Still Leveling

Shiny Dragon! Finally mine!

Between school and  work I haven't had much time for playing wow recently so Tyledres is still working on leveling. Currently at level 87. Still have a lot of leveling left. But the new zones are so very pretty. And I love looking at the architecture and the scenery and just everything.

Gorgeous. Amazing. And the dungeons are a blast. They're so much easier than the cata dungeons. Not that they're cake and you can ignore boss mechanics but you don't have to spend more time trying to remove trash than you do killing bosses. There are some disadvantages to easy trash though. The dps are impatient and seem to think that they should pull for me. Nothing peeves me off more than trying to catch my bearings only to have the mage running ahead and pulling 20 mobs. Bleh. It would be nice if they would ask me to pick up the pace instead of pulling for me. But once I'm familiar with a dungeon I don't seem to have that trouble but I think it's also because I'll chain pull and even pull several groups at once. I like pulling a bazillion mobs and running though things as fast as I can but not on my first attempt at a new place. Besides I figure when I'm leveling there might be others who would appreciate a slower pace so they can indulge their senses because these instances are just as pretty as the questing area. I think I did one that was in an outdoor zone. A monastery or something. I can't remember much about it though because the one time I did it I spent the entire time running after the mage, swearing profanities, and praying that the healer would keep me up because I know I was standing in stuff that I should have been avoiding but I was too busy trying to keep up with the mage to figure out what I was doing. I hate feeling like I have to scramble to keep with with dps when I'm the tank. It's a fun challenge to be chasing down the tank when I'm heals or dps but to be chasing after others as the tank is more frustrating than anything.

Ok, I'm done ranting. But I've enjoyed my other groups. I particularly enjoyed running Stormstout Brewery and the Jade Temple with a group that was entirely guildies. My guild has been so close to being inactive for so long it's such a pleasure to log in and see 10 or more people on. And guild chat has been busy as well. But I'm trying not to feel to optimistic. It's a new expansion. Traffic  picks up after something new is released but than tapers off. So far only one guildie has reached 90 but the rest of us are working. We weren't planning on being the first ones to 90 or being the first guild to finish the raids. We're just going to work on getting it done in our own time.

I haven't done much with pet battles. I named my feline familiar Tuttle, my clockwork rocket bot Dalek, and leveled them both to 5 along with my Spritedarter Hatchling. I've also gotten my creepy crate to level 3. I mostly just wanted to get the last few pets I needed to get  the Celestial Dragon. I've mostly just been working on leveling my death knight.

Unexpected game time

That is one big carrot.

I wasn't going to play today. Tuesdays and Thursdays are the days where I'm busy with school all day and work all night and sometimes find myself up until midnight still scrambling to get homework done. I wasn't going to be playing today.

Than I woke up and felt terribly awful. In my rush I managed to knock over my glasses and step on them. Bleh. I'm not about to try and wear contacts either. I still fill twitchy from the last time I wore them and I managed to get them crumpled up under my eyelid several times. But since I figured I wasn't going to be going anywhere I figured the headache I'll get from trying to make sense of this weird half-blur of a world was better than the eye ache I'll get trying to wear contacts.

So now I find myself with tons of time. So I figured I'd play some Wow but I find myself reluctant to try and level anything to 86. Why? Because the areas are full of people trying to level and since I'm on a pvp server I have no doubt that there will be those waiting to get some kills. I'm just not feeling up to that. So instead I made a monk. I had done some joking with my guildies about my monk being the first toon I was going to level but I never expected to be playing a monk until after I had a few 90s. I had no idea what race I was going to be for my monk or what name.

So I made a Pandarian. Yes, yes, very original. Heh. And than had no idea what name to use. I eventually just kept hitting randomize but wasn't seeing anything. I tried a few names and nothing was available. Than I hit randomize once more and got Geshi and hit accept. I had meant to keep hitting randomize but I think I rather like the name.

I spent my time going though the zone but I think I'll have to make another Pandarian later when I can see better or at least don't have to have the screen a foot away from my eyes to make things look clear. But what I could see and what I remember from my brief foray into beta was that the zone is beautiful. General chat was filled people asking when they could choose a faction, why there was no mailboxes, how to get there boa's, and why the chat was doubling up and when Blizzard was going to fix it. I stopped paying attention. There was a decent number of people making Pandaren but the zone wasn't really busy but I expect most people are off trying to level their mains.

This lady reminds me of Tyledres
I think it's the hair :)

I managed to get Geshia though the starting zone and picked Alliance for her faction and than did the walk into Stormwind. It was very different from the Death Knight walk of shame. Geshia did the walk with two npc's who stopped to marvel at the quest's board and everywhere we went the npcs would stare at us and say things like "I never expected to see a Pandarian here!" And meeting the King was interesting because he insisted on showing us around and laying down the law along with having a quick battle! I want to make some horde ones just so I can punch Garrosh in the face... unless Garrosh isn't the one we have to fight. Than I spent a bit of time doing a few pet battles but I figured it's about time I tried to get some rest.

Theramore Scenario Finished

Tonight I managed to complete the Theramore Scenario on all of my 85s. I wasn't certain that I would manage to get my horde Arita's ilvl up but though some cheap auction house finds, a little luck, and a lot of prayer I managed to sneak it to the right level.

I had been very curious to see how the two events compared. There are some similarities.

Spoilers

Randomness and Lich King Achievements

During the closing cermonies from the mogolympics, JD had picked my polearm outfit as one of the judge's favorites and he sent me the loot code I needed to get my new pet. So I spent Friday figuring out how to do that since I've never had a loot code to turn in before. Which was pretty exciting and didn't take as long as I feared it would. So I decided to keep working on Tyledres's new transmog set which meant running some randoms. I'll admit that I'm now tired of the new heroics so I qued up for old ones.

I was surprised when I got Zul'Amen. My experiences with the troll dungeons is that currently they're more of a nightmare to finish than when they were the "new" content. My theory is that when they were the top dungeon to run you were more likely to encounter better geared players and more of the group would know the fights. When you have fresh levelers and have to try and explain to everyone every fight things don't go as smoothly. I was lucky in that this group only had one person who needed fights explained and that one of the dps took over explaining so I could stay focused on tanking. I can do both but I tend not to be good at doing both at the same time. Since it was Zul'Amen I figured I'd put in a good effort towards getting the mount and if it happened it'd be awesome but if it didn't no big deal. Thanks to a really awesome hunter and healer we traveled though the dungeon at a nice pace and managed to get the bear mount for the rogue in our group. I was really surprised when we got to the Hex Lord and I saw that one of the mobs was Darkheart. Undead! The priest chained him at the same time that I made him my minion. Apparently being a minion wins out. Darkheart made a really nice pet doing some good damage and since the control lasts for 5 minutes I was able to use him to help kill the last boss as well. I may have a new favorite ability. 

