Banner – Cruorem

First up is Cruorem!

Sorry to disappoint if you were hoping for a new Arioch banner. The font I picked for Arioch and the Clearcasting banner will remain the same, it’s Arioch’s casual handwriting, after all. That font captures his bold personality and flair for embellishment.

After spending a day poring over a couple thousand fonts until I thought my eyes would bleed, I have selected new fonts to represent each of my WoW characters represented in the banner rotation as well as a font for kitty Arioch.

Aluminum Armor and Heirloom Expectations

I think I’m going about my baby tanking warrior in the wrong way.

How can it be wrong?

I mean, I haven’t logged on to him for a bit now, not since I replaced all his gear after the holiday-induced leveling spurt.

And that’s what is wrong.

I look at him on the character selection screen.

He looks back at me.

And I wuss out.

…

What started as a “just need to get my glyph bitch up to the next level for his herbalism” project turned into a rather enjoyable experience. I wanted to run around solo, not bother anyone with my complete failness of ret pally.

But questing in Outland really hasn’t changed much since it was released so the dungeons made a nice break to the drudgery.

I have no heirloom gear on him. Hell, I headed out with a leather helm. On a ret pally. Yeah, it was that bad.

So I queued up.

And didn’t do too bad. Sometimes I even did well.

To boot, I wasn’t even nervous about it.

I look at him on the character selection screen.

He looks back at me.

And I don’t flinch.

…

I have a secret project at the moment. I’m running a new DK on a new server. There are few who know of my identity and they have been sworn to secrecy.

Again, leveling in BC zones just doesn’t sound that appealing. I want to fly around, pick flowers, beat on rocks, and kill things every 10-20 minutes when the queue pops for a DPS.

Being on a new server, and too cheap to mule crap over, I’m in the DK starter blues with a couple upgrades I’ve managed to snag from repeated runs of Ramps or Slave Pens.

Even with a completely fucked up rotation (more of that on another day), I’m doing well. Not always the top of the meters, but never the bottom. I’m even getting the hang of that melee thing, something I might be able to transfer to my paladin.

I look at him on the character selection screen.

He looks back at me.

And I jump right in.

…

So I was thinking about this, why I feel so nervous on my tanking warrior and feel no issue on my DPS toons?

I mean, yeah, it’s a new role for me, but I’m decked in full heirlooms! I’ve got a shield without intellect on it! I should be rocking the joint!

Memories of leveling Selwyn well up; of being terrified that I would fail – fully decked out in heirlooms, with the best enchants, the best gems. Leveling Selwyn was almost painful for me. Zone in to a group. Four strangers. Which one would die? Would it be my fault? What if they were too stupid and I couldn’t save them?

Selwyn was eventually saved by have a group of supportive friends band together to be my pocket group. (Most people look for a pocket healer, I needed a whole freaking group).

But I don’t want to do that with my tanking. When I healed my friends, I could yell at them to quit doing stupid things and they would usually stop standing in fire. When I started healing random people again, there was no yelling (other than at the computer screen) and they continued to stand in fire. Those are the types of people I’m going to end up tanking for, I want to be prepared.

I should be prepared, in my shiny heirlooms, with their pretty stats. I mean, I walk in to a dungeon and people see the telltale gear and go, “Hey, this guy’s in heirlooms! That means he knows what the fuck he’s doing!”

But I don’t. (I’m not a guy either, but I can understand the assumption.)

And I think that’s where the root of my problem is.

With the heirlooms comes the expectation that the player has a clue. That they know where to go in a dungeon they haven’t seen in 2+ years and certainly not since Cata “simplified” it. That they have 3 other tanks in progression raiding and know what to do when the mage goes off and pulls one pack while the hunter has tab targeted to a different group and the rogue has gone afk and the healer has no mana… *flail*.

With my other characters, in their quest greens and occasional boss blue, there are no expectations. The rest of the party looks at me and assumes that I’m a complete and utter noob. They might be pleasantly surprised to see me not be a total jackass or they might not even notice I’m there.

I’m wondering if it would actually be easier on me to tank by stripping off the heirlooms … what do you guys think? Am I crazy?

