Project Lore

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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A lot has been going on lately. There has been an influx of activity in game, and a lot of the focus on a couple of in game events, namely Hallow's End and the Scourge Invasion. With the increased interest in WoW, though, there has been a rebirth of raiding for our guild. The Totally Rad Guild has been working on downing Kael for a long, long time. Since Monday, in fact. With only one or two raid members having actually been involved in a Kael fight prior to Monday, we threw together a run to get a couple of attempts under our belt (and a few more Tier 5 shoulder tokens) before a serious attempt at killing the blood elf prince last night. After getting second on the DPS charts while wearing a my lucky hat, we headed to Kael'thas with a purpose. So, With each successive attempt, we made significant progress, spirits remained high for the most part, and there were only a couple of deaths during our successful kill. We finished the entire fight in about ten minutes, and killed Kael before he got off his second gravity lapse. Although I've never seen the fight before, I feel like either our raid gained significant skill in the past week since we first downed Vashj, or the nerfs to raid bosses were extremely harsh. I had serious doubts about our ability to execute the strategy, and I think the decreased health and melee damage along with a nearly universal increase of DPS helped our raiders learn the fights much faster than previously possible. Add in the fact that there are a million write ups on how to kill the guy, and it's no wonder we got him down on the second night of attempts. However, you'll notice that the screen shot above (click for detail) is not of a dead Kael. It's our favorite fire mage, Dannydarko, on his shiny new phoenix mount, with a few jealous guildies alongside.

That's right. The Ashes of Al'ar dropped on our very. first. Kael'thas kill.

Difficult to believe? Yes. Did trade chat explode when he arrived in Shatt? Yes. Is Danny going to get more tells than he thought possible? Yes. Has Nameless been farming Kael for months hoping for the drop? Yes. Is this the end of the question and answer portion of my post? Maybe. Now, you might notice the Firey Warhorse towards the bottom left. That's Callihan on the other shiny new mount from last night. After all of the excitement and screenshots, I wanted to head to Kara to get an Arcanite Ripper before Tenris left town, so we decided to do a full clear. One Kill, One Midnight Mount, which Callihan won. We blazed through the rest of Kara, our off tank got both the Plate Chest and the Shield from Nightbane, and the Ring of a Thousand Marks dropped off of Prince for our rogue, seen above on the Albino Drake. All in all, an unbeliveable night for loot. We tried going to SM with Danny for the Headless Horseman mount, but it appeared that his Mount Juju ran out with the Daily Quest reset.

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I was around during the initial Scourge Invasion.  In fact, I was still playing WoW hours upon hours a day, many of them spent in raids, instances or just farming for gold.  Yet, I never really joined in on the fun of the Scourge Invasion.  I checked it out, but you wouldn't find me there day in and day out, in an attempt to stop the Necropoli from taking over.  I can't recall my reasoning, but it probably had something to do with the fact that I already had the Argent Dawn reputation that I needed for Naxxaramas.  This time around, I have been all over the invasion. This year's invasion started off with the infamous plague that turned so many of Azeroth's heroes into minions for the Scourge.  The Horde and Alliance put aside their differences, got together, and rid the lands of the threat in only a few days time.  But the plague was only an attempt by the Lich King to weaken Azeroth before sending out his Necropoli and Undead fodder. I enjoyed the plague for all that it was worth, and the continuation into the Scourge Invasion is partially what sucked me into the re-hashed event.  Invasion 2.0 is not all that different from the original pre-Naxxaramas event, if I remember correctly.  We have the areas under attack by the Necropoli, Necrotic Shards, Shadow of Dooms, Undead weapon enchants, and extra bosses in select instances. Only a few things have been added, namely rewards for participating.  Rather than receiving superior gear for our efforts, players can now select from almost Karazhan-quality gear that bump up one's Undead slaughtering capabilities.  We even have a few trinkets that summon an Argent Dawn agent or abilities to our side.  On the content side of things, players can still tackle the new Karazhan boss, Tenris Mirkblood, who seems to be the only thing remaining from the plague days gone by.  Not to mention, the only thing I have found that could really link the two events. This Rogue and Priest combo will be continuing the purging of the Undead from the Plaguelands until the event ends.  I am mainly doing it so I can try out Solidsamm's new spec, but I tend to be a sucker for summonable buddies.  So if you see a purple skull appear on your map (and are on Magtheridon), I will likely be in their base, killing their mans.  To bad the Argent Dawn reputation has been replaced by the Argent Crusade in Wrath of the Lich King and will be useless. Sadly, I haven't seen many other people partaking in the Scourge Invasion, is it just too old hat for you?  Or are you burned out from the plague - as the Lich King intended?

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This may seem obvious to many of you, but I thought I would share a bit of insight that I learned the hard way. No matter how much you want to free up that extra bag slot, you should always think twice (or maybe 3 times) about destroying your hard earned pieces of loot. I know it is hard to see a use for those boots you got in Kara when you have a shiny new piece of tier 5 sitting in your bags, but chances are you will need it again. I learned this lesson the hard way when it came time for our guild to take on Hydross in SSC. This fight requires that the main tanks deck themselves out in full resist gear, while still remaining uncritable. I, of course, was elected to be the guilds frost tank, meaning I needed to have both 365 frost resist, and 490 defense. This is not an easy task, and I found myself having to get creative to keep my defense up. This meant regemming many of my lower level Kara items and blues to maximize defense. As I began this long process I came to realize that there were a few items that I had long ago disenchanted that would be perfect for this! There was the trinket from Shadow Labs, that belt from Moroes, and those boots from Chess that would have put me right where I needed to be with minimal effort. Of course I had stupidly decided that I would rather have a void crystal to sell than a “useless” piece of gear, so I went ahead and did what any good enchanter would do and sharded it all. Next thing I know, I need this gear again and I'm back in Kara rolling on loot! While getting this stuff is fun and exciting the first time around, the second time it turns into a real grind. There is nothing like keeping your fingers crossed that some loot will drop that you already won months ago! Lucky for me I have a great guild, that was very understanding in the matter, but still there was a lesson to be learned here. I think this may be a timely reminder with WotLK breathing down our necks. As we all hop on the first boats out to Northrend, I'm sure we will be seeing all sorts of new gear finding its way onto our toons. There is no doubt that we will eventually replace all we have, but take a second look before you get rid of anything for good. I know there are still vanilla WoW trinkets that are used in TBC end game, and I have no doubt there is a piece or two we have now that will have its situational use for a long time to come. Think twice about getting rid of your gear, particularly If you are a tank, but I imagine the same goes for others as well. You never know when the next fight, the next unexpected gear drop, or a creative application of an ability can change your whole set of priorities when it comes to important stats!

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