Darkheart and me. BFF for 5 mins.

The next instance I got was Zul'Gurub and I again had a really amazing group and we sped though the place flawlessly and I can't think of any other time where the last boss was killed so easily. It's hard to believe that it was a group of random strangers. 

I did a few more dungeons and finished up running scenarieros on all my alliance 85s. The only 85 I haven't run yet is my hordie Arita but I don't think she's geared enough to go. 

Than my guild master started looking for people to finish up some achievements in 10 man ICC to get the drake. We quickly formed a group of four of us with me calling dibs on being the healer on my Paladin. The guild master Tiernan grabbed his lock and we had Lauralantha a fury/prot warrior, and Riandel an 84 shadow/disc priest. After a check to see what achievements we needed we quickly decided to run regular ICC to make it easier for us. Between all of us there were only 5 achievements that we really needed to get and none of them where the heroic ones. I only needed 2 of them myself, Full House and Been waiting a long time for this.

Marrorgar went down easily and we even picked up boned but getting Full House was more complicated. Our first attempt we ended up wiping because the tank was in the wrong stance and my healing picked up too much aggro. But it was also called because we had some trouble with the adds. The original plan was not to dps her at all until we had the 5 types of cultists needed for the achievement and than burn her into phase 2. But the two of them couldn't burn her quickly enough before she transformed another cultist which changed how many types we had. A quick readjustment of the plan and our tank got himself in the right stance and we had our achievement.

Festergut took two tries as well even though we weren't going for the achievement simply because we couldn't kill him before his stack got too high and killed the tank. A quick change of spec and our warlock was ready to offtank when the tank died and Festergut went down easily.  At Puturicide we needed to pick up Nausea, Heartburn, Indigestion which we managed to pick up in one try. We didn't need any achievement in the Crimson Halls but killed those bosses fairly quickly. We needed to pick up portal jockey from Dreamweaver so the priest switched to his healing spec and we both took portals with the warrior picking up the third portal and the warlock being the tank/dps on the outside. 

Sindragosa was more difficult as we needed to get all you can eat from her. The four of us could have killed her but since we were doing an achievement run we where having difficulty getting rid of the stacks of mystic buffet. We eventually managed to pull in two more guildies and the lvl 84 changed to his 85 main to give us more dps. The two guidies we pulled in was a druid Mapleleaf and a mage Teatime. Having Time Warp and the extra dps helped us to just burn the boss down before anyone's stack could reach 5. 

So than the 6 of us headed to the lich king to get I've been waiting a long time for this. Having only two people who could dispel the disease made this fight a little more complicated with trying to stack the disease to 30. When the numbers are low a few ticks of this could be survived but when they start stacking up they could one-shot someone. This wasn't a problem if there were enough ghouls and minions for it to jump to but when there was nothing but the lich king and us it got deadly quickly. After two attempts to try and stack it right from the beginning of the fight we decided to dispel the first one into nothing and let the stack of ghouls build a bit. We had only intended the first one to be dispelled into nothing but we ended up dispelling the first 3 into nothing. But there was a really nice big stack of minions for it to jump to. After it built to 30 we killed the Lich King. 

And I got to enjoy my nice new mount!

Why do you play your spec - Leveling toons

After some thought I decided I'd talk a bit about some of the toons I'm leveling. I have a tendency to change specs while I level because I like to change things around. Duel-spec helps a lot because I can experiment with the different specs more.

Adorothia - Warrior, Korgath. I started Adora to experience the worgen starting area. Next thing I know she's hitting level 20. She's also the only toon where I used the random name generator to create her name. I never really thought she'd get very far in leveling. Heh. Adorothia is now level 53 and even though she has duel-spec she spends all her time as prot running dungeons. I don't know how I ever leveled anything before dungeon finder. Prot has some fun tools and has been working well for dungeons runs but I haven't had much interest in leveling Adora recently.

Vaunt - Warlock, Aegwynn. Vaunt is one of my earlier toons. Her name is from a moment where I thought warlocks where very similar to vampires and should run around saying, "I vaunt to suck your health, bwa-ha-ha-ha." with the very bad Count Countla Seasme Street voice. I wanted a felguard so I leveled Vaunt as demonology. It took forever but eventually she had a felguard at level 40 in felwood. I really loved her in Outlands when she learned Metamorphoses. Changing into a giant demon, jumping into the fray and doing massive amounts of aoe damage is something that really appealed to me. And than the Cata patch came and I no longer had Metamorphosis. At least not for another couple of levels. So I finally bought duel-spec and tried Destruction. She eventually managed to get the few levels she needed to pick up Metamorphsis again but she's been gathering dust ever since.

Vâunt - Warlock, Korgath. I reuse names I like but only for the same class. And I like Vaunt's name even if it's a terrible joke that no one understands. I started her as destruction and since I hadn't tried affliction I picked that up as her other spec. I haven't done much leveling with her in awhile either.

Sitroh - Hunter, Korgath. I have a few hunters but this is the one that I play with the most regularity. Sitroh is a survival hunter. I like explosive shot. I enjoy playing survival and the changes to what abilities we get is pretty nice. I used my talents to pick up an interrupt and with trap launcher I can no do some decent aoe damage. My other spec is beast master which I haven't touched yet. I had thought I might become crazy about collecting pets but I'm pretty happy having just a ghost saber. I have a few other pets but other than my green ghost bird I don't use any of them. Sitroh has been the toon I'm most concerned with leveling right now but that's partly because I have a friend that I'm leveling Sitroh with.

Hortis - Paladin, Dunemaul. Hortis is an attempt at a blood elf paladin. Since I enjoy leveling though dungeons I made Hortis prot specced. She can't seem to get a decent pair of pants. She spent a lot of time leveling in a pair that looked like a belt with some chain drapes and finally managed to replace them with a bikini. Apparently she seems to have no problem wearing skimpy gear.

I have other alts but none that are currently as important as this set so I'm officially calling an end to my Why do you play your spec series. It was pretty fun to reflect on what brought me to this point with all my toons and I really enjoyed delving a bit into my story telling. But I think one of my favorite parts about this series is that it's not done. I'm only telling the back story and catching up to the present. Things can always change.

Theramore - Makeshift Mog

Last night the Theramore scenario started in Wow and I logged on and ran it with both Aritâ and Tyeldres. I'm not too sure how I feel about it though. When I ran it I felt rather blah. Here we are running around and killing Hordies with 3 dps. It reminded me a little of running some old heroics or raids that you could pretty much power though. Afterwards I found a summery explaining the events from the book Tides of War. Now I feel an impact. Theramore isn't being overrun but destroyed. The alliance didn't loose a battle but had the equalivant of a nuclear bomb dropped on it. Hmm... Something truly devastating. I haven't run the horde event yet and I'm not sure if my other Arita will be geared enough for it. But it leaves me wondering if we're going to be part of that destruction or if we're going to be part of something else or even if we'll have the same event as the Alliance.

