Don't You Know You are a Shooting Star?

Yep, that's Balth on his Headless Horseman's steed. And yes, that is him keeping up with a Violet Protodrake. No, I didn't pay 5k for the pleasure.




And, well, mounts and achievements have been a nice little distraction lately:





A wee bit grindy? Um, yeah. Especially the Wintersaber. Kattastrophe & I have been working on it since we found the trainer 16 months ago while levelling (16 months or there abouts)

Next up?

I'm 23/25 on my Exhalted achievement, with 3 different factions well into the Revered level. (Honor Hold, Shattered Sun and maybe lower City) I'm not sure which I'll finish. If I can get Honor Hold rep in regular Ramparts, that will likely be one.

Also, I've been helping Kattastrophe get her Rivendare mount (she now knows her way around there well enough, so I may not go much more). We have also been farming for the Zul Gurub Tiger (I got the lizard already) and we've also been working on the Ravenlord (so I may get Lower City Exalted in the process as well)

As far as RAIDING goes, I'm still a temp player on our main (only) raiding team, and we are now 3/12 in heroics (we gave Saurfang one attempt before calling it a night last night). There is talk about somehow helping other guildies (like me) get to see and hopefully kill the Lich King. Possibly an alt group or something. But we shall see. The last couple times a second raid group formed we ended up losing those players to new guilds. Also, since it would likely be alts of the main raiding group, I may STILL have problems getting in.

As far as the new ret stuff...

• I reforged about 100 Expertise points into Haste, and that seems to be helping a bit (I went from 580 or so, up to 680 or so) I'm still expertise capped, so it was "free" Haste.


• Rotation? I am getting better at it, but that's about the best I can say. I still dumb-thumb the hell out of it, and it is STILL super clunky.


• Output? On Test Dummies, I am get ~6,300 DPS. In ICC last night, I managed to be 1st overall in Damage (and waffled between 2nd & 4th in DPS) We have a Fury Warrior (wow-heroes GS of 3224, compared to my 3188) that is sligtly better than me single target, but KILLS me on the small groups, small single target, "target switching" stuff. Single target I can pull a solid 10-11k. Taqrget switching, small mobs gets me down to 3-4k range (remember, this is with the ICC buff!) My Ret survival abilities and some reasonably head's up playing is what enabled me to be top damage dealer, but my actual fight by fight throughput still has me bugged.


• Gear? I now have enough Justice points to buy my 4th piece of T-10(i251). The bummer is that I already HAVE an i251 chest with slightly better stats/etc: Blade-Scored Carapace Do I want to "waste" those justice points for a slight (and completely theoretical) DPS bump? Do I want to buy 2 new gems PLUS an enchant? I don't know. Especially with level 81 looming in 6 weeks or less.


• Tanking: I haven't even talented my Prots spec yet. I could use those Justice points here as well, but my tepid interest in tanking right now, as well as the "free" level 81/82,etc greens on the horizon make it a difficult choice as well. Though, if I ever intend to get back into tanking, getting in the swing of things sooner rather than later would be a good thing.

We shall see...

I'm a-Leavin'... On a Jet Plane!! (or a server X-Fer)

The four Balths you see with red dots are mine... and you may notice that I'm no longer on Velen with my 80 Pally, "Big Balth". I moved him over to Lightbringer (Whirlwind BG) last night. (I also created a Drae DK named Balth, either to play, or possibly as a placeholder if/when I return Big Balth)

Did I find a perfect-fit raiding guild? Did Kattastrophe switch and find a great guild?

Um, no...

The reason?

Reins of the Violet Proto-Drake

huh?


Well, as you may all recall, there is this fugnastic achievement along the path of getting this (via the "What a Long, Strange Trips It's Been" meta achievement). And what, pray tell is that achie? The dreaded "School of Hard Knocks".

If I had known this prior to doing a number of the achies, I would never have started. But I did, and so now I am.

Please note; I'm not THAT big into mount collecting, nor am I really that much of an achievement whore.


