MacGyver vs Chuck Norris

I quested a little more with my warrior last night and dinged 61. Much more of Hellfire Peninsula to go.

Why hadn't I discovered these nifty tools before?
Bladed Pickaxe -- for those gatherers.
Gnomish Army Knife -- great for Engineers; but why the Skinning Knife peripheral?
Hammer Pick -- Blacksmiths who mine their own ore, rejoice.

I took my mage to Feathermoon. Why, you ask? It's time to cash in some Librams of Protection at the Dire Maul library for Shen'dralar reputation. But what benefit does this give you?! Absolutely none. I am a rep whore -- a rep whore who doesn't have Exalted Hydraxian, Zandalar, Nozdormu, Scale of the Sands or Ashtongue. :(

I need 39,809 reputation to reach max Exalted. Each Libram gives 550 rep. That means a total of 73 Librams of Protection, 73 Frayed Abomination Stitchings, 73 Pristine Black Diamonds and 146 Large Brilliant Shards. It also means 73 treks between Feathermoon Stronghold and Dire Maul North. >.>

It's a fruitless endeavour but one I will chip away at over the next couple of years as I strive for other achievements.

Gaiwyn of Proudmoore

Level 60 vs Level 71

I have continued to play my warrior. She is now level 60, which means Titan's Grip has become a reality, It didn't take long for me to level my 2H axe skill from 1 to over 280. One Blood Furnace run later and it is at 299/300.

Anyway, hitting stuff with two huge axes is just as much fun as I anticipated. It was easy enough to adjust to the rage gain difference. Levelling to 70 will be fun indeed. ^^

I have decided to drop Blacksmithing in favour of another gathering skill. If I pick up Skinning, then essentially I will have three skinners. However, I prefer playing a warrior to both druid and hunter, who are my other two skinners. Besides, gathering professions are likely to increase my income a little bit.

In getting my journeyman riding skill, it pretty much cleaned me out. Gaiwyn only has about 60g right now. I will have to do a whole lot more Borean Tundra questing and maybe see if enchants are in demand at all.

After all, I have to save up 1,000g by level 77 for Cold Weather Flying. :/

Gaiwyn of Proudmoore

Dual Wielding Enchanted Axes

The other day, I ran Temple of Ahn'Qiraj with a few people, mostly from one of our server's high-end guilds. It was good because it pushed my Nozdormu rep from Unfriendly to halfway through Honored. If only Hydraxian rep went up that fast. XD

What's unfortunate is that my rep gain could be better. I never won the roll for Head of the Broodlord Lashlayer, even though some -- nay, most -- people who won it when we raided BWL weren't even up to that part of the questline, nor pursued it any further or put it to good use. I was a dedicated Silithian, and yet I never received the head; thus, I cannot gain Brood of Nozdormu rep through Silithid Carapace Fragment turn-ins. AQ40 it is.

And what this teaches us is that 40-man raiding had its negative points. Trying to win a roll against 39 other people is like beating your head against a brick wall in the hopes that you will find its weak point. Oftentimes it is futile. The ironic thing is, I won Head of Nefarian on our maiden kill. o.O

Yesterday, I had the day off. I took the opportunity to play my little warrior instead of my mage. I made five levels and at 38 am ready to do a complete clear of Scarlet Monastery -- having done the prerequisites for the main quest: In the Name of the Light. I guess I will need to spec my brother's warrior to take her through. ;)

What's fun is that every ten levels or so I have been upgrading my warrior's blue weapons. I am sticking with axes, as they tend to have a higher top-end damage. And besides, Draenei don't benefit from any particular weapon, and since axes look so cool, I might as well go with a convention, right?

Currently, she is wielding Sickle Axe and Steelclaw Reaver -- both enchanted with Crusader. It looks friggin' mean -- and when they both proc at the same time: raaaape. ;)

I will enchant my next upgrades with either Strength or Potency, depending on the current cost of Essences of Earth -- seeing as I currently have a huge supply of Large Brilliant Shards, Greater Eternal Essence and Illusion Dust, from having run Stratholme a few times.

Enchanting BoP items is going to be incredibly welcome, now that Inscription has introduced Armor and Weapon Vellum III. XD

I have run into a wee bit of a gold issue right now. I can't really get motivated to do dailies even though I'm running low on cash. I really want to go into the expansion with enough money to purchase my Tailoring and Enchanting upgrades. Still, it's not a huge issue. Having a lot of gold is nice; but it's a luxury, not a necessity. ;)

I guess I need to stop impulsively buying stuff. Yesterday, while searching the AH for Iron Ore for levelling my warrior's Blacksmithing, I noticed that there was a whole lot of cheap Dark Iron Ore. So I logged my mage and bought a heap of stacks to take into Blackrock Depths to increase my reputation with the Thorium Brotherhood. I also found that there were some cheap Lava Cores, so I also got ten of those. :)

The funny thing is, Iron Ore was way overpriced, so I didn't end up increasing Blacksmithing at all. But I did get a nice chunk of Thorium Brotherhood rep. :o A few more MC runs for more cores and I will be working towards two reps at once. ;)

Gaiwyn of Proudmoore

Crazy Numbers

I haven't been playing my paladin, but when I do start up again, I hope to push to 70 as quickly as possible. In the meantime, check out my current XP. How is this even possible? The probability blows my mind. :o



I got her enchanting to 300 but need to work on getting her blacksmithing up. ;)

Gaiwyn of Proudmoore

Titles

There are some new user titles to be introduced with the expansion. A lot of these will be server first achievements. WTB Archmage Gaiwyn. XD

A couple of other things of note. Firstly, I remember reading about faction championing a while back. Information has been released regarding factions you can champion as you run instances. All you have to do is wear the tabard of your choice of faction to gain reputation with them. For the Argent Crusade, Knights of the Ebon Blade, Kirin Tor, and Wyrmrest Accord, all reputation gains while in level 80 dungeons and wearing their respective tabards will be applied to your standing with them.