What I did feel was that I wanted to wear my new tabard in remembrance of Theramore. My druid has a mog set that I really like and I left her alone but I really felt that my death knight needed to change. I played with mogit but I find I have the most trouble coming up with outfits for Tyledres. She's a death knight and I  like keeping her in the skulls and crossbones. Tyledres wants the enemy to look at her and feel fear. You don't get that look wearing bikini's or bright shiny paladin armor. I really think the best choice for armor would be the ToC armor. It's got some golds and blues but they're not super shiney and are instead more muted. Tyledres doesn't have that armor however. And a lot of other pieces I wanted came from Lich King raids or the toc5 man. I've tried but I can't seem to kill those 3 horsemen by myself. I get close but than one runs away or bugs out and I'm SOL.

So I decided to try coming up with an outfit a different way. I went to my bank and took a look to see what Tyldedres has managed to collect. I was pleasantly surprised to see how much gear she's got. After some thought I figured I'd pick up the pants from one of the vendors and threw together some gold and silver gear and than filled in the pieces where I didn't have anything with death knight starter gear and changed my swords to Rimefang's Claw. I really need to replace the shoulders and boots and I have an idea of what pieces I'd use to replace them with. It does mean I'm going to have to try and get as many dungeons and bg runs as I can to try and get the items I want. I'm also thinking about changing the chestpiece but I want to get the pieces I feel stick out the most replaced first.

Why do you play your spec? - Other druid

Arita. My last 85. While my hordie Arita was actually my 5th level 85, she's also the one that has seen the least amount of play time. One of the biggest reasons is that she's not on the same server as most of my other toons so it's easy to forget about her but also because I already have a druid.

Arita was started at the end of Wrath and was actually a good way though Northrend when Cata dropped. I had some friends on the horde side on that server I wanted to play with and even toyed with the idea of making my new Arita my new main. But than my friends decided that they were going to quit wow and I found myself hordie was all alone. So I went back to the alliance where I knew more people. I did finish leveling Arita but than she sat around unused.

When I was leveling Arita I leveled her as resto and balance. I didn't want to play feral/feral since that's what my alliance Arita is. The balance spec didn't last long. I didn't truely enjoy playing it. Instead I managed to cobble together a feral set and figured I'd use the spec to level as tank/dps and I could que up as all 3 roles. I gave balance another try in Outlands, Northrend, and even Cata but I couldn't seem to get though a level without throwing in the towel and changing the spec back.

At 85 Arita had a feral/feral spec but still had a fairly equal quality of intellect leather in her bags. She was parked in Orgrimmar and sat collecting dust until I started joining in JD's Laid Back Raids. Some weeks the raids are for alliance and other weeks they're for the horde. So I joined into the horde side with Arita. She was terrible. I had to remind myself that she was going into the raid in fresh 85 gear. It didn't really help.

Than can the talent changes and I really wanted to try the new balance celestal glyph and to run around in my tree form as resto. So I changed Arita's spec to Balance/Resto. I spent some time setting up healing addons and trying to find any gear on the auction house and than inflicted my newbiness on some randoms. Somehow I managed to get though a few heroics and even managed to pick up 2 achievements that I didn't have before. I was too busy enoying being a tree to really give balance a try until the laid back raid.

I do feel a little terrible for having very little idea of how to play my spec but I don't think it'd have matter too much anyway. But I think I have a better idea now. It's interesting. I'm not sure if I can stick to playing balance but it's a good time for trying new things right now and soon there will be some changes as to how your specs will play anyway.

Why do you play your spec? - Mage

I seem to be running out of toons to talk about. The only 85 I have left after this is my other Arita. She's a druid too. It seems the only naming scheme I have is to reuse names for the same classes on different servers. So I have my Korgath alliance Arita and than my Dunemaul horde Arita. But this isn't about those other toons. Today I wanted to talk about Azilem my mage.

I'm still surprised I have an 85 mage. My first attempt at a mage didn't get past level 5. Glass cannon indeed. My previous attempts as a mage typically had me spending more time trying to find my corpse, again, than it did me actually killing stuff. Until I made Azilem, my highest level mage was level 25 and I thought that was a fantastic achievement. I had dabbled in the different specs but I spent a lot of time dying.

Than I discovered the concept of pulling at maximum range with frostbolt. And than hopefully having the  mob killed by the time it reached my squishy little mage. I also had a friend who told me to level frost. So I leveled frost. Made it much easier since I didn't have to worry about any other spell than frostbolt. At least not at first.

Somehow she reached level 60 and I had a friend who wanted to level a healer and had a shaman around the same level so we leveled up together. He also told me that while frost was fine for leveling by myself if we were going to be running dungeons he wanted me to take a better dps spec. So after taking a look and reading about arcane and fire I choose fire. Mostly because the idea of managing mana was a scary thought for me. And Pryoblast! is such fun.

But I haven't really played my mage much at max level. Sure she can run RF and do some bg's but I definitely enjoy my melee toons more. Instead Azilem spends her time looking nice and making portals for guildies.

I do have one fun story to relate about the new changes. I had picked some talents and than took her to Dustwallow Marsh. I'm not sure why I did that. But I had heard from somewhere the frost was supposed to be decent to use in pve so I decided I wanted to give it a try. I logged onto my mage and wondered why I was in Tharamore. I was setting up her frost spec when I saw that the guards where running around. I quickly realized that a rogue was attacking the tower! I wasn't sure about attacking him but he soon took the decision from my hands when he tried to stunlock me down. I love iceblock. If I couldn't do anything I might as well not be getting hurt while not doing anything. Followed by a quick blink away and shortly there was one dead rogue. I figure part of this was because Pain was attacking him so I figured I should try to get away. Only to find myself stunned again. Frost Snap and Ice Block again. And the rogue was dead again. I was now finding this pretty funny so I decided to stick around. Normally I see a rogue and they scare me because a well-played rogue is pretty nasty. A good frost mage can do some mean stuff too. But I figured it was one terrible rogue because I shouldn't have been winning. Of our 5 battles Azilem won 4. There are times when I think being on a pvp server isn't much fun and than something like this happens and I realize just how awesome it can be. Provided the other people are worse than me. I never did get around to doing a dungeon but I felt that frost was still a spec that I'd want to hold onto simply because I could now remember that one time I beat a rogue.

Why do you play your spec - Death Knight

I thought about posting something else for a bit but than figured I wouldn't be happy with myself until I managed to finish this series. Than I debated whether to post my mage next or death knight. Finally I decided Tyledres would be next because so far all the posts have been in line with who was actually leveled first and the death knight was leveled before the mage was created.

