The DS Weapon Collection is Complete!

 Let me reintroduce to you my sturdy warrior Bruny. Bruny likes to mine gems for a living, and has pretty much set up residence within Twilight Highlands.

As you can see to the right, Bruny is wielding Ashkandi, and when someone is wielding Ashkandi, they've probably transmogged it onto something, and what other 2H sword is in the game at the moment?

Yes, Gurthalak, Voice of the Almost Never Drops!

I've actually delayed this post for about three weeks, which is how long my warrior has had possession of the Tentacle Rape sword. I'm not even sure why I went into LFR with my warrior, probably helping a friend roll on things (I know, it's bad). Of course, Deathwing drops this sword, and of course, the tank wins and everyone sighs in frustration and leaves. Now I have made a habit of going afk during loot rolls. It just takes THAT long to get things done.

All the melee users had left and the very nice tank traded me this sword! And thus concludes my almost six month long hunt to collect all of Deathwing's weapons (for no reason at all). (Also, my rogue managed to collect his useless dagger)

So as I had mentioned before, if I ever won this sword on either my DK or Warrior I would respectively switch specs to Unholy/Arms. So I respecced to Arms, worked out the nuances and it seems my warrior does fairly well managing to maintain about 24k in half tanking gear.

Not that I'll ever DPS with him ever again mwahaha!

How I Had Envisioned Dragon Soul

I know a lot of lore nowadays happens "out of game", in novels and what-not and the DS that I had anticipated would make no sense in terms of where the story was "supposed" to go, but then again should the story have went the way it did to begin with?

First of all, let's start with our current "Madness" encounter. Currently, after we beat on Deathwing's face for about 3 minutes he dies and a random aspect will make their speech and Aggra's pregnant, the end.

NO. Before I describe how I had imagined DS, this is how I would re-imagine the current ending.

This is how it should be:

With one final blow, the aspects muster up the last of their strength and decimate the destroyer in the heart of the maelstrom. The aspects slowly descend onto our platform, give us our loot box and everything is okay. We see the same cutscene we see now, except that from amidst the maelstrom, a giant tentacle shoots up, followed by hundreds, thousands of smaller tentacles. They begin to cast a void-storm that shatters the platforms, causing the maelstrom to swell and toil around us. Consuming us into darkness. The cutscene fades from black, showing the raid dead at the bottom of a dark stone cavern. The aspects are unconscious, as are Thrall and Aggra. ESPECIALLY Aggra, she's the most dead. Anyways.

The cavern seems to be in the eye of the maelstrom, water drips off the dark stone that's been imbued with chaotic energies and above the group the cavern opens up to a portion of the maelstrom brewing over-head, a seemingly powerful barrier is keeping the water from crashing in. Swirling in the midsts of the currents are hundreds of face-less entities floating, watching. Alextrasza regains consciousness and resurrects everyone.

"A valient effort, mortals. My greatest pawn towards the destruction of Azeroth, taken down by mere fleshlings like you". The camera moves over to see that amidst the giant cavern, a humanoid form deathwing is standing there. Strange whispers emanate from within the cavern.

"Soon, all shall be undone!", cackles the strange entity. The camera zooms in on his cackling face, his mouth begins to glow bright and cracks open, the shell of a body slumps to the ground as an enormous N'Zoth appears, filling up most the cavern.

Let the fight begin: Yogg'saron 2.0!

I'm not going to go into detail about this fight, but let's just say that the aspects and Thrall fight beside you and provide buffs that are crucial to the raid mechanics. Such as Ysera's healing mist, the raid must attempt to line up to chain the mist to everyone in the raid to receive a large heal and a damage shield lasting 20 seconds.

N'zoth also casts Madness onto a random group member at the beginning of the fight, and anyone who cleanses or CC's/damages them enough will dispel the madness, but in doing so will take on the madness themselves. The raid must balance madness juggling along with the various fight mechanics.

