Project Lore

Via Washington Interscholastic Activities Association (WIAA)

Championing, all the kids are doing it now, so why aren't you?  Championing is the fun way to gain reputation with a few select factions in Wrath of the Lich King.  With Championing, you can go from Friendly to Exalted in a matter of minutes, instead of weeks.  No longer will you have to wait for mobs to respawn or fight with other aggressive characters when you wish to mind your own business.  Yes folks, Championing is the way of the future, the easiest, most convenient way to become best friends with a faction that previously despised the ground you walked on.  Championing - the new hotness. Championing offers players an easier way to farm reputation, but you can only Champion certain classes.  However, every player who wishes to have the best head enchant available needs to Champion at least one faction.  Before we get into those factions, allow me to explain the process before I drop the C-word for the tenth time.  The new reputation mechanic enables players to run any level 80 dungeon while still gaining reputation for a chosen faction.  This is accomplished by wearing a faction-specific tabard that can be acquired when your toon reaches Friendly with the select Northrend posse.  Mages get it a tad easier, the wielders of physics breaking magic can obtain the Kirin Tor Tabard at the incredibly low rank of Level 1. Four Champion-able factions and their associated head enchantment: The Argent Crusade - Stamina & Defense Rating Kirin Tor - Spell Power & Critical Strike Rating Knights of the Ebon Blade - Attack Power & Critical Strike Rating The Wyrmrest Accord - Spell Power & Mana Per 5 Seconds Blizzard's mechanic allows players to break the monotonous cycle of grinding dailies for every faction, but we can't escape it completely.  Aside from a new way to gain status among our peers, the hidden benefit is that Championing will - at least theoretically - open up more people to a selection of instances.  The ability to gain Ebon Blade rep in any Heroic means that SolidSamm won't have to grind the same instance like he did in The Burning Crusade's day.  This opens up the possibility of my rogue joining any instance group that is looking for DPS (read: none).  Choice is good. The above aside, there really is no "guide" to Championing.  Simply hit Friendly with whatever faction you need, grab the tabard from their vendor and you are on your way.  As a side note, if you fail to don one of the faction tabards, your toon's Northrend rep (Alliance Vanguard/Horde Expedition) will be raised instead. SolidSamm is working on his AP/Crit Arcanum as you read this, but don't forget to look at the other items the factions of to offer.  The little ankle biter will replace his Ebon Blade tabard with the Kirin Tor's in an effort to lower the high price of their sexy ring.  Who's colors are you sporting? On a more hardcore note, how many of you have taken the time to score the Championing achievement?  Serious props if you have.

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I didn't have the heart to crop out the skull.

Blizzard Entertainment seems to be on a warpath with Wrath of the Lich King's first content patch.  The developer has promised players an insane amount of content including the addition of the largest instance to date, Ulduar, the Dual Spec mechanic, a built-in Gear Manager, and the Argent Tournament, just to name a few.  Not everything coming in v3.1 has been given the bullet point treatment however. The bloggers on Project Lore have found a few under-the-radar type of additions that we have clung to like a dork to his unopened figures.  Heartbourne gave us the Hearthstone cooldown reduction and Dual Spec price.  The first change was likely made to stop "ghetto hearthing" - the art of abusing an instance for a free hearth.  Juggynaut got hooked on his Legendary mace and the modifications to the Dual Spec feature before hitting us with the removal of the Black and Plagued Proto-Drake meta-achievement rewards.  Myself, well, I covered the Argent Tournament and the patches upcoming gear additions.  Which no one cared about apparently, or just didn't want to spoil themselves. Following in the footsteps of the Hearthstone's nerf and the additional of the Gear Manager, comes another quality of life change to World of Warcraft, the modification to the RaidID system. Blizzard announced their intentions to overhaul the archaic system a few weeks ago, but I don't think anyone, including Blizzard, expected it to be done for Patch 3.1's testing on the PTR. The RaidID system is Blizzard's internal way of tracking which instance a toon should be connected to.  The main problem that arose with the system was the lockout period.  Should a player that has cleared a raid or heroic enter into the instance first, followed by the other members of the party or raid, the unsaved players can get linked to the cleared instance.  This would then blow their lockout period.  Needless to say, this small issue pissed people off. A lot.  Zarhym's promise of "a better interface to warn players" has come to light on the PTR, but not as elegant as he hoped. BigRedKitty's screenshot shows us a dialogue box with a warning on it.  Basically, we have 15 seconds to get out of dodge if the instance is not what we expected, that is it.  The box does not appear to give you any details on the instance itself, so the "better interface" has yet to come to fruition by my standards.  Hopefully further upgrades to the system will be coming in the near future. Many of you probably never experienced this issue, or don't even care about the "fix", but you should.  In my opinion, it is Blizzard's application of these little tweaks that helps make them one of the premiere developers in the industry.  The company should be applauded for their attention to detail and willingness to correct their mistakes, especially when the issue only effects a small amount of the populace under certain circumstances.  Even if Blizzard does it in an iterative fashion when a more drastic change is called for, at least the ball is rolling.  Right?

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Way back when I started here at ProjectLore.com I was all giddy over a new engineering pattern that showed up on the Wrath of the Lich King Beta. The Mechano-hog (Horde) or Mekineer's Chopper (Alliance) infatuated me with its ridiculous clunkiness , gnomish features and lifelong dream to be part of a biker gang.  We should also factor in the hilarious Predator reference that comes via the accompanying achievement, Get to the Choppa!

I had been waiting to get on this bike since Wrath launched, but its insanely steep price and my incredibly slow grind to level 80 have delayed me severely. I am underselling the price when I say steep though. The bike is on the Auction House for downright ludicrous prices, well over 10,000 gold the last few times I have checked.  I am not poor but in this economy I find it difficult to even spend virtual money.

Being an engie, Solidsamm has an alternate route, making it himself. This would require a crapload of money spent to level the profession (see link above), then a boatload of time spent getting the required materials. Lastly, a small purse full of money and time spent rep-grinding to pick up the pattern itself. All of this to ride around in a spiffy hog, that can't fly.  At the moment my time is better spent on other things, causing me to go with option three, the passenger's seat. Shotgun!

While participating in yesterday's Heroic Daily, I noticed my tank had pulled out his shiny new Hog, complete with PWN license plate. As I ran up to him to get a free ride click the green arrow, a party member dove in before me. Being the little knee biter that I am, I harassed the paladin until he got out of the sidecar and allowed me to navigate. After all, I did call shotgun.

To my surprise, Blizzard actually intended the person in the sidecar to navigate. Once belted in, I noticed a scroll of parchment placed in front of my character. On it was a map of Kalimdor. The map wouldn't help in Stratholme (Lordaeron is part of the Eastern Kingdoms) but I loved the small detail nonetheless. It is the little things Blizzard adds that make their titles more enjoyable.

Although we didn't succeed in completing the timed event (I blame Arthas and his snail pace), I did score some loot. Sadly, it was two new pairs of gloves, but they may both be used. Until I can get my hit rating up to something respectable, the Handwraps of Preserved History are my new gloves. Bile-Cured Gloves should make an appearance when I begin to approach the the hit cap. This is all assuming both pairs aren't replaced by then.

I would say that Solidsamm had quite a productive weekend. Scored a few pieces of new loot, got more than a dozen Emblems of Heroism, over twenty Stone Keeper's Shards, a good amount of reputation and his first ride in Wrath's version of the ROFLCopter.  He also got a sad reminder of his sister's lack of playtime. According to the returned mail he received from Solidsagart, I haven't paid much attention to her in 30 days!

The irony of the whole situation was that as I oogled that glorious chopper, my buddy went on to explain that he wanted my Mechanostrider...Anyone else manage to have a productive weekend in Azeroth?

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Yes, I dinged while working on Sons of Hodir

Wrath of the Lich King's PvE content may be easy compared to The Burning Crusade, but there remains a line of progression.  For instance, hitting level 80 does not mean you should immediately jump into one of the many heroic dungeons.  With my long weekend, I figured I could get a bunch of heroics under my belt seeing as I have finally hit level 80 (DING!).  My old warrior buddy set me straight in only the way he can, through ridicule and yelling. I still have a lot of gear from Season 2, Karazhan and high level crafted items equipped and haven't seen many alternatives.  This is why I was thinking about banging out a dozen or so heroics with my free day.  After the text-lashing, I checked in with WoWHead to see just how much my gear could be upgraded through non-heroics.  Turns out to be a crapload.  Nearly every dungeon from Gundrak on has some sort of an upgrade, incremental and not so incremental.  The only thing that they lack is a pair of quick daggers for my Mutilate build.  Guess I will be sticking with old trusty for awhile longer. Rather than diving into the ranks of heroic runners, I have taken the advice of my friend (although I will never admit it to him) and segued to the non-heroic instances for the moment.  By the end of the day I will have run over a dozen non-heroic dungeons, and hopefully, bumped by gear into the next level.  But damn if I don't want a new off-hand dagger. Doing non-heroics before jumping to heroics may seem like an obvious notion to many of you, but I have run across countless people in the non-heroics who are barely geared for them, let alone the more difficult flavor of the dungeon.  Even many of my guild mates tried to make the leap from level 79 to heroics.  The better geared members were able to roll with the punches, but just as many had to be replaced during the instance.  From our anecdotal evidence, anyone decked out in SSC gear or better, with some Wrath gear mixed in there, was more than ready for heroics. Nice, just found a group for Halls of Lightning, off to shiv some baddies from Nordic lore.  This will be my first run at Loken, hopefully he is kind enough to drop his hood.  For those still leveling, do all the heroic runners a favor, check out which dungeons have gear you need and hit them up first.  My tank is sick of out DPSing other party members in heroics... How many of you had the patience to gear up before attempting your first heroics?  For those that just dove right in, what was your gear like and how did you do?

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I did it. Juggynaut is a Level 80 Shaman. What did I do when I hit 80? I definitely didn't say ding. I spent my last talent point, turned in my quest, then Astral Recalled and trained one of my new favorite toys. Well, I actually trained about three levels worth of skills which cost me hundreds of gold, but the most important one for me was Hex. For those of you who haven't been paying much attention to shaman lately (including the devs), or those of you who haven't been watching our features from the beta, Hex means I can crowd control a mob temporarily. While it only lasts 30 seconds and has a 45 second cooldown. I've found it terribly useful while soloing, grouping, and even raiding. While questing, Hex can either eliminate an add for a short period, or it can decrease the damage output of the enemy for a few vital seconds in a fight. I utilized it in both fashions while attempting (and eventually defeating) a 5-man quest with my favorite Night Elf Priest (I love telling people we duoed Mal'Ganis). In instances, I'll Hex any animals or humanoids I see. It's been great in both heroics and our first steps into Naxx 10, where we managed to down a handful of bosses. In the end, Hex is a crowd control spell that mixes elements of a lot of the other CC spells that are out there. On the surface, it is polymorph effect, but it also counts as a curse. It can only be used once during a typical battle, like Sap, and has a cooldown longer than its duration, reminding me of blind. Similar to Fear, it doesn't break immediately on damage. Instead it takes a certain amount of damage to break it, which according to my anecdotal evidence can vary. I think I've seen frogs drop dead from AoE before anyone in the group targeted them. While not an ideal CC spell, I'm definitely liking it over my past options (none).

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Okay, this is something that everyone is allowed to be angry at, casual, hardcore, Auction House nuts, everyone.  Maintenance day.  Thankfully, I actually have something to do on this day of reduced playtime.  In my effort to head over to Karazhan and Tenris Mirkblood yesterday, I realized that I have not logged into my Rogue with a purpose, for some time.  Poor Solidsamm has been relegated to the role of bandage machine in recent weeks. The main issue with this is that Solidsamm had never had his talents redone for Patch 3.0.2.  Gasp!  How the hell can one raid without spending those precious talent points.  Instead of being “that guy” in the raid that largely does nothing, I informed the leader of my plight and kindly allowed a replacement.    What a nice guy I am.  I then spent the next hour or so pining over my talent spec and have finally come up with a base spec that I will fine tune after some raiding. The current specialization is built around daggers and will change to a more level friendly build when Wrath launches in a few weeks.  For now, raiding, instancing and damage is all that I really care about.  At the same time, I decided that I wanted to try something new.  Out with the old Combat Daggers build I was using, and in with the new Mutilate build that uses 3.0.2's Turn the Tables talent. The build is pretty cookie cutter, but I will try a moving a few points around to see what can maximize my damage, if anything.  The current setup focuses on energy conservation and creation and is heavily reliant on poisons, namely Deadly Poison.  I threw in that point of Vigor mainly for farming purposes.  Which I do plenty of.  I will have to get used to using Seal Fate again, as well as another new talent, Hunger for Blood.  My combo point rotation will change, from Gouge/Backstab, to a Mutilate heavy rotation capped off with Slice and Dice or Envenom.  In the end, a whole bunch of new buttons, that are bound to a collection of new abilities, will be pressed.  It'll be almost as different as leveling a Priest! What do you PvE-focused Rogues out there think?  Have you guys tried Mutilate yet?  Am I the only person attached to his daggers?  As for the rest of you, did you take the opportunity to try something fresh like I am about to?  Hopefully my toon won't revolt on me for ignoring him for weeks...

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Oh, god do I understand the pain to be a healer finally. Previously, I have leveled my Rogue, a Mage and a Hunter. Never have I truly focused on a healing class, or even a tank (that is my next project). That was until recently. Since I hit 60+ and have been voyaging throughout the Outlands, I have been bombarded with tells. Ninety percent of them, if not more, simply asked “do you want to heal x,” quest, instance, help in PvP, you name it. I am not ignorant. I knew that I would be receiving these tells as soon as I got into the higher levels of World of Warcraft, but the sheer number I've been receiving is astounding. Ironically, they would have never asked me had they looked at my gear. It wasn't until some friends ran me through Ramparts, Blood Furnace and Slave Pens a few times that I became a competently geared healer for my level. Before that I was decked out in level 35-50 gear from power leveling – as a Shadow Priest - via the Refer-a-Friend service. This was responsible for my health barely being over 2000 and my mana pool hovering in the 4000 range. Not exactly ideal. The main reason I rolled a healer is simply because they are always needed. On my other toons, I would have to spam the LFG, trade, city and general chat channels to try and find groups. Minutes to hours could go by before something solidified. Now I simply say “Healer LFG Slave Pens” and boom, I have an invite. It feels nice to be wanted. In my defense, I feel like I have always been kind to healers, as I never randomly whispered someone or harassed them to come on my run. To top that off, I always would hand them any items I did not need. Healers must have loved me when they grouped with my Rogue. As soon as I felt the group and healer were competent to finish the instance, I'd open a trade window and dump all my mana pots, spirits or mana regeneration food and mana drinks on them. Back in my raiding days, I heard that some Priests asked for me to be in their group in hopes of scoring free swag, maybe that is just my ego talking. So the moral of the story is, be nice to your healers. Like a good tank, they can find a new group quickly. They don't need you, you need them. Oh, except Goggins, /spit on him at any and all opportunities.

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