Tabard of the Achiever

Viljo has had 23 tabards for quite a while now. And recently I decided that this was no longer ok. Viljo needed to have 25 tabards.

So Viljo convinced Eeyan to come to Heroic Mana Tombs and kill some mobs until Viljo hit exalted with Consortium. It turns out that even with decent gear at level 80 those ethereals hit pretty hard when you're only wearing cloth or leather. But Viljo and Eeyan persevered and Viljo finally got exalted.

Unfortunately Eeyan said no to going to run Black Morass or Old Hillsbrad on Heroic. Especially since Viljo needed 1500 rep, instead of just the 700 that Consortium was missing. So Viljo was slightly disheartened as he went to get his spiffy new Consortium tabard.

But then I though of where I'd gotten my 23rd tabard: The Argent Tournament! Granted the paladins there were mostly a bunch of poufs, but they still gave out Champion's Seals. So Viljo tootled up to the Argent Tournament. And spent some seals on a very lovely Orgrimmar Tabard.

With that 25th tabard Viljo got the achievement: Twenty-Five Tabards. And suddenly there was a mail in his mailbox:

From: Windle SparkShine
Subject: Quite the Achiever

I couldn't help but notice what a fine collection of Tabards you've managed to collect over the seasons. You might as well add this one to your collection. It's simply been gathering dust in my wardrobe.

And contained in the mail was the lovely Tabard of the Achiever, which will be the tabard that Viljo wears from now on.

Well at least until I get bored of it. Or find one that matches better. Or decide that I want to have a special tabard on for some holiday or raid. Or, you know, just swap on a whim. How do you think I got so many tabards to start with??

Bank of Balou

DraNgNon and I decided that we needed our own alt guild bank. We'd been dumping random rep stuff into Ancestor Cult, but there is only so much space and we can't buy new tabs. Also both DraNgNon and I are paranoid. If we're going to put primals and high level ore into a bank we want to make sure the situation is entirely under our control.

So I took my alt, Lithui, and pulled him out of Ancestor Cult and bought him a guild charter. He pestered various friends and finally got the required 9 signatures the other day. And thus Bank of Balou was formed! I picked out a nice tabard: black background, white border, and a golden snarling dog head. It's meaner looking than Balou usually is, well unless he sees his reflection.

The first tab was 100g. It now holds a LOT of cloth. And that's not all of the cloth that our banker alts were carrying either...

The second tab was 250g. It now holds crafting mats. It's got stone, leather, grinding stones, ore and bars.

The third tab was 500g. It now holds gems and primals. We hold on to all of our primals and eternals. Between tailoring, blacksmithing, inscription, and jewelcrafting we go through a lot of materials.

We haven't rounded up the 1000g for the fourth tab yet. It will probably be for rep items when we do though.

Lithui will also be selling stuff as we go and putting that money back into the bank. Because there is no reasonable cause for keeping 25 stacks of solid stone.
So the general principal for using the bank and keeping it under control is that we'll sell the extra stuff, but never all of it. So the 25 stacks of solid stone will dwindle to 2 or 3 or so. There is also no limit on withdrawing as long as you're going to use it. Our characters will generally keep the materials that they need for skilling up on themselves. For example, Viljo is keeping the Northrend herbs on himself and will send any other herbs he gets to the bank. Mornara is keeping the gems that will skill her in her own bag, but the ore she is past will be sent to the bank.

and, Ulduar 10 redux

I finally had some time last night to play Wow, the first block of time since rejoining Darkfall. Darkfall decided I was there as a friend (not probation) until I re-app'd, so I re-app'd Friday. The guild rule, that they've had forever and still have, is no raiding in non guild raids during guild raid times (whether you are in the guild raids or not). And, no raiding progression 25 mans with other guilds or pugs, period. Makes sense, what if they need you and you are saved? Fail.

So, I got Kuanchichi into a VoA 10 run; I tried to get Viljo but we were miscommunicating so Clara had to cool Viljo's heels in Wintergrasp while that happened. I don't think it was more than 20 minutes. After, we got pulled into an Ulduar 10 run that was mostly alts or mains that aren't able to make the regular raid times.

Oddly enough 5 of the 10 people, I am very used to raiding with. One of them, Kaviaa, had been offline for months and was only just restarting playing again. Which is not quite beside the point of this post.

Darkfall has always made their own strategies. In Siege of Ulduar, (the first 4 bosses), there isn't a lot of variety, and so was pretty straight forward. Once we got past there though, I ended up asking for more and more explanations. Iron Council was not so bad. Kologarn was a wipe fest; I think Darkfall would benefit from adapting Deterrence's strategy there honestly. I mean really. Kologarn is the easiest boss in there, and we had a wipefest forcing Kuan to be heals before we succeeded. Auriya was not so bad, but I was adjusting what I was doing on the fly as they pull her in a different place and kited and kited her up the Shattered Walkway. Hodir, they corner him near the cache to force the NPCs into a small area, both for toasty fire goodness and to make it easier to break them out of the Flash Freezes. By this time Kuan had swapped to heals but even 3 heals can't make up for undergeared alts, people unfamiliar with the fight and/or fight strategy, and a distinct lack of Frost Resist gear. So we called it at that point; I think we'd been in there maybe 3 hours.

Kuan picked up [Pendant of the Piercing Glare] off Kologarn, which means I now get to rework his hitcap and hitcap-minus-1% sets, which I will be doing this afternoon at some point. But I guess this serves as reassurance that Kuan is not terribly undergeared as all the other shaman loot got DE'd or nabbed by a paladin alt for his heal set. And, much as I hate to play for loot, I will be doing Uld 10 weekly now, as I've decided Kuan really needs a different shield.

Last but not least - Drognin came into our Ulduar 10 raid partway through. Drognin is his alt now, so he's one of the toons missing Frost Resist, tsk tsk; but anyhow, so much for worrying about our guild re-apps, with Kuan 2nd overall damage for the run even though he was healing on 2 bosses, and Viljo being regular awesome, we will be put back into promotable guild member ranks again.

Darkfall redux

Viljo and Kuanchichi are back in Darkfall.

They've gotten very big and probably don't have raid slots for us. But we'll see how that works out. I can't raid until next month anyhow, what with work and all. Clara, on the other hand, will probably be signing up and trying to get in.

Since they are on probation, we're not pulling in any other toons yet.

the Onyxia patch...

...means Kuan is going to have to re-glyph. It also makes the 2-bonus for Tier 8 meaningless.


Shamans

* Flame Shock: The duration of all ranks has been increased by 6 seconds.
* Lava Burst: This ability no longer ever consumes a Flame Shock debuff off of the target.
* Talents

o Elemental Combat

+ Shamanism: Your Lightning Bolt and Chain Lightning spells gain an additional 3/6/9/12/15% and your Lava Burst gains an additional 4/8/12/16/20% of your bonus damage effects.

...

* Glyph of Flame Shock: Redesigned. This glyph now makes Flame Shock periodic damage able to be critical strikes.


Plosion

I can't decide if it is an IMplosion or an EXplosion. But either way there has been some sort of plosion in Deterrence.

For the past couple of weeks Deterrence has been unable to clear the Faction Champions in TOtC. We lost a few people and so had to pug 10-ish of the people in our 25-mans for the past few weeks as well. And now there are only 4 or 5 people showing up for 25man raids...

It's really sad, since I though that Deterrence actually had a lot of promise. But first Softieknight and then Carolije drove people out of the guild. Then one of of the officers (RequiemX) was absolutely childish in a raid and then looted the gbank and went off to form his own guild. And during all of this the original guild leader at first was MIA, and then passed leadership to the raid leader. The raid leader is a nice guy and he promoted a bunch of other officers, but he still wasn't all that great at delegating.

So Viljo and Kuan have watched the plosion of Deterrence and are now looking for another guild to join. Perhaps we can follow Nothinman into Smile. Perhaps we can convince Bloodcry and Hellshot to let us back into Darkfall. Perhaps there is another guild out there that we could make the raid times for.

followup

I said in an earlier post: the +hit lets me swap a neck gear in my standard raid set for something with no hit, but crit, and more spellpower.

Well, that was the badged neck, Lattice Choker of Light. Now, Kuan was saving up for buying the T8.5 chest for his heal set, and once I had enough badges I went to the vendor. And saw that for 19 of them I could get Frozen Tear of Elune.

So now Kuan has even more crit, and the healy chest has to wait more. I know, that's not that many badges to farm, but we've been busy wiping on faction champions, which Deterrence would rather keep trying instead of progress in Ulduar which would, as a side effect, get enough people geared so that faction champions would be easy.

Hence my spending some cycles leveling Ikoli. I thought the Coliseum was boring when they first released it. Now I think so even more.

Ikoli is 70!

of course she got it working on the Karazhan key.

The keys she and Mornara sitll need are:
• Arcatraz - they are on the final quest
• Shattered Halls - not started
• Caverns of Time heroic - they need a Black Morass run
• Tempest Keep heroic - will get as a side effect of Arcatraz quest
• Karazhan - they are early on the quest chain

Living in Azeroth

I was looking at Blue posts last night while stuck at work. One of the posts I noticed was someone asking where your characters would live. It caught my attention and I've been randomly pondering where my different characters would all live.

Viljo would have a room at the Filthy Animal in Dalaran. He doesn't altogether trust the Dalaran mages, so he'd want to live in Dal to keep an eye on them. Even if that means that he'd have to deal with Alliance in the streets. He'd keep at apt in Orgrimmar to get some Alliance free time, and of course to be on hand to defend Thrall and Vol'jin at need.

Teltanara would for sure live in Silvermoon. Kael'thas may have betrayed the Blood Elves, but Silvermoon is still the capital, and has the best (BE/all others) ratio. It's also a city so she can get whatever she needs without putting too much effort into having to go get it her self.

Mornara doesn't really have a home. She's more of a wandering fighter. She spends time wherever she has been fighting most recently. If she could settle down though she'd probably want to be in Orgrimmar or possibly Undercity.

Kairon would have a hut in Sen'jin Village. He'd spend some time in Orgrimmar as well, but Casimir (his tiger) prefers the jungles of the Echo Isles best.

Patience is its own reward

Well, OK, not really.

But Teltanara gave Kuanchichi a [Scroll of Enchant Weapon - Mighty Spellpower] and Kuan just banked it.

A couple weeks ago one of the officers gave me grief, why is there only +50 spellpower on Kuan's [Hammer of the Astral Plane]? I said, I don't want to blow the enchant on something that has a lot of upgrades... this is a Naxx 10 weapon off Kel'Thuzad.

Tonight, off the first boss in 25-man Coliseum, [Barb of Tarasque] dropped. It was rolls since we pugged in people, and Kuan won the roll! People were offering me 1,000 gold to trade it to them. But I hearthed, and used the scroll, pretty much as soon as I got the weapon. We had that kind of time; the raid leader talks too much between bosses.

And then, the same people were mad. Becuase they couldn't believe that I got it, and wasn't trading it to them.

Anyhow, now Kuan is wearing a daggar instead of a mace. (It's got the Horde logo on it too.) The +crit hit isn't as bad as it seems, the +hit lets me swap a neck gear in my standard raid set for something with no hit, but crit, and more spellpower.

Naxx 10

Last night Eeyan and Telt went into Naxx10 with a three quarter guild group. It was mostly alts and people who had relatively recently hit 80. We pulled a pug or two in and off we went.

Telt and another priest who was "practicing healing" were the healers, and we had a very nice shadow priest who kindly filled in during the 4 hoursemen. Our tanks were a bear, who had recently gotten to 80, and a very well geared pally, who had recently been Faction Changed from Alliance.

Anyway as can be seen from the logs, we were chugging merrily along. I was leader and was doing all the loot mastering. Which is a lot harder than it always seems. Both of the tanks had assist, and I was perfectly happy that they were merrily charging off and deciding who was doing what tank wise. I was also giving the other healer a few directions, but mostly she was doing fine. Her gear was pretty nice, but Telt was still outhealing her by a bunch. I give credit to holy spec and my ability to spam group heals.

We weren't making spectacular time, but we'd gotten Construct and Death Knight wings down pretty easily. The only wipe we had was on 4 horsemen, before I remembered that the spriest could go holy to get the back. But then the server crashed. In fact, not only did the server crash, the whole battle group crashed. After about 20 minutes of waiting to see if it would come back up DraNgNon and I just went to bed. Hopefully we can finish up tonight or tomorrow.

Ravasaurs

Here are Kuan and Viljo on their new Venomhide Ravasaurs, just after Mov'rek decreed that the hatchlings were big enough to ride. Wheee!