See, isn't that a much more better ending? =D

ANYWAYS. (Reverses time)
In the beginning I had no concept of the entire DS raid, just the fight with deathwing being a series of "scenario" fights much like the ones we have now, but a bit more epic and less disjointed and way less mind-numbing. It wasn't until pictures of the DS raid bosses were released that I began to construct a visual layout for the raid based on what I saw.

I saw faceless, and got excited. We must be going underground! There were generals of the Old Gods, which meant that there must be something to do with an Old God at the end. Little did we know, these 2 legendary generals were just herpaderping inside maws...waiting for us to loot them.

Nope chucktestaanddeathwingtentacles.jpg

I had envisioned the beginning of DS to have the same layout as BWD, a great raid of this expansion.

Then pictures of Ultraxion were released and I thought "yes, Atramedes 2.0! but twilightier!".

Nope, chucktestaandangryyellingdragonpushabutton.jpg

Lastly, info was released that we would be fighting on the very back of the Destroyer. Little did we know that this was just Thrall sending us grunts up to kill, kill, kill, stack. Kill. Heal. Wait. Kill. Rinse and repeat 3x so that he can be the hero.

I had postponed this post from last week. I wanted to fully absorb the atmosphere of DS one last time in case I had missed something. Thus, I ended up doing DS on four characters, my newly growing rogue, warlock, hunter, and tree druid.

I tried to engage myself in the siege, defeat Morchok, the giant stone guardian, then....head into the temple...and...oh no.....fly to the maws? Uhh why don't we just drop some nuclear bombs down there? Both these bosses spawn trash and this is where I usually zone out. I mean, the trash aren't going anywhere, they're stuck down there anyways! And there's SO MUCH of it, and they also drop the coveted 397 off-hand, where in that case there ISN'T enough trash in DS. Poor design? Maybe.

Anyways, just like how I try to refrain from trash talking LFR, this should also be my last burning of DS. Poor DS.

LFD: Why are HoT Heroics Grouped with Cataclysm Heroics?

Hello dear reader,

I would like for you to think back to patch 4.2: Rise of the Zandalari (or whatever the hell it was called), and put yourself back into the tedious time of separate dungeon queues via our LFD tool.

We had "regular" dungeons, which awarded 140 JP.
We had "Cataclysm" heroics, which awarded 70 VP.
We had "Zandalari" heroics, which awarded 140 VP.

Anyone worth their salt would have totally ignored the old heroics and queued for the newer, higher reward Zandalari heroics and that's where the name of "regular heroics" came from.

Come patch 4.3, we get a new batch of heroics. The HoT Heroics. They have a much lower gear and skill requirement and also demand less of one's time investment.

Some of my old Zandalari runs used to take 1-2 hours and would essentially be my single dungeon run of the DAY, shuffling through almost a dozen different PUGs in a single run. Sigh.

Nowadays, the Zandalaris have been scaled back and are grouped with the "cataclysm heroics".

However, the LFD tool is....in the gentlest of terms possible: STUPID.

Why? Why am I complaining? Both Cata and HoT heroics now offer 150 VP?

Well yes, HOWEVER, when one chooses to queue for Cata Heroics, just to re-visit some of the funner encounters of the past(and also grab the 140 VP bonus), the LFD tool doesn't filter out the newer heroics! And because the newer heroics are so much easier and offer better gear, the demand for roles tend to put us into the HOT heroics.

I don't want to listen to Asthamtion tell us that we are merely mortal and we must die like one! My rogue actually wants to do heroic Shadowfang Keep cause he doesn't have the achievement and never got the opportunity to die in a fire like all the melee from back pre-4.3!

None of my characters have any need for the sole purpose of the HoT Heroics: Easy 378s, and a vaguely supposedly epic storyline. They want to have some FUN. "Fun", as in watching people die and perhaps helping out newer players with mechanics they will never see again until MoP in the older heroics.