Leatherworkers will be able to apply item enhancements that act as enchants. The same will also probably eventually apply to Blacksmiths and Tailors.

Gaiwyn of Proudmoore

Beta Build 8820

It's here! The latest beta update. Changes to skills and talents. More class glyphs.

PvP Items
WotLK Arena Weapons Page 1 | Page 2 | Page 3
WotLK PVP Necklaces | Rings | Cloaks | Trinkets

Lake Wintergrasp PvP Vendors
Epic Armor
Epic Belt/Boots - 24 800 Honor
Epic Bracers - 15 800 Honor
Epic Necklace - 19 000 Honor
Epic Cloak - 19 000 Honor
Epic Trinket - 24 800 Honor
Epic Rings - 19 000 Honor

Rare Armor Sets
Rare Chest - 6000 Honor
Rare Helm - 6000 Honor
Rare Shoulders - 4800 Honor
Rare Gloves - 3600 Honor
Rare Pants - 6000 Honor

Weapons
Off-hand items - 3600 Honor
Main-Hand (Healer Mace) - 10 000 Honor
Main-Hand (Melee) - 8400 Honor
Two Hands - 12 000 Honor
Ranged Weapon (Hunters) - 12 000 Honor
Throwing Weapons / Wands - 3200 Honor
Shields - 6000 Honor
Relics - 3200 Honor

New Professions Recipes
Engineering
Blacksmithing
Jewelcrafting

Level cap raised to 80 and new instances unlocked! Source.

Gaiwyn of Proudmoore

Professionally Speaking

I read the transcript of three interviews yesterday with various Bliz personnel. The first interview was about music in the game, especially focusing on what is to be expected in WotLK.

The second interview was what I was most interested in. It covered professions and expected changes with the expansion. I have every profession across my toons, and so found many things in that interview to be interesting. Check out the following summary from MMO-Champion (edited):

General

• The alchemy discovery system could be added to all professions, but will be restricted to "fun" discoveries or more predictable outcomes.
• Players may be able to collect tokens from daily profession quests and use these to purchase select recipes from token vendors.
• 375 skill requirement for the best craftable gear was too high -- expect the required level for epic craftable gear to be lower than the max 450 in WotLK.
  
• Sets such as Frozen Shadoweave were "too powerful", damage stats being equated with Tier 6, but available to any tailor without too much trouble (eg. Didn't require nethers). School-specific craftable items will be reviewed.

Blacksmithing

• Blacksmiths will be able to add sockets to a weapon, Armorsmiths will be able to add a metasocket to armor.
• The plan is to try to balance Armorsmithing and Weaponsmithing to make both specs viable and interesting.

Fishing

• Fishing will be more interesting and require more than half-conscious clicking.
• There will be fishing-specific food in WotLK just like what was introduced in TBC with recipes like Spicy Crawdad or Golden Fish Sticks. (Might be time to get both this and the cooking skill for my mage...).

Engineering

• Some of the engineering items nerfed in TBC like the Gnomish Mind Control Cap will probably be un-nerfed and/or upgraded in WotLK.
• Items like Rocket Boots will be changed to an "enchantment" allowing you to convert any footwear to Rocket Boots.
• WotLK now allows engineers to do "on-use enchantments" to items, and they're going to use it a lot. (Parachute Cloak enchant, or something to let you shoot webs from your gloves, etc.) -- each "enchantment" would replace any existing one on the armour, and vice versa.

Enchanting

• Enchanters will be able to sell their enchantments at the Auction House (or send them to alts) -- Scrolls of Enchantment.

Alchemy

• Discovery won't be used for "important" recipes anymore, it will be either predictable or just produce "fun" recipes.

Jewelcrafting

• Not as reliant on world drops.

Tailoring

• Tailoring-only flying mount -- the Magnificient Flying Carpet! (I can't wait!)

Inscription

• One inscription is equivalent to one or two talent points, and all the inscriptions aren't about increasing power; sometime they’re a big power increase but they’ll change something else about the spell. (eg. reducing the cast time of Pyroblast down to 3 sec but adding a 25 sec cooldown, or decreasing the effect of Last Stand from 30% to 20% of your max health, but giving it a 2 min cooldown instead of an 8 min cooldown).
• Inscriptions will affect talents, but probably won't affect passive talents very often.
• 15-20 Inscriptions will be available for each class, sometimes with more than one inscription available for a specific skill.

So these are some of the changes to look foward to with professions! The third part of the transcript covered a few questions that people had directed towards Jeff "Tigole" Kaplan. It makes for an interesting read.

Gaiwyn of Proudmoore

The Beta Rolls On

There were a lot of beta changes over the weekend. More blacksmith craftable weapons and armours have been released; Lake Wintergrasp (PvP zone) was made available; Mages, Warriors, Rogues, Shaman, Druids, and Warlocks all had their talents updated; Naxxramas tokens can be used to purchase a healer shield and a tank shield; many new class glyphs for the inscription profession have been released.

I still yearn for a laptop to hook myself back into playing, grarghhh. :o

Gaiwyn of Proudmoore