Banner – Kaayn

It’s a good thing I kept all these files or I would never have been able to update the banners.

Kaayn is Selwyn’s twin, though he has no memory of this – only limited flashbacks of confusing images and memory fragments. His writing probably was very similar to Selwyn’s prior to his rebirth (redeath?) as a death knight but suffers from lack of use and faltering confidence. The pen may be mightier than the sword for some, but Kaayn doesn’t feel that he has anything to say worth writing down.

Old banner:

In the meantime

Since raiding has been off the table in any serious capacity for the past couple weeks, what have I been up to in WoW?

With the exception of this past weekend, not much.

I started playing LoL and almost as quickly lost interest.

Watched the first 4 seasons of Venture Bros. Seriously, if you aren’t watching this, you need to start. What are you waiting for? Go watch!

And then two things happened.

Patch 5.4 and the promise of 489 catch-up gear for my alts and 100 free valor (if I can cap on Arioch) each week until this shindig ends (anyone know when it will end?) had me itching to put some serious hours back in to the game.

The second thing was my overwhelming guilt for not keeping up on my cousin’s gaming podcast (check him out over at www.extradamage.com ) finally caught up with me.

I had the perfect opportunity to roam the Barrens, mindlessly slaughtering Kor’kron and escorting caravans, while listening to the MANY hours of podcast I had fallen behind on.

I am sad to say that I’m still not caught up on the podcast (episode 19!) , but I made progress all over the place in WoW on multiple characters.

Making Progress!

Alright, it’s been another week-plus since I had time to write, but there’s been valor to cap and bosses to kill.

Not to loot, just to kill. Because I just get gold.

Anyway…

I am now officially 16/16 in T14 content and ready to step up in to T15 Throne of Thunder.

So I had a bright idea.

I should use the +300 food for the new content, really squeak out that extra bit of DPS.

Hmmm…. I’ve got a DK that’s got cooking up pretty close. I bet I could level his cooking really quick and make my little fish stews to get points!

Digging the Tillers

I have a confession to make.

I might be addicted to farming in WoW.

No doubt, I loved the leveling experience on Arioch. So many new sights and sounds and sparkles.

And a lot of running like hell and trying to peel individual mobs out a of a clusterfuck before the insane respawn led to screams of SHITSHITSHITFUCKFUCKFUCKRUNAWAY.

But I was in no hurry to get to the end game of 90 and took my time exploring each zone.

Without rest XP, I almost made it through all the content before hitting the end, snagged flying and finished it up. (Skipping dungeons helps you cover more ground in quests.)

And then began the dailies.

Which I haven’t done for 3 days running…

Raiding Excitement – Not as Anticipated

Last week was full of raiding excitement!

Just not on Arioch.

Log in Tuesday and mill about Org, waiting for an invite.

(Actually, I stood around and made cloth bolts, Arioch isn’t a scribe. OK, bad joke is bad.)

The roster looks a little thin… only a handful of people are on.

Word finally comes down that it’s postponed to Wednesday.

No problem, just level that pally up to 79.

Log on Wednesday.

Again with the waiting.

Postponed until Friday.

No problem, just crush out some dailies.

And then Tir looks at me and says they need a 10^th for an alt DS run.

Honey, I Shrunk the DKs!

Has any one else noticed that their DKs, which have always been sized oddly on the character selection screen, are now minuscule?

I present the before and after 5.0.4 screen shots of my DKs:

Kaayn:

The cat is out of the bag!

So quite some time ago, I made mention of a super secret DK project.

I never did come up with a cool code name for it.

Anyway, the secret DK had clawed his way up to level 82 in (mostly) secrecy. (Zar knew I was there.)

And then…

Life blew up with work and toddlers and other raids and kittens and rainbows (surprising amount of rainbows in D3).

The secret DK project got left behind as I moved over to a new DK for yet another not-quite-so-secret DK project.

But a chat with Zar reminded me of the languishing first DK (which is really my second DK, or third if you count that one over there… why do I keep making DKs?) and I decided to make the push to carry out my secret mission prior to MoP.

Cue Ominous Clouds

And some dramatic music…

Who is this masked man?

Because I said I would

So sorry about the lack of posts. Lately I’ve had the choice to either play WoW or write about WoW… playing won out.

I’m having a blast on my little secret project DK, with most dungeon runs being civil and smooth.

Most.

Then I get this gem of a tank.

He’s not a bad player, per se. (And I say “he” as he was claiming to have an enormous and magnificent dick.)

OK, he was bad.

Level 79 and direct queued for Drak”tharon Keep. Apparently he had been in the instance before, but after the first boss was dead and was attempting to get the achievement for completing the dungeon before hitting level 80.

Of Deserter Debuffs

More crazy adventures of my top-secret DK!

One of my earlier runs was in Ramps.

OK, MANY of the earlier runs were Ramps, I thought that’s all I was going to get until I was eligible for Utgarde and then maybe Stonecore for all of eternity after that.

Ramps is generally a well-designed dungeon.

It’s short, has easy access back to the quest givers once the dungeon is completed, there aren’t an insane amount of trash pulls, the pulls require a little care for an undergeared or underskilled group, and it’s fairly linear.

The only big problem that Ramps has is the first patrol.

If you zone in and a party member takes 4 steps forward to be in range of the quest giver, they are now in range of the patrol at the end of his path. And he pulls the first two guards with him.

All hell breaks loose which sucks when your tank hasn’t loaded or the healer is still in their DPS spec.