Pre-MoP Checklist

N'zoth's True Hiding Place

Ever since the realization that a lot of the cata story lines are going to end un-finished and unexplained, one of the major threads that still bug me is the whereabouts or status of N'zoth.

Neptulon and Ozumat are probably a writeoff. Perhaps they will show up in the future, they got married and had half-breed octopus-demi-god children. Who knows.

I've been wracking my brain as to where the heck N'zoth could be. We defeated his lieutenants, and we defeated his vessel for destruction, Deathwing, but...where is this old god hiding? Is he under the sea? Waiting and whispering?

No.

Alright my dear reader, think back to the final cut-scene from deathwing's demise. The aspects become mortal yadda yadda, Aggra strolls up to Thrall as if nothing happened, blah blah blah Alextrasza off-handedly mentions that new life will begin and touches Aggra's stomach...THERE!

N'zoth has possessed Aggra's baby!!!

Deathwing was a formidable tool, however he is a mere dragon aspect, and perhaps the only way to accomplish his means was to utilize mortals. We love being mortal, and what can get more mortal than Thrall's son/daughter?

I'm not sure if there are going to be a series of behind the scenes novels about Aggra and Thrall while we are all romping away in Pandaria, but I bet this baby will show up corrupted along with Neptulon and Ozumat's offspring to wreak havoc upon the Emerald Dream!

Truny the WTF Lore

Random Screenshot: Camel Pulling

Silly Uldum, y u no let me cancel your dreadfully silent and boring cutscenes???

Of the Void

Truny the Void-Face

If only Void Face were a title that one could obtain. This mount matches my outfit!!

Truny the Void Face

Fun with Orb of the Blackwhelp

Whelps need MORE claws!

If there is one thing I would like to have "accomplished" before Mists, it is to have 11,000 achievement points on Turby before we set foot in a whole new world.

In my trek to clean up some of the "easier" achievements, I decided to do the Loremaster ones. Aka quest *shudder*.

My progression in BC brought me to blade's edge and everything was going swimmingly until one quest led me to a mysterious vendor in a cave who sells the Orb of the Blackwhelp. My first reaction to my discovery was "Ohh, so this is where I can get one of these", and my next reaction was "oh crap, he's attacking me!" Then my next reaction as I put my costume on again: OMG WHELP WITH WEAPONS ATTACHED! HAHAHA! It seems that the only way for me to show my weapons unsheathed was to get into melee combat and feign while my weapon is still sheathed, THEN activate the orb. I tried this at ranged, and it showed the whelpling holding a bow!


With Staff of Thane Thaurissan

  The sad part is that this orb only has 3 charges, and can only be obtained while on this specific quest chain, AND you are only able to carry one orb on you at any given time! Luckily you can farm multiple "disguises", which are used to talk to the vendor to sell these. Which means I probably won't be able to finish Outlands Loremaster because of this but...whatever!

Thunderfury Whelp is NOT Legendary!

Turby the Whelp

Into the Void

Having abandoned my warlock for much of Cata, I finally managed to grind out his reputation to exalted with the guild last (last) week to buy the shadow phoenix because it matched my current transmog set.

He is voidy, and shadowy, however his class mechanics are still crappy so I play him sparingly. And yes, to anyone who has noticed I sex changed my warlock in hopes that I could "click" to it again, but alas...it was hopeless.

Truny the Voidful

Preparing for MOP: Glyph of the Felguard

There are a few things in which I prioritise in game, since it is just a game, however one thing that has been on my "list of thing sto do before MOP" is to collect ALL the 2-handers that look awesome/cool on my Warlock in preparation for our new glyph in MOP: Glyph of the Felguard.

This glyph allows our felguard/wrathguard to randomly equip any 2H sword/axe/polearm from our bags everytime we call for their aid.

THIS IS AMAZING.

I had started building up a proud collection however one of my addons, THREW EVERYTHING AWAY! I hadn't noticed that my Cataclysm's Edge went missing, amongst a lot of other weapons since as of late, I've been suffering from a chronic case of "all my bags are full on every character" syndrome.

