Notes: Professions and Paladins

OMGZ Its Patch Day *flails* Everyone is sitting around bored waiting for the servers to come up and I’m no different. So I read the patch notes a couple times.

Oh Patch Notes… you read them constantly, everyone posts about them, so I thought I’d post a condensed version based on things I’m excited about. It took me about 20  minutes to read through the entire list (Not counting the million times Hid distracted me from reading about the changes to Aura Mastery *shakes fist*). We’ve still got about 3 hours until the patch hits anyway, you need to read more, you junkies!

Everyone has read countless things on Ulduar and NannerShoulders wrote up an excellent guide to the Argent Tournament, so I’ll skip those. Countless posts have been made on Duel-Speccing and to be honest I don’t even really need to do it (though it gives an Achievement… those bastards!) so I won’t beat that horse any longer. I’m excited about Noble Garden as well (Woo! New Achievements!) but I can post about that later. I haven’t seen a lot on Profession changes, so I want to talk about that first… because I’m really more excited about the Fishing Daily than the new Paladin Glyphs >.>

Alchemy

• All flasks now last 1 hour. To compensate, all flask recipes will provide 2 flasks for the same material cost.
• Flasks now stack to 20, and their vendor sell prices have been reduced to lower the Auction House deposits.
• Northrend flasks will be converted to mixtures. This includes the Flask of Stoneblood, Flask of Pure Mojo, Flask of Endless Rage, and Flask of the Frost Wyrm. Mixtures can create 2 flasks of the corresponding type. This allows players who stockpiled Northrend flasks to convert them to the new system without any loss.
• You can now sometimes find Alchemist’s Caches from bosses in Ulduar. Only players with an Alchemy skill of 425 or higher can loot these secret caches.

I’m not an alchemist on my Paladin, but my little Rogue is maxed out and supplies all my flasks and pots (not that I ever use them). I think the idea of an Alchemist’s Cache is really neat though, so I’m excited for my Raiding Alchemists to get some of those.

Herbalism

• Find Herbs no longer tracks Glowcaps.
• Northrend herbs now yield more herbs on average.
• The herbalism requirement for gathering Tiger Lily has been reduced to 375.
• Lifeblood now has level requirements equal to the level required for the corresponding skill rank: Apprentice (1), Journeyman (1), Expert (10), Artisan (25), Master (40), Grand Master (55).
• You can no longer fail when Herbing.

• The time it takes to gather herbs has been reduced.

Pretty cut and dry here. I’m interested to see how fast I pick an herb now and how many drop. Looks like this made it easier to level my favorite gathering profession, but the others got similar buffs as well.

Inscription

• Added a recipe to trainers for creating a level 70 superior-quality off-hand item.
• Added a recipe for creating a different level 70 superior-quality off-hand item. Scribes will find the recipe is dropped from residents of Silverbrook.
• Added around 50 new glyph recipes. These new recipes can be obtained from Books of Glyph Mastery found as world drops on Northrend monsters. Reading a Book of Glyph Mastery randomly discovers one of the newly-added recipes.
• Glyph icons have been updated so it is easy to distinguish between classes.
• Players will now learn 3 recipes the very first time they perform Northrend Inscription Research. This does not apply to players who have already discovered recipes from Northrend Inscription Research (sorry).

Ha! The little pathetic looking (sorry) at the end of that made me laugh. Inscription is still looking pretty dull. I’m glad I have it for my over-powered Shoulder Enchant, but thats about it. The wording on how to get the new glyphs is strange, I wonder if you just have to wait for them all to drop or if you get them from research as well? I’m kinda dreading having to discover ALL of those new Glyphs also. Northrend Research is so expensive to do! I’m still wondering why they decided to not allow us to make those portable Lexicons that I was excited about…

• Applying a glyph no longer requires a Lexicon of Power. The same rules for switching between dual talent specializations now apply to switching glyphs and cannot be performed while in combat, Battlegrounds (except when Preparation is up), or Arenas (no exceptions).

..Oh.. well hmph! Honestly I think this change is kind of… well stupid. So what are all those floating books going to be used for? Maybe they’ll just be gone! Moving on to my two favorite professions (and Lae’s as well).

Cooking

• A new recipe has been added to cooking trainers for making Black Jelly, using several Borean Man ‘O War as ingredients. While it looks disgusting, it restores more health and mana than the highest level food.
• Flint and Tinder is no longer necessary for creating a campfire. You’re just that resourceful!
• Grub now sells the Dig Rat Stew recipe to players who completed the quest.
• Ingredients such as Spices, Apples, and the like have been removed from most cooking recipes.
• Players no longer need to complete the Clamlette Surprise quest to gain Artisan cooking. The quest now offers the unique recipe, Clamlette Magnifique. If you already completed the quest, you can visit Dirge Quickcleave in Gadgetzan to learn this recipe (for free).
• Prospector Khazgorm, found in Bael Modan in southern Barrens, now sells the recipe for Dig Rat Stew to the Alliance.
• Several Northrend recipes were given greater skill up ranges to make it easier to reach 450 cooking skill.
• You no longer need to learn cooking from books. The trainers have finally done their reading and are able to teach you the same thing.

