Project Lore

The time for my first purchase with Emblems of Frost is coming near, and I find myself wondering -- what is everyone else choosing for their first shiny new piece of gear? I might be a bit behind the times. Sure, I've been collecting my weekly 5 Frost badges from the weekly raid and I completed the frost emblem-yielding quests for the new dungeons, but I've been slightly slacking otherwise with the winter holidays upon us and all. I've probably only done the daily random heroic (for 2 emblems of frost per day) about half of the days that I could have since Patch 3.3 came out. And my raid group, also as a result of the holidays, has only ventured into Icecrown Citadel once -- and only gotten past Lord Marrowgar at that. But somehow I've managed to round up a grand total of 45 badges since the release of Patch 3.3, and I've started looking longingly at that new gear in ICC. If you've been clearing ICC each week in both 10- and 25-man versions and also doing everything else, you should have probably about triple that amount. With new gear pieces ranging in cost from 30 to 95 frost emblems, players already are starting to get in on the new tier pieces and other armor. Here's the mind-twisting question: to save up for a really great piece of gear to start off the collection right, or to spend as soon as I possibly can. Usually I'm pretty good at holding off for what I need most. But in this case, it looks like the piece that will give me the single greatest upgrade in one quick purchase is a belt -- the haste-happy Vengeful Noose, which for a costly 60 badges would replace my well-worn Belt of the Twilight Assassin that I bought with a mere 28 Conquest badges long ago. If I work hard, perhaps I can get it by the end of this week. The next purchase may be a more difficult decision, but I'll probably go with the same logic: figure out which piece will give me the greatest stat boost per slot. Another deciding factor for me, which is unfortunate for rogue tier 10 gear (in my opinion, anyways) is aesthetics. If I want to keep my DPS on top, I'll have to forgo looking pretty. Which I'm not happy about, but hopefully my raid mates will be! How did you, or will you choose your first Frost emblem purchase? What else do you take into consideration before handing over those hard-fought-for badges?