Yes, every character has about 20 weapons in their bags, along with 3 full tier sets amongst the random food/archaeology/profession items. A dozen 2 handers go missing, who knows, free bag space is much sought after amongst the Troon-Toons.

Luckily, I can utilize the newly implemented item restoration process to get all these weapons back!

I had actually tried this out for fun, and I re-instated a 2H sword, which mysteriously got vendored. Now I know why, they ALL got vendored. Alas, that addon threw that sword away again so now I have to wait a month until I can get my weapons post fully up and functionable. Until then, I will continue to collect what I think I still don't have!

Truny's The Weapon Seller

(Essentially this addon thinks its smart and throws away everything your character can-not equip, along with gray junk)

Runy the Crazy Rogue

So cold..

My last toon to hit 85. I got bored one day and decided that I would like to blow some money on some "free" 397 weapons for my rogue. The issue was that he was level 83. = /  Questing. Ew.

Upon dinging his final ding of this expansion he quickly started up his dagger quest and waited outside Dragon Soul to quickly pop in and steal Hagara's ring for our weekly runs.

10k gold and 12 hours later he was in possession of his easily obtained daggers (upgrading from 308s to 378s to 397s within a day, not bad).

So the dagger quest. OH, so THAT is where all of Uldum's voice-acting went! If anything, the quests leading up to assassinating Creed refreshed my memory on how to be a sneaky bastard and the fact that I had taken Gouge off my bars! (Baddie!)

One thing I forget about my rogue is....how fun it is to sneak around, and how fun subtlety is for PVP! I queued him up into some battlegrounds to test out my new pretty weapons and just to be masochistic, attempt to complete the School of Hard Knocks on yet another character. Runy actually did manage to complete the tasks swimmingly with NO CURSING AT ALL!

Though much of that achievement is luck, I was lucky enough to find an empty unguarded *twitch* flag in AB, and our team was PLAYING NORMALLY in EoTS AND Warsong Gulch, and I managed to capture not one but two towers in Alterac Valley because....everyone seemed to be skirmishing in the middle regions of the bg......

PVP-wise, my rogue is safe and sound, however, if he is ever going to attempt to grind for what possibly is the simplest legendaries, he must excel in PVE.

PVE on the other hand could be summed up as: ihavenoideawhatimdoing.jpg

I dropped my Combat spec, since I am lazy and refuse to monitor three buffs/debuffs and having to refresh them manually is a pain, picked up the assassination tree and it is quite fun and working quite well. Well, for a nooblicious rogue anyways. Now that I have relatively reliable dungeon bosses to practise on, I shall revisit combat once again.

I am 100% sure that Runy has already exceeded the damage performance of my other silly melee classes, breaking 25k on stand-alone dummy boss fights. I queued him into Looking for Rage and that went well, save for only finding one upgrade, given most groups lately consist of 7 DKs, 7 mages, 5 druids, and 4 rogues (seriously tokens???).

It's not losing rolls that is the bad part, but it's the fact that I may have to requeue into such a poisonous/vicious environment another day in the following week that I dread.

But anyways, ultimate topic change: Warlocks are looking better and better on Beta and that's what's keeping me chugging through right now on my Cata-Flavoured warlock =(

Truny the Chaos Bolt is Back

All Done PVP For the Year

Remember yesterday when I said that Truny the Warlock was still missing an Eye of the Storm flag capture for her dumb little orphan brat? Well, I queued up later in the evening and luck was on my side.

Despite half the team having an orphan in tow, I was very glad to see that half the team had split up to capture TOWERS and a few to defend the flag base. With our towers in place, and with some pressure on the opposing faction's towers, the flag area was relatively calm and "normal" and I managed to grab a flag with ease!

I did pop a Potion of Swiftness (+50% movement speed for 15 seconds) just in case. Now I have an entire stack of those left over....

Truny the Lucky

Ps. And I did not even curse once!