Rill's transmog complete!

I've been trying for ages now to put something together for Rillian, and while it's been almost more trouble than it's worth, I think it's finally finished now! Pictures:

Chest, pants, and gloves are all from the Scouting set. I could have used the belt too, but it was annoyingly absent from the AH, so I went with a Bandit cinch, which uses the same design. For the boots, I'm just using his Bloodthirsty leather ones, which I'll probably keep even after he gets better. His daggers are from the Bravo Company questline in Redridge. And his shoulder is from a quick, easy quest out in Desolace.

Rill's cloak, now, almost needs a post all its own. I knew I wanted this design for him, but there are only 3 cloaks that look like this in the game. One of them drops from a rare spawn in Zul'Farrak. Another comes from the North Dire Maul tribute chest (the one you get when you leave all the bosses- except the king of course >.>). And the third is a drop from Terestian Illhoof in Karazhan.

Rill is fairly well geared now, but I still didn't think much of his chances in Karazhan, so I tried ZF first. The rare spawn was actually up the first time I checked, but he didn't drop the cloak. I did a lot of "run in and check, run out and reset" before he spawned again- no cloak. After a long run of no-shows, I decided to try Dire Maul.

I have no idea what was up with Dire Maul, but the cloak just didn't seem to exist on the loot table... which is funny, because Davoss actually has this cloak sitting in his bank(got it on a dungeon run while he was still leveling). I never kept track of how many times I ran the instance, but saying that it must have been between 20-30 times would not be an exaggeration. It refused to drop.

I kept running through it, killing the King and looting that chest for several days, pausing only to run back to ZF and check for the rare every now and then(only seen him once, and he dropped a sword for me, no cloak), before I gave up. I still tried 1 or 2 runs now and again, but Rill's cloak moved to a back burner for a while.

So. Tonight. I was out doing stuff with the family until late, and when I got home it was too late to do anything, but still too early for bed, so... I decided to just try Karazhan. If it was too hard for Rill, at least I'd know, right? I logged on Rheugan on the other account for a raid group, then went on in. After spending several minutes trying to remember my way around, I finally got to the opera event... and had to backtrack because I needed to kill Moroes first. I got him down pretty low my first attempt before Rill's health got too low and I made a run for it. Second attempt I actually remembered poisons(*cough*), so it went much better. Moroes never even vanished.

I skipped Attumen and Maiden and went back to Opera, and wound up with the Wizard of Oz event. I was really uncertain about this one, but they all went down ridiculously fast, even the Crone at the end. Curator was the same way- I even pulled a group of trash by accident, and was able to kill them off and get Curator down with no trouble. He didn't even evocate until the end of the fight.

I nearly got lost again trying to find the bookcase, then killed the trash and jumped Illhoof. By this time I was feeling pretty good about Rill's chances, not enough to get cocky but I felt that he wouldn't have a problem. I was right, too, and was even able to keep the imp numbers down with regular Fan of Knives thrown in. Terestian hit the floor, I clicked him to loot, and....

Cloak. I will admit I squee'd.

So that's how Rill got his transmog cloak. I like the way the set looks even if all the pieces don't match exactly. The cloak... well, I'm a nerd, and I read in a book somewhere that if you're being stealthy, you don't necessarily want all-black gear, you want dark - but not black! - gear that will blend into the shadows better. That, and I think the pattern would help break up his outline enough to make him harder to see. Maybe I put too much thought into it. XD

Disclaimer!: I didn't run through the whole Kara adventure just to be like "I'm so awesome I killed all these bosses so easily". If you're 85 and even somewhat decently geared, I think any class would have just as easy a time of it, so long as you're patient and know the bosses/your class. So, yea.

I need to get back into the MoP beta and take screenies of all the new pets... when I went to look for pics before it appeared that I had, uh, forgotten to take any. >.> So, til next time Happy Hunting!

Stuff 'n Things!

I am being bad and distracted by in-game "Oooh, shiny" so haven't gotten any writing done. >.>

The Riders have been doing some old-school raids lately, so Pitch has gotten almost all the ICC achievements he needs for a frosty skelly-drake... which he'll probably never use. Oh well.

Lark's gotten in some Ulduar stuff too, and now has her Starcaller title. Pitch likely will too, now that we've found out how simple it is to get to Algalon. I'm still hoping to someday get Lark an ironbound proto-drake, too. *crosses fingers*

Her normal raid is still going strong- in fact, we chalked up another kill to our total for Dragon Soul. Ultraxion down, finally!

He doesn't leave a body, so I had to take a screenie of his loot chest. Also, ignore all those skeletons there, kay? >.>

It was so late when we got him dead that we just hammed around with the next fight, just to get a look at it.

I got a bit of a present when we reached Hagara, the 4th boss- Rill got to come in and do a little thievery. I couldn't do anything else with the questline until the raid was over, but he did start his ring charging before I logged, so by morning he was all set.

I'm not really sure how to describe the questline. All the stealthy bits were fun, especially after I found some video guides on Youtube. My only real problem came with the boss fight itself. Rill just could not get Creed down before he enraged and smashed Rill to bits. After dying to the fight all day, and getting him agonizingly close a couple times, I finally got a break and teamed up with another rogue, and we got him down at last. Woot!

.... and then I transmogged them. >.>


My only excuse it that Rill just wouldn't want to carry around daggers that look like most of the Cata models. Combat knives, on the other hand, are totally diggable. Shush.