Fishing

• A new (and very rare) special mount can now be caught from Northrend fishing pools.
• New fishing dailies are now offered from Marcia Chase in Dalaran City!
• Players are no longer required to do the Nat Pagle, Angler Extreme quest to gain Artisan fishing. The quest now offers a special superior-quality fishing pole instead. If you already completed the quest, you can visit Nat Pagle in Dustwallow Marsh to receive this new fishing pole.
• The time needed to catch fish has been reduced.
• You can now fish anywhere, regardless of skill. Every catch has the potential for fishing skill gains, but you are likely to catch worthless junk in areas that are too difficult for your skill.
• You can now fish in Wintergrasp, and the fishin’ is good!
• You no longer need to learn fishing from books. The trainers have finally done their reading and are able to teach you the same thing.

First of all… NEW FISHING DAILY! Wewt. They didn’t really say much about it but never fear! El’s Anglin’ was on the case as usual and I went over there to get the lowdown. That jeweled fishing pole has Paladin written all over it and oh yes… she will be mine. I really like the Bone Pole too (wow… they need a better name for that) and am kinda glad I don’t have the Kalu’ak Pole now, I always thought it was unsightly. The other rare rewards are slightly disappointing since they are just reused from the old daily, but there are a lot of new common items that I think might be cool and of course a new pet will keep all us feesh-lovers busy with this for awhile.

I’m really excited actually about the changes to fishing and I’m quite curious about this fishing pole Nat Pagle has for me. The cooking changes aren’t anything super exciting, though I am glad I saved up all my Borean Man ‘O War to use for some makeshift Mana Streudals. I think at least a few hours of my day will be spent running around to the old world vendors/quest givers to pick up those new recipes. Again, more changes to make leveling these two professions easier, no more books, no more quests. Not to mention you can fish ANYWHERE and get skillups! I wonder what they mean by worthless junk…

Speaking of worthless junk… since this is a Paladin Blog I should go ahead and list the Paladin changes, though I must admit they aren’t anything you haven’t already heard nor are they anything exciting. I know you’re coming down from your high about that Tiffany Fishing Pole, so I’ll slap the Pally Talk under a cut:

/ReadyCheck: My 3.1 CheckList

Apparently I was AFK >.>

As I mentioned in my last post, I wanted to post about the last minute improvements I was straining for before the patch came out and we all skipped merrily into Ulduar. However, Blizz has shocked many and announced the release of 3.1 TOMORRROW, therefore making the entire post I worked on irrelevant lol. So this post is going to take a different turn. My plan this week was to do the following:

• Run VOA/OS for Valorous Gloves!
• PuG Naxx 25 for a few last minute upgrades.

I did manage to full clear Naxx 25 this week, with a group I ran with the previous week. I picked up my T7.5 Shoulders the first night, which are oh so smexy smexy plus I had enough emblems to also pick up my T7.5 legs and get the 4 piece bonus. I wanted to try my hand at VOA and OS before I decided to get my legs however, just in case I didn’t really need to spend the badges. I ran OS, my gloves dropped but I got outrolled. BOO! No worries still had VOA to go, bupkiss… except for the mount!!! Which I also got outrolled on by the same damn priest who got my gloves! Ah well, no worries.

Eventually I caved and got my legs because honestly what else am I gonna do with the badges? So I got those and was reveling in my golden (or Yellow as Hid teases) glory. I went back to finish that same Naxx pug and go figure THREE pairs of pally/priest/lock pants dropped. *grumbles* Oh well. I did however get the Libram of Tolerance since I was the only Paladin in the group. I’m not really sure how I feel about this Libram as Holy Light is a big enough heal as it is. Now that I have the 4-set bonus I might be able to switch out, but honestly I feel like it would only make even better at overhealing -_- I didn’t get anymore drops from that run, but the group was persistent and I picked up the Achievement for the Fall of Naxxramas: Heroic. Yay for more achievements. As I mentioned, I went with them again this week in hopes of getting a couple pieces, but it wasn’t the best night for Holy Pallies. Nothing dropped at all for me aside from the Shroud of Luminosity, which I happily won.

I have become slightly obsessed with Wow-heroes.com. Some of my good friends are ranked really high on there and I like to pretend I’m geared as good as them haha. For example, Hid’s Priest is actually the 5th best geared person on the entire server (2nd just for Priests!) and my friend from Silvermoon is ranked 3rd on that server (1st for Priests!). The last time I had looked I was rated pretty decently for only doing 10s on the regular. I thought for sure since I got some new drops I would get bumped up higher, but unfortunately I went down a few spots. I noticed that I was getting dinged for not having better enchants and the epic spell-thread so I picked those up as well. As it stands at this very moment, I am ranked 12th Horde-Side and 22nd Overall out of a list of 299 other Holy Paladins.  Not too shabby, I can live with that.

So after getting 2 more pieces of Valorous, iLvl 213 cloak and having all the best enchants this is what I’m working with: