Transmogrification Journal 3: Paladin PvP Season-8 Wrathful Gladiator

            Hey folks, sorry for the huge gap in between these posts but I’ve been extremely busy lately. I meant to have this out 2 days after the Judgement Set, but things just kept snowballing and before I knew it, it’s been almost 2 weeks. I’ll try and get these out faster from now on. So, on to the set…

            Wrathful Gladiator is a very popular set on the PTR, but perhaps it’s because Blizzard removed the cost from the items at the vendor making it the only real option for premade characters. This was my first choice for a transmogrification set for awhile because I assumed it’d be far less popular than either the Judgement Set or its recolor, but that might not be the case if the PTR is any indication. Also, I had a very difficult time finding some accessories to fit this very well. On live servers I normally pair it with Thunderfury and Bulwark of Azzinoth but since legendary weapons cannot be used to transmogrify, I had to dig a little deeper to find things I really felt suited the set.

Transmogrification Journal 2: Paladin Tier-2 Judgment Armor

            The second transmogrification set I’d like to talk about is my Paladin Tier 2 set, the Judgment Armor. This armor drops from bosses in the Lv60 Blackwing Lair raid, with the exception of the legs which drop from Ragnaros in the Lv60 Molten Core raid. Molten Core should be solo’able as a Paladin but it may take you some time depending on your gear. Blackwing Lair can technically be solo’d but the first boss is very difficult to do by yourself, it’s much easier with 2 or 3 people. This set is Paladin-only so only Blood Elves, Tauren, Humans, Dwarves, and Draenai can wear it. This is one of the most intricate and iconic set designs ever created in the World of Warcraft and is sure to be a popular choice for transmogrification. Fortunately, there are a wealth of items that match up very well with this set, so if you find yourself asking, “what shield matches the Tier 2 Judgement Set” or, “what weapon matches pally tier 2,” well, I’m here to tell you about my favorites.

Transmogrification Journal 1: Paladin Tier-2 Judgment Recolor

            I’ve spoken at length about how I choose items to compliment the gear sets I collect for vanity. While the example was based around three shields, the same criteria hold true for selecting weapons, cloaks, tabards, non-set items, and even mounts. This post is going to discuss the first of my planned series about actual sets I am transmogrifying and using on the Public Test Realm as I try and decide which I’ll end up using when 4.3 goes live.

            I’ll begin with what is sure to be a popular plate set people will be using in 4.3 because it is not class-specific; the recolor of the Paladin Tier-2, the purple Judgment Armor, (what I call “the Blessings Set”) which is healer-plate available in Outland Regular and Heroic dungeons and is likely very easy to farm as a lv80+ for any plate class and spec. I saw a few warriors on the PTR using pieces of this set and I just finished gathering all 8 pieces for my own warrior on live servers, so he may end up using this set himself on occasion (Though Wrathful Gladiator is likely what I’ll stick him in). Anyway, on to the set…

“Challenging”

            Perculia posed an issue on their blog, Flavor Text, about “If a game asks nothing of its players, what’s left of it as a game?” The question was raised on the subject of how World of Warcraft has become increasingly less challenging across all levels of difficulty, not just top-end raiding, as it has aged. The post is an excellent read and I recommend people check it out, but I can’t help feeling that it is asking the wrong question. I’m not going to get into a debate about difficulty in World of Warcraft as that has been covered by all angles and thousands of people over the last several years, but I’m interested at taking a brief (for me) look at the concept of “challenge” in general using World of Warcraft as a reference point.

            Now, I know people who play World of Warcraft “for the challenge.” What this simplistic statement usually means when these people say this is that their mission is raiding world-firsts, to face the toughest challenges as soon as possible and be the first (or among the first) to overcome them. There are also players in the game who sit in Orgrimmar or Stormwind their entire lives and amass gold by controlling markets on the auction house. There are people who collect vanity gear, pets, achievements, mounts, tame rare hunter pets, or just “play solitaire with a built-in chat function.” Now, on the broad, over-arching subject of game design, yes, challenge is intrinsic to what makes a game an interesting or “good” game, and you NEED challenge for a game to exist. But I feel that the “challenge” from a game does not necessarily have to be the INTENDED challenge the designers implemented when creating the game, nor do I believe there is a requite floor to the difficulty of a challenge. After all, stacking blocks can be a challenge. Building an intricate scale model of the Taj Mahal out of blocks is not the same degree of challenge as stacking 5 blocks on top of each other, but there IS a basic motor-skills challenge of stacking 5 blocks. Gravity can cause you to fail at the challenge of stacking 5 blocks if your motor skills and understanding of stable structure theory aren’t very good. If raid encounters or dungeon encounters become less punishing and challenging, that does not diminish or enhance the difficulty for Mr Bank-alt McMoneybags controlling a server’s economy. It may change the relative value of items, but that only affects his profit-margin “score” after he has completed his challenge, not the challenge itself.