My altitis has slowed down, though I still want to get Rill and Pitch (and maybe Turron, but he needs work) ready for the raid-finder. And Rill needs to play with his new shinies anyway.

Other than that, I've been tinkering on LOTRO again, and Basten the burglar is now level 38! He's still my highest toon, though I want to get Ilfariel up to match, plus a couple of my other toons (Elgo and my new guardian Raedbor at least). Rift has been meh lately, but that might change as well- mostly because the server my sister and I were on is being changed to a trial server, so we'll be moving our toons to higher-population servers.

And that is all I can think of for now. Til next time, Happy Hunting!

Patch 4.0- Hunters, Druids and Rogues

Okay, I've had time to play with a few of my guys now, so let's try this again, shall we?

Hunters first off, because duh, hunters! Lark was my first to get specced/glyphed, though I only did her BM spec. Her second spec is remaining blank until I decide to go MM again or else give Surv a try. BM.... well, first thing is I MISS MY LAZERKITTY DANGIT! The heal that spirit beasts have now is... kinda useful? Maybe? But I haven't had an occasion where I needed it yet. Komah's dps is still up there, however, so I'm fairly happy with it anyway.

I ran Lark in a couple heroics and then the weekly raid (Patchwerk) so I could get a feel for it right away. Her dps on trash.... was sad. That's all I can say. She went from little over 3k dps to maybe 2.5k. Bosses were better, and other bloggers have said that it's just because hunters need time to "rev up" a bit now and trash just dies too fast. I think I agree. Patchwerk was the real test, after all, and since we were, uh, kind of 5-manning it (>.>) I had an excellent opportunity to test it.

Lark's final DPS for Patchwerk was about 4.5k. Yea, ain't complaining about that.

So! Hunters- seem pretty cool. I did a little bit with Kaled and Khaotic too, and I'm still pretty happy. Khaotic went back to Surv, all I did was pound on a training dummy for a bit, but she managed a bit over 1k DPS even with being focus-starved most of the time. Kaled went through some quests, no training dummy for him yet, and he and Vysaka the worm did very well. Stuff died super fast, no low-health problems, and worms are Best Tanks Ever. (Ok, maybe not but I still love them.)

Booggah did nothing but run around collecting old friends. I'll try to get him into a heroic or something some time, because he has to level BlackHide the raptor now. Samahe the rhino, being a tank pet, will get leveled up the hard way I think. He just needs 1 level anyway, so shouldn't take long.

That was about it for my hunters, so next up is druids. First off, I uh, haven't really done anything on any of my ferals yet. I'm a baddie. Alanon, however, got enough attention to make up for it. And Shaur will get some leveling attention at some point, so I'll see how she does then.

Boomkins are fun. Not that they weren't before, but still. Alanon's DPS seems to have gone up, even without any gem changes or reforging attempts. I may play around with reforging a bit, haven't decided yet.

Resto was what had me worried the most, to be honest. I shouldn't have worried at all. He healed with a holydin for another weekly-raid run, with no deaths and lots of big green numbers. Efflorescence is too much fun. I have to confess that I spammed Regrowth most of the time- I felt like I was back in vanilla, in a way. I really need to learn the rotation and stuff for it. Nourish.... isn't as much fun as before. The cast time seems really long, about the same as Healing Touch, for a lot less mana but much smaller heals too. So yea, a lot of Regrowth spam with Rejuvs and Swiftmends thrown in.

Now on to the last one for this post- Rogues!

I went ahead and did the faction-switch a few days before the patch, so Zuluu is gone and Rillian is in his place. I've RP'ed him some already, and he's fun if you don't mind the slightly-jerky-type. *ahem* But more on that later.

I specced Rill Assassination after a lot of "stare at the talent page and wonder what the heck I'm doing". Now I wish I'd done it before. Assassination is fun, rogues are fun, sheesh, I think I love the patch for that reason alone. I've gone from thinking about deleting him to wanting to play him all the time.

His rotation? Cheap shot, backstab, mutilate, eviscerate. If the mob isn't dead then, it is after a couple more hits. Throw in some lucky crits, and sometimes he doesn't even get the evis off. I ran a random dungeon with him too, and while he wasn't super-DPSer, he didn't do badly considering I was still learning what stuff did. And the fact that he's geared in all quest greens. I, uh, really ought to do something about that. >.>

This is what I wanted in a rogue- a sneaky toon that Kills Things Fast. When Zuluu got to Northrend, leveling turned into "Take 30 seconds or more to kill one mob, repeat 3x, then stop to eat/bandage." It was, frankly, a grind in every sense. Now, Rill can kill 20 mobs or so without taking much damage, so long as I'm careful with what I'm doing. He's still squishy- he wound up vs. 3 mobs at once and barely came out alive- but most of the time things are dead before the stun wears off.

So to sum up rogues? Thank you Blizzard, I needed that.

And I know they'll probably get nerfed eventually, but for now I'm going to level up Rill as much as I can, and enjoy it in the process. Also? He got to revered with Cenarion Expedition already, and between farming ears in Borean and duoing Coilfang instances with Alanon, he'll have his hippogryph very soon.

That's about all I can think of. I'll try out Turron, Davoss, and at least one of my ferals in the next week or so and do a post for them. And Rill is inspiring some RP posts (finally!) so I'll probably have one of those up soonish. So til next time, Happy Hunting!