This is a quick wrap-up of the weekend. Friday's Ulduar raid started off by taking down the three bosses in the Iron Council. To do that one of our raiders ended up being three people before all was said and done. He started off on his druid healer alt, to bring our healer group to two druids and a priest. When the druid had trouble keeping the off tank alive he switched to his shaman alt for off tank healing, which worked. But then the main tank on Steelbreaker died because he was getting hammered by Fusion Punch and we had no one who could interrupt that high damage spell. So he swapped out again to his main, a paladin, who could do interrupts on himself. We shifted him to main tank healing, Wild to off tank, and we finally won.
We moved on to Hodir, and here we bogged down big time, unable to shovel our way out the deep hole we dug for ourselves. We made nine attempts. We tried a lot of different things. But us healers couldn't keep people alive, and DPSers couldn't seem to stay away from things that would kill them. We had three decent healers, two solid DK tanks, and enough DPS to win it, but we could never get all the pieces working at the same time.
The raid ran out of time and energy, and Wild retired to give JB some game time, which she is getting more and more of lately. DER and JB got together, took out some trash inside the Northrend dungeon of Utguard Keep, and when the first boss proved he could encase both of us in Frost Tombs long enough for both of us to die, we said the heck with that and went to clear the level 60 dungeon of Stratholme. It took awhile as there are mountains of mobs to kill and twelve bosses to find and dispatch. The killing part was pretty easy, but the finding part was a challenge, as was the looting part. Tons of stuff were left to rot as neither of us had any bag space left halfway through the clear. The two intrepid adventurers got the Achievement for clearing the dungeon. The number of beautiful, level 60 blue gear drops was amazing to see. We could have brought a couple of our level 59s to grab some of that gear, but its a sad fact that it was really pretty useless even to them. Around level 58 levelling players now go directly to Outlands, where even green quest gear is better than anything Stratholme and the other level 60 vanilla WoW dungeons have. Those dungeons languish, forgotten and haunted by players past. Wild hopes the next expansion, Cataclysm, addresses that.
Much of the rest of the weekend JB spent in Wintergrasp. A new battle begins roughly 2 1/2 hours after the prior one finishes, so Wintergrasp is "Up" for battle about every three hours. On Friday JB got into 5 WG battles, winning thee and losing two. On Saturday it was three battles (all losses :( ) and then on Sunday it was two wins and a loss. Winning is more fun, but even losing grants Honor points, Stone Keeper Shards, and Marks of Honor.
The shards come from completing quests. JB had all kinds of trouble getting the quests, until she learned they are on an odd cycle of every four days except the four day cycle resets on Tuesdays. It's crazy but if JB plays often enough she usually gets the quests when they're available. JB has 151 shards, and needs 200 to get the heirloom shoulder piece she wants. Maybe another week, or a bit longer. The marks of honor are awarded according to wins and losses like other pvp zones - 3 for a win, 1 for a loss. JB has already earned a +hit trinket for the marks she has collected, and has 18 now toward the 40 she needs for her next acquisition.
As for honor points, JB pretty much ignored them. Pause for effect - yep, erik's entire WoW family just fell over, stunned and laughing hysterically at the same time. The Hall of Legends (I think that's the name) in Orgrimmar is where those honor points can be spent, but JB was so totally focused on the marks and shards she never thought about the honor points. She might still be ignoring them except for the fact that on Friday or so she noted her total honor points were at the nice round number of 75,000. Neat. Then she forgot about it again until Sunday, when she happened to glance at honor points after the latest WG battle to see be sure she'd gotten her marks, and the total honor points were - 75,000. Huh? What gives? JB has killed literally hundreds of alliance between Friday and Sunday, all of which should have earned honor points. Well, back in some patch a long time ago a limit was placed on how many honor points you could have. Care to guess what that number is? The worst part about that is JB has no idea how many honor points she lost as she has no clue when she maxed out to 75,000.
Well, JB couldn't earn any more until she burned some of those honor points, and so off to Orgrimmar she went. An impressed JB was greedily pleased at how much nice gear was in here! After much indecision on what to start with, JB purchased [Furious Gladiator's Waistguard of Dominance], JB's first piece of ilevel 226 gear, and her first true pvp gear as it came with a stat called Resilience. That cost nearly 50,000 honor points, so JB will be back in WG grinding out more.
JB typically looks like this, wrapped in all that deadly gear -
In her latest visit to WG, however, she went upscale. You think the new look will help or hurt when facing down an Alliance opponent on the battlefields of Wintergrasp?
JB also has her whimsical side - you remember the bunny ears, I'm sure.
She also had a halloween costume:
Happy Monday!
What is honor and what is it good for??? :P
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