Tyledres is a newer toon for me. I didn't create her until Cata was well under way. It's not that I haven't had death knights before. When Wrath launched I was there with hundreds of other people trying to get though the death knight starting zone. It's a really neat place. The class also really confused me. And every time I thought I might have an idea what a death knight was it would be changed. So I ended up starting a death knight, getting it though the starting zone, and than deleting it an awful lot.

It's not that I didn't like death knights. I thought they were so cool. And I had a guild master who was able to play a beastly death knight. My guildies and I dubbed him God after he practically soloed one of the heroic dungeon bosses. He was really good and he was what I thought of when I thought of death knights. I've had a healer friend who absolutely hated death knights. Her experience was with the really terrible ones. I have no doubt that of these two examples I was more a terrible death knight than a good one.

Eventually I leveled though the death knight starting zone enough times that something finally clicked in my mind and I was finally able to be a decent death knight. I managed to level to about level 70 and than I stopped. Eventually I had a friend who was leveling a hordie on my server. I didn't have any empty slots left so I couldn't level with her. I eventually deleted my death knight to make a troll one. The name I had been using didn't seem to work for a troll and I eventually came up with Tyledres. My friend than decided she didn't want to be horde anymore and switched to alliance. So I deleted my troll and made a human death knight. I really liked the name Tyledres so it stuck. Before I had made my death knights night elves but I was starting to feel like I had way too many night elves. I wanted more humans so that's what Tyledres became. 

I leveled Tyledres as blood and unholy. I choose blood so I could tank and I choose unholy because I thought having a permi-ghoul would be awesome. Frost just didn't seem interesting to me at all. I didn't touch the unholy spec. I spent my time as a blood death knight running dungeon after dungeon until I reached level 80. Than I switched to unholy. I'll admit that I was afraid to keep trying to tank the cata dungeons. They weren't easy when I went though on my druid and she had been wearing ICC gear. My death knight was in leveling greens. So I figured I'd been out in the world doing quests and that unholy would be easier for leveling since it's a dps spec. 

I stopped at level 83. I just couldn't keep going. I try questing, I tried dungeons, I even thought about trying pvp. Unholy was not working for me. I felt that I spent way too much time trying to build up to the good damage abilities. And I had to choose between making my ghoul stronger or summoning a gargoyle. I also took a lot of damage and to try to heal it I threw off my rotation. Than a friend said, "Why aren't you leveling blood? It's faster." 

So I switched back to blood and wondered why I ever stopped playing that spec. I love bone shield, I like my blood worms, and having a second weapon was a blast. I also tanked dungeons and I never once felt weak. She was a death knight and she was godly. She was also very lucky. She managed to hit 85 and by the next day was already running the hour of twilight dungeons and before the week was out was running dungeon finder. The gear was dropping and not just for her tank spec. By the end of the week she had a nice tank set and a decent dps set. I also had my choice of weapons. So I tried to look up the best dps spec. Different sources said different things but I noticed that of the two frost specs DW frost was supposed to be better than 2H if the weapons where close enough. So I went DW frost. 

I loved it. I wasn't completely sure what I was doing at first but I was doing damage. Howling blast is amazing. It's not a really flashy spec or very complicated but I have a blast playing it. It's fast, no build-up, and very steady damage but with some dps cooldowns. 

I eventually took my death knight into battlegrounds but originally as blood because I didn't have dps gear and I was more concerned with surviving than trying to do damage. Normally I tolerate pvp or else I really dislike it. But I loved killing stuff with Tyledres. I think part of it was my first battleground. I got twin peaks and had a group with 5 rogues. 5 really good rogues. And I got to carry the flag. Lots of achievements there. Eventually I got enough pvp gear to feel confident making the switch to pvping in my frost spec. Still lots of fun. I eventually changed my frost spec from a pve one to a pvp one and loved being a pain with my chains of ice, licheborne, and even started figuring out how to catch people in my pillars of frost. I don't think I've ever loved pvp as much before.

I'm very happy with Tyledres as my main. I never really planned to make her my main but she managed to get her way to 85 and than refused to let me out of her grip. I love some of the new changes to the specs. I can now choose to either DW or use a 2H for my frost spec without visiting the trainer to fix my spec. I can also pvp or pve without having to change my spec either. While I don't necessarily want the same talents for either of them the ability to change my talents on the fly is something that's mind boggling for me. Really? I can have this talent and than change it later to run bgs and change it back to run dungeons? Only for the cost of a reagent? Much nicer than running back to the trainer ever time I turned around.

I still enjoy tanking things as well but I tend to think of Tyledres's main spec as frost even if it's not the one she uses the most. I'm pretty certain that Tyledres will still be a blood/frost death knight in Pandaria.

Why do you play your spec? - Shaman

I leveled my shaman with the intention that she would be a healer. And since I was using heirlooms and I didn't want to mess with collecting two sets of gear I had made Mnementh's off-spec Elemental. I managed and I mostly managed because I spent my time healing in dungeon finder. I just couldn't seem to get elemental at all. Although to be fair I didn't really try to hard either. The dungeon que was always much faster when I was looking to heal than if I was trying to dps so I spent my time running around in resto spec. I even quested that way. It wasn't too difficult. Threw earth sheild on myself and keep casting lightening bolt until something died. Actually worked better for me than to try and kill anything as elemental.

I kept pushing though until I reached Northrend and than I stopped. This wasn't fun so why was I doing this? It's a kind of revelation. The reason to play wow is because it's fun. I'm not saying that having things too easy makes it fun because overcoming challenges can be fun. But pushing though something that was pure torture isn't how I want to spend my time. If I didn't like playing my shaman now why did I keep thinking it would get better? Why did I think that the idea of casting would eventually become something I'd enjoy? I only have to look at the classes I had at max-level to realize that I don't enjoy being a caster as much as I like being melee. Sure I can heal, I even like healing, but I don't like being a caster as much as I like being melee.

So I took my Shaman to Dalaran and the trainers there and raided my other toon's gold stash to help purchase and make an agility set. I wasn't able to get a complete set and I only had one new weapon but I hoped it'd be enough to get me started. I spent some time trying to learn how to spec and about the rotation and than trained and fixed up my action bars before heading back to questing in Howling Fjord. I also fell in love with my shaman. She still needed a lot of work but I seemed to be able to kill mobs quicker and move though the quests faster. It was also more fun for me. I like bright lights and flashy spell animations. Enhancement shamans have a lot of those. There's an ability that looks like a little tornado, lunging attacks, spinning, ghost wolves, lightening bolts, and fire nova. There's a lot of abilities to maintain and they all seem to have an accompanying animation. In a way it almost reminds me of the old protection paladin rotation. Press the button when it comes off cooldown, there should always be something, and certain abilities have priority.