Baby Steps

With Love is in the Air going on, I’m running a 2-pronged attack on the game.

First, I’m farming/hoarding tokens with the theory that I can obtain about 6 Swift Lovebirds over the course of the holiday. This is to move me along the “GET ARIOCH A FUCKING SWIFT SPECTRAL TIGER” track.

My second goal is to get my alts at sub-level 20 up to that magical level of “quit running everywhere on foot.” This will also help speed up the obtaining tokens for flamingos.

Thankfully, these work together rather well and I’ve been soaking up XP left and right handing out little bracelets.

The bank alt got taken out for a spin the other night to burn off her rested so it was the baby warrior’s turn.

Starting from the bottom

Because we all have to start somewhere, right?

Anyway, you’ve probably noticed that part of the new banner is up and running. Rumor has it that this has greatly improved the load time on the site. My apologies to anyone that was having difficulties before. Except Tel. No apologies for you!

Playing around with different brush packs has been a lot of fun and I’ve come up with ideas for banners/signature panes that I don’t think would have occurred to me otherwise.

For instance, I was playing around with various “grunge” and “distressed” brushes, no real goal in mind.

Suddenly, the landscape of chipped sandstone started to pop off the page at me.

A splash of blood later and it was off to the WoW Model Viewer to start throwing together some poses for my baby warrior.

I seem to be missing something…

Working on my absurdly overpowered baby warrior in little spurts.

I broke down and got him the helm and shoulders and cloak to go with the chest and axe… and I got him a full set of the same in the tanking flavor.

Obviously substituting the 1-handed sword for the 2-handed axe.

Although, I have healed an instance or two with a low-level tank insisting that it was just as good as having a shield… he made me say unkind things. There was possibly gnashing of teeth and questions regarding his parentage and drug use.

And obviously I made yet another blood elf.

It’s a Small World

No, this isn’t a post about some Kevin Bacon-esque finding of someone a million miles away through WoW or anything like that.

However, I must say: mmmmmmmmm…….. bacon.

Anyway.

So I rolled my blood elf warrior and have been leveling him with Tir’s holy cow.

I started in the blood elf starting area (duh) and completed all the quests in the “cradle” without any BoA gear.

I think I was 5 or 6 when I was told I was ready to move on to Falconwing Square.

Which I promptly ran through, stopping long enough to pick up the flight point (WTF?!?) and eating at the bountiful tables.

555555

That number, shit you not, was given to me by my authenticator.

What does it mean?

It means that I finally got a chance to log in and play some WoW!

Work is still kicking my ass and I’m at least a month behind on all the blogs that I read.

But, I did get a chance to sample some of the new things that came in with the Sundering. Or Shattering. Or whatever the hell it was called.

…

So what have I been able to squeeze in to my limited play time?

Tales of a Warrior – BFD

No, not big fucking deal – Black Fathom Depths.

I have run BFD on my mage. Back when we had 3 pallies in the party and two mages. Yeesh, that was bad.

I have healed BFD on my priest. A few times actually as the poor druid was trying to get the staff to drop. It never did drop for us. It dropped for my warrior, of course.

And now I have run it as a melee DPS on my warrior.

I use the term DPS loosely… I hadn’t come across a 2-hander worth equipping yet and was in the LFG on a lark (there’s never anyone else in LFG for low instances) so ended up going in with sword and board.

Two pallies, a mage, a hunter, and me on my warrior.

Early 20’s.

Party up and one of the pallies asks if I’m prot spec.

Like I knew what I was doing

Every couple of days I’m trying to devote a few minutes, a quest or two, an auction house scan, something to my little night elf warrior.

If you don’t remember, he’s a copy of my first WoW character – sort of an apology for how much of a noob I was and an attempt to set things right.

It’s amazing that I remember as much as I do from the night elf starting area, I haven’t leveled anyone through it in something like a year or more…

He’s level 13 now – and has 13 gold, all from scratch.

According to the statistics page, I haven’t died yet and I can’t recall being a wisp in a very, very long time so I think it might be correct.