Many of the changes that have been made since Wrath, or maybe even further back, seem to be designed to make the game easy mode.  At the same time, I find the idea of not having cookie cutter talent builds, or of not being told I’m a gimp for not choosing this one particular talent particularly appealing.

I don’t know if these changes will actually result in that, though.  It seems to me that the min-maxers or theorycrafters or what-have-you will always run the numbers and say, definitively, that this one way of speccing and of playing is best, and that there are few viable alternatives, if any.

I’d like this to lead to more character customization, but I don’t have much faith that it will.  However, I do think that Blizz often has a better idea of what’s good for the game (if not good for me) than I do, and so I’ll cross my fingers and hope that it turns out to be as much fun as they’re making it seem.

Weapon Skill – This stat will be removed from the game completely. Classes will start with all the weapon skills they need to know and will not need to improve them.

I guess it’ll turn into a Feat of Strength achievement, probably, but gosh, that sure feels like a whole lot of work for nothing.  Maybe I can use it the next time we’re talking about questing uphill in the snow both ways, back in the old WoW days (and liking it!)

I chose my Death Knight for this task, as she was already level 58 (due mostly to the nature of the hero class) and I figured if she had to get anywhere for training, it would be workable.  It only took me a few days at most to get to the top of Outlands level Inscription.  This is where I became stuck.

Apparently they’ve added in (or there always was and it just never came up) a minimum level for Northrend crafting.  In order to train Grand Master Inscription, I have to be level 65.  I am so glad I chose my Death Knight for this task and not a new character as I’d briefly considered.  That might have made me set aside this task for an indefinite amount of time.  Instead, I am now working bit by bit on leveling my DK to 65 so she can finish up her Inscription training.

One of the most frustrating elements of this is that, where I had to buy or gather herbs for all the earlier inks, I have such a surplus of Northrend herbs that I won’t deplete even half my stock once I am able to continue working on this crafting.  I thought it was about to get easy, and it became harder instead.

There were a couple of boss killing type achievements earned as well.  The first one was "Gotta Go!" which is earned for defeating Anub’arak in four minutes or less.  I doubt this is especially hard for raid geared folks, as most TBC folks are but I most definitely am not.  The other one was "Snakes.  Why’d It Have To Be Snakes?" which is for beating Slad’ran without getting snake wrapped.  Since it didn’t happen, I’m not sure what that involves, really.

That’s the problem with a smooth run — I don’t have much idea of the boss strategies because we didn’t seem to need them, or they were using them and I was just along for the ride.  I know not to stand in the goop, whatever kind it is, and to stand on the opposite side of a mob from the tank.  Oh, I also was able to try out my new Tricks of the Trade and Assist macros, and they both worked beautifully.  Set the tank as Focus and go!

I do remember the fights with Anub’arak and Gal’darah, as I remember getting speared once or twice (before I learned what this particular pool of stuff looked like – dust clouds – and avoided it), and I remember hollering "Wheee!" when I was thrown in the air by a rhino or some such.

Also in Gundrak, I got some new leggings: Gored Hide Legguards.  They are ugly, but have better stats than what I was wearing.  Sera’s poor shins are getting cold, as neither the "pants" nor the boots cover them.

Oh!  I also got the recipe for Haunted Herring, though I haven’t made any yet.

Other weekend accomplishments:

I finally got my last point in Unarmed combat and earned the achievement "Did Somebody Order a Knuckle Sandwich?"  I ended up switching my fist weapon to my right hand to do it, hoping that more hits might mean more chances, and it still took a few hours of play before it happened.

I finally ran across the last fish type I needed for Northrend Angler while questing in Dragonblight.

I also finished four of the Love Is In the Air achievements.  It would have been five if there was such a thing as Undead Warriors.  Where are they all hiding?  I let them all turn me into a turkey during Pilgrim’s Bounty.  The least they could do is return the favor.

The Eye of the Storm loss was in less than five minutes and they capped and held all four towers through the entire game.