It was also at this time that I realized shaman healing and I weren't getting along very well. There's a lot of interaction between the different spells a shaman casts and you have to cast them in very specific ways to get the most from each ability. It's very different from healing with a holy paladin where you cast a spell and it heals and you might or might not get a proc and certain spells with give you holy power. Shamans have to think about casting earth shield on the tank, who gets the hot, who to cast chain heal on to heal most effectively, and how many charges or the faster heal are left. And than there's finding the rest place to put healing rain but to make sure it's always up unless no ones taking damage, and lot of other things. I'm not saying holy paladins have it easy and have nothing to think about but healing on Hortis was so much more natural to me than trying to figure out what I was doing with my shaman.

I have another shaman friend who told me that from her experience shaman healers where either amazing or struggled to push out mediocre heals. I told her I was in the mediocre heals category. She thought it was funny because she felt I was really good on my holy paladin. I think it's pretty amazing that Blizzard had goals about making sure all heals had a similar toolkit but still played really different and they were able to do just that.

I still love being a shaman but I also knew she wouldn't be my main. I feel that only being able to play one-spec really limits what I can do. I don't enjoy saying, sure I'll heal but if this fight only needs 2 healers instead of 3 I won't be dpsing since I can't. Or saying sure I'll dps, or you're looking for a healer, sorry, I can't do that. I like being able to play at least 2 of the specs well and to enjoy playing them. But I also had another reason for not making Mnementh my main and that was the number of my friends who did play shamans. My guild already has a really good enhancement shaman who plays resto really well. I had a friend who invites people from my guild to her raids who plays a resto/elemental shaman. And finally another friend and guildie who plays a resto/ele shaman as well. I love my shaman but I was also happy with my other toons so Mnementh is very much an alt.

Why do you play your class - Paladin

Paladin! Hortis was my accidental 80. I never really sat down and said I was going to push and level her to 80 it just happened. I had done some leveling with my pally and enjoyed tanking but the original dungeon finder took a long time to help you build groups and than you still had to travel to your location, summon people, watch as the healer went afk, dps bailed, and so you had to build the group up again. Questing was the way to level by I didn't feel inclined to questing on Hortis.

Than Blizzard introduced the dungeon finder. Instead of spending the day trying to track down enough people to get a daily group done on the druid and maybe another toon before calling it quits for the night I was able to blast though my daily dungeon and than try to find something else to do. I don't farm herbs, mobs, do dailies, or really any of those things people do to make gold. Instead I would hop on Hortis and run dungeons with her. And other than a few quests in Hellfire and Borean Tundra, Hortis leveled entirely though the dungeon finder. It was a shock to realize that she was level 80. So I worked to get her geared up and she even tanked in ICC. 

While I bought Hortis duel-spec I never used it during Wrath. I loved pally tanking at that time. There was something about watching all those lights and hearing all those sounds that kept me enthralled. I also liked that she had a rotation. It was a contrast from druid tanking which would eventually dissolve into maul and swipe as fast as you can. A pally was about using all their abilities as soon as they were off cooldown and something was always off cooldown. It was predictable but still fun. I also really enjoyed the prepull checklist. Sacred shield, holy shield, divine plea and pull. And than there was the fun of running with a disc priest. I wanted to take damage so that I would be healed and so gain more mana so I could cast more stuff, make sure stuff was beating on me so I'd take more damage. 

Than Cata happened. I really wanted to like the changes to pallys. Unfortuantely Hortis just felt weak and I never got over it. I managed to level her to 85 and really gave tanking a good shot but it just didn't feel right anymore. So I gave ret a try. And promptly went back to prot. My last spec to try was holy. I loved it. I had heard that healing was more difficult in Cata I felt like my pally could heal anything. I think part of why I love being a pally healer is how easy the spells are for me to understand and when I heal something I see the difference that it makes. For a time I thought Hortis would be my main but I knew the lack of the versatility that having two specs I really enjoyed would annoy me. I like to be able to switch my role to fill a need and I couldn't do that with Hortis. But I could still enjoy her as an alt.

Raid finder is a blast as a pally. I know healing meters are not a good indicator of how well your healing. But you can't argue that it's not fun when you sit through Ultraxion as a healer and watch those who got the red and green crystals destroy the meters and than you get your paws on the blue crystal and giggle in glee when you smash the meters to smithereens in just a few casts of holy radiance. And than you keep casting. Don't judge. I have to find enjoyment from running RF somewhere because otherwise I fall asleep. 

Not much has changed about holy paladins for Mists. New talents and some different spells but the heals are the same. I really look forward to giving prot and ret another try since I've heard there's been some good changes there but I'm really happy with how Holy is right now. 

At the half-way point of my long litany of alts and their tales. I'm not sure this is quite what I had originally intended with this idea but I'm almost done as well. Not much more to do but to keep chugging away.

Why you play your class? Priest

My priest Lillium was the third toon I managed to get to max level. I had started her and was leveling her as a holy priest but I left her abandoned in Tanaris.

Eventually Wrath was released and I enjoyed playing my druid. Arita started off as a healer but I eventually switched her to tank/heals and than to tank/dps. But I found that there where some pugs I couldn't get into because I wasn't ranged or heals. So I decided to try leveling my priest again.

I logged onto Lillium and realized that she didn't have any talents yet. I remember how painful it was to level Artia as a healer so I made Lillium a shadow priest and fell in love with her. I love shadow form. Being a purple writing mass of shadowy magic appealed to me. I also discovered that she didn't have any problems getting groups and was still able to heal fairly well as a shadow priest.

I had put the glyph that makes the bubble heal and bubbled the tank at the start of each fight. That along with renew usually took care of any healing I needed to do. I could also still cast the spells I needed to activate replenishment. And when she reached Outlands she was able to replenish mana even easier by using dispersion.

I didn't feel brave enough to try to heal any of the Northrend dungeons as shadow but I was able to manage to scrape together enough gold to get Lillium Duel-spec. I choose holy because it made more sense to me than disc. While I could heal with Lillium I didn't enjoy it. I eventually changed her to a holy/disc priest so I could attempt to try playing both heal specs and try to find which one I enjoyed more. I still hadn't picked a favorite when the talents where reset for Cata.

Lillium is now a disc/shadow priest. I love shadow and still really enjoy it. While I can heal with her it's still not a spec I really enjoy playing. I've picked disc mostly because atonement appealed to me along with using bubbles. I haven't tried it since the Mist's talent changes but I have tried her as shadow and I'm still really like the spec. But I don't think Lillium is going to be more than a glorified auction toon. I use her to try and sort all the stuff that I find on my toons and to DE and post auctions. She does an occasional run through some dungeons but uselly spends all her time in a city running errands.

Why do you play your spec? Rogue

Changing realms is no fun when your name is already taken
So what to do? Add a different character

My last post went over the tale of how Arita became a feral druid and I think my rogue Ursa would be the logical next choice since her tale is very connected to Arita's.

Arita was my first toon and I had made a lot of mistakes with her. Eventually I came to realize just how much I'd messed up. I was really reluctant to delete Arita but I didn't know if I could push her forward either. So I spent my time creating new alts, playing them for a day or two, and than deleting them. Ursa was different. 

When I created my rogue I was determined to name my characters after stars, constellations, and other space stuff since I was attempting an astronomy course. The naming never went much beyond Ursa and I have since realized my dislike of online classes. But part of what my Ursa different from some of the other alts was that I put as much time and thought into her appearance as I did Arita's. I love the night elves and when clicking through the different hair and skin colors I hit upon the idea of a red skinned elf with green hair. I loved the idea that they were bright flashy colors for a class that's all about blending into the shadows.

Leveling Ursa was a blast too. I enjoyed stealthing though areas and I was able to kill things so quickly, at least compared to what my druid was doing. I was in love with Ursa and I was determined that she would be leveled properly. I picked a spec and made sure I put all my talents into it. I chose combat since it made the most sense to me. The idea that the off-hand weapon would hit harder and a few other talents seemed really straightforward compared to the other two trees. I managed to get into dungeons with her and I watched to make sure any gear she replaced had more agility on it. I also had a very strict plan of earning a set amount of gold per level. I wanted to make sure that my rogue would be able to buy a mount and the riding when she hit level forty.

I don't think I was the best or most efficient leveler. I spent a lot of time wandering around picking pockets and I made sure to keep my poisonmaking and lockpicking skills maxed out along with leatherworking and skinning. Making sure I had all these abilities leveled took time since I wasn't spending any gold on anything. 

About level 50ish I took turns leveling both Ursa and the druid until they were both level 62 and I learned about the next expansion. I really wanted to have a max level character by the time Wrath was released. So I decided to stop leveling Arita and focus on the rogue. I choose to level Ursa because she had the two different riding skills and was putting in a good effort to save up for flying. I felt confident that when she hit level 70 I would be able to get a flying mount for her but Arita still didn't have any riding skills. And Ursa was easier to level because she could kill things faster. With that choice made I settled down and leveled Ursa. Things went well and the week before Wrath was released I had reached level 70 and realized there was nothing for my rogue to do. She couldn't get into any dungeons because she lacked the rep, key, and gear. And no one would even think about taking her for a raid. So I went back to leveling my druid.

When Wrath was released the talents where wiped and I had to pick a spec. I leveled though Northrend as a Sub rogue. I didn't enjoy it. I stuck with it in the hope it'd get better but I was miserable. I wasn't killing anything quickly and I felt that I was not contributing anything to any of the dungeons I ran. I had a friend in my guild who told me it'd get better and raids would love me for the ability to crowd control. Go ahead, laugh, Crowd Control during Wrath? 

Anyway, I did attempt to take Ursa to Naxx but I really felt like I wasn't doing much. I also felt confused trying to figure out what was wrong with my rogue. I had trouble getting into heroics because I couldn't pull off any decent amount of dps and so I couldn't get gear. It was frustrating. I felt like the time when I almost deleted Arita. But my guild was looking for healers and I jumped at the chance of being able to contribute something. So I got to leveling her and left my rogue sitting and collecting dust.

Eventually Blizzard released some buffs to rogues and I decided to give Ursa another try. I wasn't liking sub so I switched her spec to Assassination. Than I realized I need 2 daggers to be able to play it. I changed her to combat and tried playing her again. I wasn't liking combat too much but it was better than sub but eventually I managed to get Ursa 2 daggers and I decided to give Assassination a real try this time. I loved it. Mutilate! Mutilate! Mutilate! I love watching Ursa lunge into the boss with that attack. It's one of my favorite animations. It's also has a rotation to maintain that I enjoy. I like that idea of envenom also refreshing slice and dice. It's nice to just set the buff and than go about the task of killing stuff. 

Cata has changed the rotation a bit but since it still used Mutilate so much I still really enjoy it. I've been very lucky with Ursa so far because the best weapons she's gotten have always been daggers. I've bought her duel-spec when the cost of it decreased but I've never used it except to set it up. I did try Ursa out on one run and I still like her as assassination. I really enjoy my rogue but I don't think I play her as often as I might like. She's done raid-finder once or twice but mostly my rogue spends her days in quite retirement opening up lockboxes. 

I suppose if I were to rate my toons from my favorite to least favorite Arita would be number two and Ursa would be number five. 

Why do you play your spec? Druid

Aritâ - Korgath
Although her name has a funny a, I tend not to type it that way

I love alts. I make them all the time. I level them. I run dungeons. I pvp. And then eventually I leave them behind when I discover that another class is holding my interest better. Some make it though the leveling and reach 85. The ones that do are the ones I've found something that I absolutely love about them. Which makes me wonder, why do I play the specs that I do? And why do people play the ones that they do?

Ahh. Time for a trip down memory lane. As I mentioned in my first post, I started playing at some point during BC. That time when Greeks ruled the Westren world and where building temples and sculptures.

Well... ok. Maybe not. But sometimes it feels like it's been that long. When I started playing I had to use dial-up and was limited to an hour of internet time a day. Needless to say, I wasn't leveling very fast. But the leveling is really another story. I had been leveling a druid because I love cats and the idea of being a cat appealed to me. I didn't get to be a cat until almost a year later.

I was a happy little newblet, wandering around, turning in quests until I reached level 40. This was when I realized that getting the long awaited mount was not going to happen. Brewfest was introduced and I thought I'd be able to at least cut the cost of buying a mount from my tab. So after spending a few days getting tickets I bought a stamp and went to the mount guy only to learn... What? I would have to buy my mount! And at the same price as my faction mount! I figured after all the work put into getting the stamp I was going to buy the mount. Somehow, by the end of the week I had managed to scrape together enough gold to buy a ram. But I still wasn't able to use it. I was really feeling unhappy with being a druid at this point but the nail was driving into the coffin when I learned about dungeons.

I was leveling in Tanaris when I got a whisper asking if I wanted to do ZF. I asked what ZF was and was told about dungeons and groups. From what I remember, a higher level pally was looking to run some friends though ZF and was looking for someone to throw out some heals. After looking in the zone they had found my name and asked if I could heal. I said I had no idea how to heal but if they would teach I'd give it a try. So I had my first ever dungeon group. I don't remember if we finished or not. I like to think that we did. What I do remember was how awesome that pally was and how patient since he was teaching me a bit about what spells to use and when.