Aesthetic Manifesto

            I LOVE vanity gear. I can’t remember what it was that first started me on the road to actively collecting gear, but I remember that the desire to HAVE that kind of gear came the first moment I set foot in Orgrimmar as a lv10 Orc warrior, my very first character on my very first day of playing World of Warcraft. It was the end of Burning Crusade, about 2 month before Patch 3.0, and everyone was walking around in awesome looking equipment. The images of Warrior Tier-5 / Merciless Gladiator gear and Hunter Merciless Gladiator gear was a feast for my eyes and I couldn’t wait to grow up and one day be as cool as all those people I saw.

            With 4.3 rapidly approaching and Transmogrification already available on the Public Test Realm, I thought I would talk a little bit (ok, A LOT) about my thought process in deciding how I choose my gear sets and how I complete these outfits with accessories and flair. My purpose here is not to make anyone’s decisions for them or to influence people in any way, merely to illustrate my thought process as I gear-up (pardon the pun) for my own personal vanity-fest in 4.3 When I look for gear sets to build, there isn’t much to it beyond “does it look cool” and “how does my race/gender look in it.” Fortunately, I’m a female blood elf so there really isn’t much that doesn’t look good on me. My biggest complaint is that I’m small, so I lose some of the detail in breastplates and shoulder pieces. Some items that look amazing on big-shoulder races like male Orcs and Tauren just don’t look as impressive or detailed on my smaller shoulders. It doesn’t mean they look bad, just less impressive or eye-catching. When it comes to accessorizing my sets though, there are three things that I look for and consider in order to determine if they’ll complete the grand-unification effect of the set or ruin it;

Top 10 Disappointments of Catacylsm (so far)

            As I was RUNNING through Silvermoon City, bemoaning my inability to fly here for the millionth time, the idea popped into my head to list my 10 biggest disappointments of Cataclysm to date. There are many things I like about Cataclysm, but it is so much easier, and more fun, to complain than to praise; so here are my top10 biggest disappointments of cataclysm (so far, it’s not over yet…)

Transmogrify Demystified

            I finally had a chance to get on the PTR and take a look at some of the new stuff. I got to run two of the new 5-mans, “End Time” and “Hour of Twilight.” Both are really short, each having only 3 bosses and very little trash overall. The loot was in-game and some neat drops were seen even though I only ran each once. Overall neither was very challenging in a disappointing way. All the bosses seemed very simple mechanically and never posed too much of a danger. Maybe it’s because I’m in mostly 391 gear, but I seem to remember the Zandalari heroics being much more taxing the first time I did them on live. Maybe these will get re-tuned before 4.3. But, what I really got to sink my teeth into was transmogrification.

            There is a new building in Orgrimmar, right inside the drag, entering from the Valley of Strength, inside are the Arcane Reforger (now an Ethereal), Void Storage, and the Transmogrification guy. Reforging has a new interface which was nice, it is now radial buttons (like a multiple choice test format) and you fill in the buttons of the stats you want swapped, rather than the old style drop-down menu. Void storage offers 80 new slots of storage for Soulbound, non-Unique, non-stackable items. You cannot put in items with a “Unique” designation, you can, however, put in “Unique-Equipped” items. So, sadly, some items I would have love to have stored in there must remain in my bank, but as of this writing I have 41 items in there including old trinkets, archeology items, tabards, and some other miscellaneous stuff. You can deposit 9 items at a time, simply open void storage, open your bags, and right-click on the item in your bags and it will automatically be placed into the deposit window. The withdraw window works the same way, also with 9 slots for quick movement. Including the 1000g purchase fee, I spent roughly 3000g putting stuff in void storage, which is cheaper (and much bigger) than what a 26-slot dreamcloth bag would cost me on my server. Anyway, on to the transmogrification discussion…

Growing Up As A Tank

            I’ve grown up a little more in Cataclysm. I’ve grown as a player, as a person, and as a tank. I guess the world having its face re-arranged can do that to people. I can remember the times in the now-distant past where I was clueless as a tank. I remember popping my +dodge Monarch Crab trinket before dragons breathed on me thinking it would help. I remember using a healer mace to tank Wrath heroics and not understanding why it wasn’t a better tanking weapon because my consecration damage was so much higher. “I did more damage” I would think, “Surely that means I did more threat, doesn’t it?” I remember wiping in Old Kingdom because I didn’t understand target priority on trash. I remember I never used to use Holy Shield back when it provided a bonus to block % and had charges. I remember never moving out of the way of Anub’Arak’s “Pound” ability in Azjol’Nerub because the first time I did it I had an over-geared healer who told me to stay still while he healed me through it. It wasn’t until several wipes in the future later that I learned not every healer could do the same and that it was my job to move.

Breathing on the Embers

            I don’t write anymore. I don’t stop to smell the roses. At this point, I don’t really remember why I started writing; what it was about writing that made me want to do it. I can only guess it was because there was empty time that needed filling and despite idling for countless hours around Dalaran at the time, that alone wasn’t enough just watching the lines on the chat window scroll by. Maybe That was when I had time to write and I suddenly got busy. I know there have been times where I’ve spent as much as 16 hours a day in Azeroth. There was that one-time “Great Cataclysm-launch Marathon” of 60 hours that I somehow managed to pull off. Looking back on it now I remember how surreal it felt, going from 80 to 85 in about 22 hours, then immediately grinding dailies, extra quests, and heading into dungeons, cause I was gonna be damned if I wasn’t in full 346 or better and killing at least one raid boss the first week of the expansion just like all those impressive guilds. Little did I know, of course, that those impressive guilds wouldn’t just kill a boss, they’d kill 12 of them, even if Nefarian didn’t die until Monday night, and only on 10man because of some bug in the 25m version.

            I think it really was an issue of time. I had all the time in the world, and I didn’t want to sit around writing about the World of Warcraft when I could just log on. I didn’t feel a need to chronicle things or analyze them when I could just talk to people in-game or on vent. Now, almost a year since my last entry, I still have all the time in the world, I still recognize that I’m not in any position to give advice on the game or about my class, and I was perfectly content, until tonight, to let this place go on gathering dust along with my consecrate button. But, thanks to whatever it was that made me open up the list of blogs I used to read, I’ve seen that The Renaissance Man has continued to update his blog and has sparked something in me to create again. Whether this spark will live to enliven some creativity, or be squashed like the adds on post-nerf Al’Akir, only the future will reveal.

Algalon “The Raid Destr…” oh f**k it he died before Big Bang.

So, Hi everyone, haven’t posted in ages, too busy grinding my face off.

I was going to blog about my race to 85, but then I spent 24 hours running on adrenaline. Hit it in just shy of 24 hours (server 13th, not bad). Would have been faster but I was dumb and ran Throne of the Tides and Blackrock Caverns hoping for some nice instance-XP, but it jut turned out to be a waste of 2 hours. Then I went to Vashj’ir first and wasted another hour on clunky 3-d movement and the inability to tell when I was going to pull something that looked far away. Once I went to Hyjal I finished the zone in an hour and was extremely disappointed by all the time I had wasted instead of just going to Hyjal first. I also died ALOT. I leveled Retribution because I thought it would be faster. It was fast enough I guess, with my 4-piece 264 tier and a heroic Brynn’troll which I didn’t replace until somewhere in Twilight Highlands I think. One or two monsters at a time was ok, but once I started getting 3+ it got hairy, and even with cooldowns and Word of Glory spamming myself, 4 or more usually meant death. I also didn’t read a lot of quests. There was one quest in Uldum where there were 6 guys guarding an item I had to click on and all I had to do was use an item in my inventory to distract them and get it, but instead I charged in and tried to kill them all with kiting and CC and luck three times, eating floor every time, because I only looked at the “where on the map do I go” indicators, and not reading how to do the quest. I killed so many 400k-elite quest mobs solo that I was supposed to weaken down to 100k with an inventory item that it’s not even funny…