I decided that I really don’t like Strand of the Ancients.  It might have been lack of coordination on the part of the Alliance folks but it seemed like I was always getting killed, right off and getting little if any assistance.  I don’t mind dying or I wouldn’t PvP but this just seemed excessive.  Maybe I should try it again.  Maybe it was a bad night.

I joined the Alterac Valley battle already in progress.  I ran to catch up with the pack, and by the time me and a half dozen others made it to the General fellow at the end, the pack was back at midfield or so running back.  I guess they died though I don’t really know.  (Why don’t people talk in BGs?)  We were smashing him fairly well when the Horde must have killed our general.  At least that one was close.

The Warsong Gulch battle was interesting.  Both teams were turtling to some degree, and there actually was some very little bit of talking going on.  Eventually someone on our side killed their flag carrier, and we managed to score a point.  At this point, there were about ten minutes left to go and the consensus (if you can call it that when it comes from only half the team) was to turtle so we’d get a win.  I am not sure what happened to that strategy, but in the last two and a half minutes, the Horde somehow capped the flag.  Twice.

Despite all of this relative frustration, I really had fun.  I’ve been toying with the idea of bringing up another alt just by playing in battlegrounds (from 30 onward), to see if it can be done, and as a challenge.  I’m not sure yet if I’ll go through with it, but the idea is bouncing around in my head.

A little frustrated, I went to work on farming leather (so I could make myself something better later), discussing the situation a little bit with our associated guild folks.  After some good advice about stats to focus on for now (Apparently my hit was disgustingly low, amongst other things.) and which factions had items worth getting, we decided to do the ToC run also mentioned on Monday’s post.  This started the gearing up as the Shoulderpads of the Infamous Knave dropped.

I spent some time on Monday and Tuesday researching the various faction rewards and realized that I could already get two upgrades as the Kirin Tor and Argent Crusade both love me.  I picked up the Lightblade Rivener for my offhand and got a desperately needed cloak upgrade with the Cloak of Holy Extermination.  (Prior to this, I had no idea where the Argent Crusade quartermaster was.  I’d even been in the right camp and missed it.)

After that, I set up a plan.  I would work on my Dragonblight quests, which I was already doing, until I could reach Honored with Wyrmrest Accord, then start the quest chain that would open up the Ebon Blade dailies, and later do the same for the Sons of Hodir.  I was pretty sure that doing these things would allow me to queue for heroics.

Sometime on Tuesday evening, I did reach Honored with the dragons, and bought the Fang of Truth to use as my main hand weapon.  (Yeah, it’s a little fast.  It’ll maybe move to offhand later, depending on what I get between now and some unknown future time.)

I checked the LFD panel at this point, and saw that I was able to queue for heroics — not ICC or ToC heroics, but all the others are available.  As I’ve reached the goal there much sooner than I’d thought possible or than I’d intended, I’m not sure if I’m going on with the rest of the gearing plan or set it aside for now.  I still want that nice sword that the Ebon Blade folks have and they also have some nice chest armor at Exalted.  The Argent Crusade have some pretty boots as well, and the Sons of Hodir have both a nice shoulder enchant and the mining bag pattern.

Wintergrasp

I did finally go to Wintergrasp.  It was crazy! I decided not to risk jumping into a vehicle yet.  Though I’ve read up on the zone, I don’t feel I have more than half a clue about how things work, so I decided to run alongside and guard vehicles.  We didn’t win, but I did get to see a fair amount of how things worked, I think, and I nabbed the Destruction Derby achievement as well as these Stone Keeper’s Shards for the daily quests.  I’m not clear on what those are for quite yet, as opposed to the usual BG tokens, but I have some.

I ran a couple Arathi Basins and one more Wintergrasp and they were all total… uh… they were crazy cubed is all I can safely say.  I don’t think anyone cared about winning, only about getting HKs or maybe we were just up against premades.  People don’t talk in BGs except to insult each other’s abilities, it seems.  Maybe I’ve just had bad luck lately.  Anyway, we were totally steamrolled.

Culling of Stratholme

Sunday afternoon, I decided to risk a random, and it… wasn’t good.  At least, it didn’t start well.  I popped in and see that it is the Culling of Stratholme, and my party is nowhere near me.  There’s a tracker at the top of the screen that says 9/10 undead waves done.  I’m a little nervous, because my appearance after the instance started means they must have lost a DPSer already, and none of the reasons I can think of for that are particularly pleasant.  I tell the group I haven’t seen the instance before and I’ll try to catch up to them.  After this and that, I do.

Well, on the very first trashy pull, we wipe.  (Well, I didn’t die — that’s what Vanish is for — but you get the gist.)  And then the healer apologizes, says she isn’t good enough to heal this, and leaves.  And then the tank disconnects.  So here we are, three DPSers, in the middle of an instance with no tank and no healer.  And the group leadership for some unknown reason defaults to me.

One of the DPSers is a shadow priest, who says she’ll switch to healing.  We get another couple of DPSers right away (shaman and moonkin).  I’m not sure exactly when that happened — it might have been before the tank disconnected.  Unfortunately, we are still without a tank.  After sitting there for a good five minutes with nothing happening (And I’m trying to remember, if I ditch, will I have to wait a further fifteen minutes to try again?  Or do I just have to outwait the original debuff which only has four minutes left.) I ask over the TBC channel and a very nice Hroth says he’ll come help us out.

Now, back at the beginning, when I said I didn’t know the instance, no one else said anything about it at all.  And now that Hroth joins us, everyone else speaks up and says they haven’t been here before.  Well, I think one person didn’t say anything, but certainly no one was speaking up about what had or hadn’t been done, except me who was making assumptions based on that tracker thing and what my Atlas addon had to say about the instance.  Nice Hroth takes the lead and we finish the rest of the instance with very little fuss or muss.  I get my two Emblems of Triumph (Only 228 more to go!) and some gold.  There weren’t any rogue-y drops to speak of, unfortunately.

Later, Graen and Sera went to do old world Strat, and cleared the live side fairly handily.

I wonder if the maps are the same.  I’ll have to remember to compare later.

Trial of the Champion

In an effort to get Sera geared adequately (more on that tomorrow), we also had some nice friends run us through Trial of the Champion.  We were unable to find a fifth, so we decided to go ahead and try it with four.  It went fine.  I think Graen died once (which, I guess, isn’t all that fine).

I found the jousting a little confusing.  I know how to do it well enough, but I hit the wrong target once and then spent a while trying to decide if I should kite the mob until someone was free to help (as she was beating me to bits) or … something else.  I’m not sure what.  As I think about it now, it seems you couldn’t run it like a usual fight.  The tank has no taunt ability while on a mount.  I’d guess the goal would be focused fire on one target at a time until they’re all taken out.

The reason for going was to get gear for me (or for Graen, who needs the help too), but it seemed all the drops were plate until the very end, when the Shoulderpads of the Infamous Knave dropped.  I asked permission to need them, and then did, and now have nice purpley shoulders.  Dekae also sent me a gem for the socket (to help with my apparently deplorable hit rating).

And the big thing I learned from those instances runs — I need macros for assist and Tricks of the Trade, and I need to use them.  I have assist hotkeyed, but I found that trying to target the tank, even when it was my focus target, and then hitting that key lost me valuable reaction or damage time.  I have the macros made now (for assisting my focus and for putting Tricks of the Trade on a particular person) so we’ll see how that goes next time.

Other Things

I also finished the Ironforge Valiant quest, and started on the gnomes.  This earned me the Exalted Champion of Ironforge achievement.

I earned the Winds of the North achievement when I reached Exalted reputation with the Alliance Vanguard.  I’m not sure if there’s much benefit in this for me, as I don’t recall any of their rewards being especially needed, but that did bring me to 7/10 exalted reputations for the next overall reputation achievement.

I finally looted 1000 gold and earned the Got My Mind On My Money achievement.  I’m curious to see how quickly this will happen for a lower level alt or a new character starting from scratch.  I think this is one of those achievements that wasn’t retroactive when the system was put in and that’ll change when in a character’s career it is achieved.

Now that I’ve reached level 80, my goals are to acquire/earn:

• Some of that pretty VanCleef’s (t9) armor set.  I saw it on another rogue and love it.
• Rep with enough factions to get enough mounts and pets for the next two mount and pet achievements.
• A flying mount more interesting than the standard armored gryphon.
• Achievements, achievements, achievements!

To summarize my achievements for the last weekend, I earned these, more or less in this order:

• Nothing Boring About Borean
• Dual Talent Specialization
• Lance a Lot
• Explore Sholazar Basin
• Explore Icecrown
• Champion of Stormwind
• Exalted Champion of Stormwind
• It’s Just a Flesh Wound (Finished him off with auto-attacks and one Killing Spree due to UI related bug that didn’t let me access my action bars.)
• Level 80
• Explore Dragonblight
• Veteran of the Wrathgate (So so cool!  On Ceire, I apparently missed like half of it or more.)
• Northern Exposure

I’ll explain, but we’ll have to step back in history a bit.  When I started Sera, it was largely out of frustration.  I’d been playing on an RP-PvP server and my solo character (not a good idea on a PvP server) was a mage.  Mages are very squishy.  Extremely squishy.  Maximally squishy.  I was tired of getting ganked.  I needed revenge.  Who is best at ganking the gankers?  A rogue!  And so, Sera was born.

That PvP beginning has flavored everything about her.  Her spec, the one I used for leveling, has always been focused on disabling the opponent and surviving the fight.  Maximum DPS suffered so that maximum survivability could benefit.

Also, there was the RP element to it.  I have this potentially elaborate back story to the character that involves her combat training having references to "dancing with luck" or dancing with her opponent.  Her RSP title is "Luck Dancer."  This has been a theme.  So when I saw that the capping ability on the Subtlety tree was Shadowdance, it just… fit.

So, here I had a good mechanics reason and a good role-playing reason for her spec.  Those elements combined with the fact that I seemed to be doing just fine kept me content.  I never had any desire to even really look at what all those Mutilate and Combat proponents were talking about.

And then…

And then, right before I dinged 79, I also had enough money on me for my second spec.  I wanted a second spec primarily for the achievement.  Also, I’d been hearing enough about how Subtlety wouldn’t work for instances, that I was willing to entertain the idea of a second spec just to make sure I was pulling my expected DPS weight — but only in dungeons!  That was the plan.

I asked for advice (Thanks DK!), checked out a couple of recommended specs, and when I went to train after reaching level 79, I also bought the second spec.  I set it up as suggested, with a few points shifted elsewhere.  I went to Icecrown to do my Argent dailies and try it out.

O.

M.

G.

The difference in damage output is … startling, initially, and amazing as I got into the groove of it.  And Killing Spree is the most fun rogue ability ever.  Seriously?  I get to dart around from target to target?  Or all around a single target?  And probably take him to near dead in the process?  And with a glyph, I can do this every or every other fight?!  Seriously!  I tear through cloth casters like they’re paper!  Paper!  I took down three mobs in one fight.  They were clothies, but I used to struggle with two!  I know it’s about to get a nerf.  I can see why.  No one should do this much damage in quest greens and blues.

I feel guilty about enjoying it so much.  My intent was to switch to Combat spec only for instances and to stay in my much-loved ever-reliable Subtlety the rest of the time, but I cannot get over how much fun I’m having or how much quicker some of these fights go.  And so I think the Subtlety spec is going to get refined to be more clearly for PvP and may get shelved when I am not in a battleground.

I will miss you, Preparation, and your help in escaping.  I will miss you, Cheat Death, because you have saved me many times.  I will miss you, Premeditation.  I will miss how much more quickly the combo points come (as that is the one thing that my Subtlety spec very clearly wins at).

Maybe this love affair won’t last.  Maybe I’ll get disillusioned after the newness wears off.  That’s how these things are supposed to go, isn’t it?  In the meantime, I will be crying (Joy?  Sorrow?  Both?) while I am going: Cheap Shot! Blade Flurry! Slice and Dice! Killing Spree! Dead mob!