My next dungeon did not go so well. It was ZF again but this was almost an all druid group. 3 Balance druid, a warrior, and me. I had a very mismatched spec and apparently my gear was terrible. The three druids got together and had already planned which of them was going to get what loot while ripping into me about what a terrible idiot I was. I was really glad when the tank left after the first pull and the group fell apart. But it was a turning point of sorts. I didn't want to ever feel like that again. I spent the rest of the night trying to look up and learn anything I could about being a druid. I got an understanding of what the talents where about and what the stats did. I went to Darnassus and decided to pick a spec to put all my points in. I knew I didn't want to be a Boomkin. I wanted nothing more to do with them. But I remembered how awesome the first group was and picked resto. Than I looked at my gear and realized I'd have to replace almost all of my pieces. There went my meager mount gold fund.

I quickly realized one thing when I went back to leveling. If I was terrible at killing stuff before I was even worse now. It was frustrating. I was almost level 50, still didn't have a mount, couldn't kill anything very fast, and my gear still wasn't quite where I thought it was supposed to be. So I made a new toon. And than another one. I keep making toons until I came to my rogue. I fell in love with her. I was happy playing Warcraft again. But I'm not ready to tell Ursa's story yet. I'm still telling Arita's.

By the time Ursa reached level 50 I had realized a few things about looking for dungeons. One of these is that heals where hard to find. Eventually I just took to leveling Ursa, finding a group, and than trying to fill spots before switching to my druid for heals. This worked well and the two reached 58 about the same time. I also started leveling them in Outlands in the same manner. Eventually I realized I would level faster if I'd just pick one toon. I picked Ursa and leveled her. She reached 70 the week before Wrath came out. Not having much else to do I returned to leveling Arita who reached 68 when LK was realized.

I was set to play my rogue for wrath but after reaching level 80 on Ursa I wasn't happy with her and my guild was looking for heals so I decided to start leveling Arita again. It was not easy leveling as a resto druid. I managed but it was mostly though running a lot of dungeons and carrying agility gear so I could run around as a bear. I did some raiding with a group of my friends as we went though a few guilds trying to find a home. And when duel-spec came out I knew I wanted to be a feral druid. I had made a druid so I could be a cat but I wasn't running around in cat form much as a resto. Cat is a very difficult spec to master. I eventually gave up and thought I might have to try balance when one of my friends, who was leveling a healer, asked me to come tank regular nexus for her. The fact that I was 80 meant I could tank it easily enough and the group was happy I came along. So I left feral as my spec and my friend kept inviting me to tank all the rest of her normal dungeons. I was feeling pretty good about tanking so I decided to make my spec a bear one. Eventually we reached a point where we could try doing heroics. I still get a laugh when I remember all the groups that would kick me when I said I had no defense rating since bears didn't need any.

Eventually my formal guild leader learned I was tanking so he came with me. That night he had me tanking beside him in Ulduar. I was nervous, scared, and twitching. But it was a blast! I still had a lot of learning left to do but I knew I was a tank. She eventually picked up cat as her other spec and actually learned to play it rather well and was dps when she killed the Lich King. I still think of playing resto and sometimes inflict my healing on random dungeons but she's been a bear/cat for some time since even if she's no longer my main.

It's been a long journey for my druid and I think she'll always be special because of all we've been though together but I'm more excited about being a death knight.

I had hoped I might get into why I play what I do with the others but this post started getting really long. So I'm going to leave it for another post soon.

August Transmog - Faction Pride

One of the things I'd wanted to do was post my entry from Neriapproves August Transmog Tournament. We're now partway though September and the next Tournament has been announced but I really wanted to get this post up. So I present to you my mage - Azilem!

When I submitted this I was thinking about showing off Alliance Pride but now realize that the pose hides my mage's shoulders. She also doesn't have a very interesting weapon.

I had seen the tournament at Neriapproves previously and had wanted to get into it. But than the Transmogolympics came around and I was busy with that. But when the time came to submit my outfits I remembered about Neri's Tournament and decided to check and see what it was. I checked and saw the deadline was coming up quickly and the theme was Faction Pride. I knew whatever I was going to come up with was going to have to be with stuff I already had. That made me think of my mage. She's my last 85 and started leveling after transmogging had been added in. So any armor she found that I thought was neat she kept. Which meant a lot of the stuff from Azuremyst, Bloodmyst, and Outlands is in her bank. When she reached 85 I knew I wanted to justify keeping all that stuff and built her an outfit from stuff she had. And what she had was an awesome chestpiece and the legs from Hellfire. I than chased down all the pieces to make her shoulders and found a belt that worked with the blues and golds. For the tournament I tossed on a tabard and tried some poses for the king.

She's wearing:

Shoulders - Primal Mooncloth Shoulders

Chest - Jessera's Fungus Lined Tunic

Tabard - Stormwind Tabard

Hands - Tempest's Touch

Waist - Serenity Belt

Legs - Wanderer's Stitched Trousers

Feet - Darrowmere Sandals (Because they didn't show)

I think now that this was the better shot because you can see what she's wearing better. But I'm pretty happy with this look. I'm much happier with my entry for September. But I won't be posting that until it appears over at Neriapproves.

Adjusting to Change

With the start of school I've been pretty busy with work and homework to spend much time in WoW. Which was a little frustrating because I wanted to get into the game and see all the neat changes that have taken place. But than came the three-day weekend. Horray for Labor Day! And I finally got a chance to take my toons for a spin.

This is not Zul'Gurub. I unfortuantely don't have
pictures from there. Instead I present a lovely
one from inside Old Kingdom.

I started with Tyledres and I love that she can choose to either DW or use a 2-hander without changing her spec. I haven't tried frost in any pve though. I took Tyledres into the battlegrounds instead. Some of my guildmates warned me that I wasn't going to have much fun. I'm glad to say they were wrong. Sure I didn't win any of the games I played but I had a blast running around killing hordies. It was fascinating to realize that I could tell who had good pvp gear and who was running with pve gear since I could tell with one howling blast.

Having played two games I moved on to looking at my other toons and trying to pick talents for them but I felt a little lost so I decided to play my horde pally and run dungeons for awhile.

Monday I was going to try leveling my hunter with a friend's priest but he was having trouble logging on. I was in Stonetalon which left me confused because I have no idea why Sitroh would be there. Deciding to make the most of my time while my friend tried to sort out his problems with the game I decided to see if there was anything interesting to tame. I now have a beautiful, ghostly green bird. Finally my friend decided he was going to have to uninstall wow and than reinstall it. So I finally decided to finally go see what I could do with the druid.

Arita and I were at the Darkmoon Faire when I saw that Shoryl of Tiny WoW Guild was online. She had mentioned previously that if I wanted to run heroics with her to give her a tell. So I asked if she'd be interested in running something with me. She agreed but she mentioned that she hadn't run very many of them yet. So I decided to grab Hortis, my pally, so that I could heal while she tanked. And than we qued up.