BUT, I have been slowly, doggedly, beating my head against the many long, tedious and uber-grindy achies so that I could get a 310% mount. I hadn't realized that one of the achies needed required some painful at best quests/requirements, like capping a flag in Eye of the Storm (EotS)

If you've read this blog for any amount of time, you'll recall a few things about me & PvP:


1 - I'm not that good at PvP
2 - I have a low tolerance for frustration
3 - Velen/Retaliation are not exactly good for Alliance PvP

To put this into perspective, in the BGs I've played in since I hit level 80, I have:


- lost every single game in Warsong Gulch (WSG)
- have never capped or returned a flag in WSG
- only seen 1 flag cap by Alliance in EotS
- never capped a tower or flag in Arathi basin (AB) or Alterac Valley (AV)

Now, to be fair, I haven't played many of either AB or AV since Dinging 80, but I have still tried a handful.

Now, combine this slightly wrongwise slanted data with the requirement of doing them for the achie, and you can easily see that it is pretty much a sure thing that I would never be able to get them on the Velen server.

"Well, don't worry about it, just forget about it."

Easy for you to say. Now, many parts of the holiday quests are entertaining or at least garner a grin or two. BUT, many of them are multiple hour slogs across Azeroth to pee in a fire, or grovel for candy. And I have been grinding them. It would piss me off to no end to leave all that hard, grindy work to waste, if not toget something out of it.

I did give a couple shots on Velen. In fact, it was during one of these attempts that I saw my first Alliance Flag cap on EotS. But it was also during this same game that someone (Ally) managed to grab the flag and run, but wasn't able to capture it, because we had ZERO towers.

FYI, the server balance is 62% Horde, 38% Alliance.

So, I asked around, and heard some good things about Lightbringer and put my $25 on the table.

FOOP!

I'm moved, ran into an ex-guildie, and got invited into a guild. (no clue what this guild is like, but hey...)

So, I get into WSG, and it's a quest-fest. folks grabbing the flag, dropping the flag, and generally being silly. Pretty fun & funny.



Yeah, I took my turn grabbing, then dropping, the Horde flag.

My next WSG was a closely fought 3-2 loss. Tough, a bit frustrating, but at least a GAME. Not a one-sided domination.

And then over to Wintergrasp (WG). We won in what seemed like a moderatly balanced fight. Alliance was defending and we won, after dropping one tower and out-lasting the Horde. They had dropped one wall (west side) and had damaged the wall into the main courtyard. I was out near the towers, so I'm not sure how ahrd fought it was. What I can say is that we dominated for a bit (20-4 for vehicles) and then the Horde came back to tie the vehicles 12-12.

I died a lot, and killed a lot. (and the quest 3k honor, 10 stone shards were a nice addition)

So, am I paying $25 to get my Proto-Drake? Possibly, or at least I'm paying that $$$ to get a CHANCE to get that.

But seriously, WHAT are we trying to t4each these orphans? Btw, I think that they should be doable "by the group", not per each individual. That would encourage teamwork, and give most folks a fair chance at it.

Oh, I did a little bit of tanking in Utgarde Keep (UK) and Utgarde Pinnacle (UP) both in normal (not heroic) mode. If I only ned to tank 3-4 things, I'm OK, but when it comes to huge mobs, especially when mixed with casters, I struggle to get/keep aggro.

And I got wheedled into OT-ing Naxx 10. I did OK for a while, then failed miserably on that large Dog. Evidently Righteous Fury fell off, and, since it was my first time in there, nobody really explained it, so I had no clue = FAIL. Ah well.

OH!!!! One last thing. I have been running ICC 25 mans with Kattastrophe's newest guild. Mainly a Saturday start, and Sunday-struggle. After the RL said "NOBODY START THE GUNBATTLE, OR I'LL BOOT YOU!!!" I ran over to the dude to get my jetpack, and clicked quickly.

Too quickly.

Evidently the "jetpack-dude" and the "start the fight dude" are right nexxt to each other.

Oops.

(we didn't wipe, and I didn't get kicked, but I felt - and still feel - like a fucking imbecile)

We finally made it past Saurfang.

Later!