We got Zul'Gurub. I think the troll dungeons are really hard to get though unless most of the group know what they're doing. Unfortunately, I haven't managed to get into groups where that's been the case lately. The first boss is one of the harder ones, I think, because you really have to make sure you don't stand in anything green. If you don't have the path of the green goo memorized you could find yourself stuck into a corner with no way out. Apparently you also have to tell new tanks not to tank the boss on the staircase up to his alter. While I tried to keep Shoryl and the death knight dps up, the green mists there managed to win. That left just me and a hunter who knew his stuff since our third dps was no where to be found. Amazingly enough the hunter and his pet where easy enough to heal and he managed to almost kill the boss before something happened and he died. But the boss was so close to dead that whatever dots the hunter put up along with the denouncement my pally cast that the boss died. I felt pretty elated by that win.

The rest of the bosses went pretty well with only the final boss giving up any real trouble. The first attempt was pretty close but the next few were flops. I think Shoryl and I where feeling some frustration since we where losing the fight because of dps not doing what they were supposed to, such as stand on the chains and not killing the bezerker. But we stuck it out and eventually we managed to get it. By that time Shoryl had to go and I was left to my own devises but I didn't really do much after that.

It's been pretty fun finally seeing everything that I've been working on and I've managed to snag some new achievements. Classic dungeonmaster being one of them, over 9000 being another. But I found myself still short 2 achievements for Glory of the Dungeon Hero. Tonight was one of Shoryl's LBD days but it's been pretty quite since it was just the two of us. But we started in Oculus and I ran on my priest since she just needed to ride the ruby drake to get the drake handler achievement. Shoryl was on the green one. After that I switched to my shaman and we went to VH where we got the Void Achievement and Shoryl managed to get all the VH bosses killed. Than we went to Halls of Lightening and managed to pick up all the achievements from there. Shoryl also managed to get the achievement for completing all the heroic LK dungeons. So it was a pretty fun night. I know Shoryl said she really wants to get the 5 people need so I can get my last achievement Share the Love from Gundrak for next week. I also think she wants to do Zombiefest.

Anyway, was looking at the mogolympics on Amateur Azerothian and JD has posted the closing ceremonies! It was really exciting and even more amazing was that he picked one of my outfits for a judge's choice award! My druid javelin look! I know that when I posted about it I've begun to really rethink my choices but now I think maybe I shouldn't be rethinking them. I'm proud of what I came up with and while I might rethinking my choices I also have a feeling I'd end up picking the same items again anyway since I did go though each entry many times to make sure everything was perfect.

Last of the Mogolympics

I had really hoped I'd be able to keep posting something everyday but Wednesday came around and I was too tired to come up with something for Thursday. Now it's Sunday and I'm berating myself for not starting back up sooner. I had two ideas for posts that I was thinking about doing but they can wait for next week since one is my first location and the other is the transmog I'd use for another contest.

But today the last of the Mogolympics events was posted and I've really wanted to post my outfits. I didn't get a medal this time but I'm still really happy with how things went. I didn't win any golds but for my first time entering a competition like this I'm really happy. Two medals is nothing to sneeze at since I don't think there's anyone who managed to get more than two. Although from what I can figure I think the winner managed to get two golds. That puts me in the top ten. Which is pretty awesome. But to my outfits!

Fencing

One of the things I've noticed is that when I've put these outfits together I seemed to loose the theme. My wrestling mog is a good example of what I mean. I think about the requirement of wearing a big belt but than forget about the event which is wrestling. I build up a nice outfit but it doesn't say "Wrestling." I think my fencing outfit is another example where I let that happen. The requirement was to build an outfit around our favorite 1-hand sword. Mine is the Red Sword of Courage. I love that sword. But it was also very difficult for me to work with. I had certain ideas stuck in my mind that I wasn't able to get rid of. I'm happy with what I came up with, although I think I'd toss the helm and just go without one. But while it's a neat outfit it doesn't say fencing.

Helm: Onslaught Battle Helm

Shoulders: Pauldrons of Unnatural Death

Chest: Lost Reliquary Chestguard

Hands: Callous-Hearted Gauntlet

Waist: Veteran's Plate Belt

Legs: Frostplate Greaves

Feet: Greaves of Iron Intensity

Weapon: Red Sword of Courage

Freestyle

Freestyle seemed like a difficult idea since it was a mog that could be anything. I choose to try and create Snow White. I started with the skirt and after looking at what was available from the cloth, leather, mail, and plate that was both yellow and a skirt, I choose to make my snow white in leather. I choose these legs because even though they were mostly brown the yellow color still came out. I realized later that there's another version of this skirt in blue that I think would have worked even better since blue is a color in Snow White's actually outfit. Hindsight. Anyway, after some looking and thinking I choose the rest feeling they best represented what I felt Snow White would be. I used the red bandana in place of a hair bow. I wasn't able to replicate Snow White's ruff in leather so I skipped that but thought the shoulders made a great substitute for the puff of her sleeves. While Snow White doesn't wear gloves I choose to use the colors from her skirt for them.

Helm: Imposing Bandana

Shoulders: Spaulders of the Ring

Back: Renzithen's Dusty Cloak

Chest Lo'ap's Tunic of Muck Diving

Wrist: Ranger Armguards

Hands: Deviate Scale Gloves

Waist: Headhunter's Belt

Legs: Luminary Kilt

Feet: Wolf Rider's Boots

Weapon: Broad Bladed Knife

Equestrian

Choosing a horse was one of the hardest parts of this challenge. I choose the warlock Dreadstead but I don't really think that a demon horse is really the best choice if you want to build something that says Equestian while still saying demon horse. I love my set but right now I'm feeling very conflicted about my choices especially for this event. But I also think part of it comes from looking at the two gold medalists and seeing how very similar they are and how strong the theme of equestrian comes though for them. Mines is a warlock. I started with the robes for this entry. I was actually planning to find something dark to match the dark color of the dreadstead but the reds and pinks from the inside of the robe felt like a great match for the Dreadsteads saddle and the orange reminded me of the flames. The helm and shoulders matched the colors and added a flame effect that would match her steed. The gloves and bracers pick up more of the pink but also add some more of the orange.

Head: Crown of the Twilight Queen

Shoulder: Mantle of Roaring Flames

Chest: Vermillion Robes of the Dominant

Wrist: Emberflame Bracers

Hands: Widow's Cluthes

Waist: Sash of Serpentra

Feet: Necropile Boots

Weapon: Ti'tahk, the Steps of Time

Final Thoughts

It was pretty fun to attempt this challenge. I have things I'd do differently but overall I'm proud of my efforts. It had it's highs and it's lows. It's definitely fun to at last present some of the cool outfits I've created to other people and I really want to know what the judges thought of my outfits. But I also want to know what others think as well. One of the things I've noticed with this event is that it's very important to keep an eye on what I'm trying to achieve. It's one thing to look cool but it's also important that you get the effect that you want to achieve as well otherwise it's just a random mash-up of similar looking pieces.