I made a quick update to the Soloer's Pre-Heroic Gear Guide today to include a bit of 4.2 information. The Chest of Forgetfulness is off. Those 2200 JPs are better spent on the Tier 11 chest. Pretty much all the changes I made are below. I still need to add the 4.2 Firelands grind currency options.
Just quickly, the Jal update: More Firelands grinding while waiting for LFG PUGs. I've gotten in Vortex Pinnacle and The Stonecore that I haven't run before. And after a bit of a sales war between three sellers of the Chestguard of Nature's Wrath(I canceled, dropped price, and relisted twice), I managed to clear 4090g on the AH. Picture above. Four more times and I can buy new bracers. ;^D
As Lissanna says, and then there were bracers. The Smolderskull Bindings are new in 4.2, and are actually 1250 Valor Point items. But they're BoE. I think you're better served by saving Valor Points once you earn them for Tier 12 gear. And when you're pre-Heroic, you can't get Valor Points anyway. The price is so high I considered keeping these off, but some folk are so good crafting or have access via guilds or mains that it's good to keep them in mind.
You've already run Hyjal and gotten good rep just with the quests. That bagged the Aessina Blessed Gloves I mentioned before. With 4.2, you can quickly pick up an ilvl 365 neck for under 90g if you've finished Hyjal and enter the Firelands. It takes a few more Marks of the World Tree to enter the Firelands proper, but it's a minor grind. There are more rewards for grinding Firelands that I'll be adding shortly, but they take 31+ days to unlock, which is insane. Tol Barad-like, but grindier.
With the addition of Tier 11 to the list of Justice Point gear in 4.2, this list gets lots longer. I'm going to remove my recommendation for the Chestguard of Forgetfulness and replace that with Stormrider's Vestment. That's a no-brainer. The same JP cost for a 359 ilvl with the possibility of tier bonuses instead of 346 is obvious.
At the same time, note that you only get 140 Justice Points per normal Cata dungeon. Getting everything on this list means you're running 59 normal dungeons. That's a lot, obviously. And you don't need all of this gear to be geared for Heroic, which is a change with 4.2. You're easily overgeared, if only slightly. So let's get the Vestment and Cluster (still the best head pre-Heroic). Then if you've got a one-handed weapon, go with Apple-Bent Bough. If not, save for the Stormrider's Leggings. Why? Because when you go Heroic, you'll want the lower price Tier 12 Valor Point gloves first, I think. Honestly, if you've got the Furious Kilt from the AH or farming, you could potentially skip the legs here.
Ultimately it's up to you. Just know if you gloves for the T11 two-piece bonus that you might replace those pretty quickly once you're in Heroics.
Well, 4.2 is out. I've played a bit -- all on the MacBook -- and it's, well, interesting. It's not so much PvE end game for soloers as much as a minimally interactive movie so far. Sure, I've gotten lazy and dropped two healing pots, but there's really zero strategy and lots of mob clean up stuck between cut scenes. Even though the cut scenes, like the one where Thrall is taken away, are meant to pull you out of the millions of PCs running around HyJal right now and thrust you into what briefly looks like a position of singular fame and power, the facade drops away so quickly once the cutscenes are done that Blizzard'd be better off leaving them out entirely. It'd be better to treat you as what you are -- one of thousands attempting to fight the same thing.
The touch-and-tally quests (instead of "Kill X of Y" we have "Damage X of Y before someone else is done with them") really undercut their difficulty and feeling of accomplishment. I feel like I'm marking time.
In order to begin your new adventure, simply pick up the starter quest from any of the new adventure boards located in a major city. This will send you out to Sanctuary of Malorne in Hyjal where the druids are under attack. After the initial quest chain, you'll gain access to three daily quests. It takes 20 Marks of the World Tree to open the next stage, which requires three days' worth of questing to get.
After those minimum three days, you've got "at least 10 days" before you can move from the first group of Firelands dailies to "unlock either the Druids of the Talon or the Shadow Warden" who offer you yet more quests that apparently take at least seven days to complete. After that, "you will open up three new quests that will finally net you the rewards that you've been after. Each of these quests require 125 Marks in order to open, which will take you 6 days or so in order to reach."
So, to sum, "From start to finish, it will take you around 36 days, 35 at a minimum, in order to unlock everything." Wow, indeed. If the quests don't get a heck of a lot more enjoyable, and soon, this will redefine the meaning of "grind". If Blizzard loses many more subscribers in a month than they gained from folks coming back, I wouldn't be surprised in the least.
If you were wondering about soloing Upper Blackrock Spire (UBRS) at 85, it's straightforward and easy. You can honestly DPS (lots of Starfall and Hurricane) your way through the whole thing like a demigod, no problem. Lots of runecloth and rugged leather if you've got too much time on your hands.
The only pain is the amount of time it takes to beat the Rend Blackhand waves in the Coliseum or whatever. Hint: Don't walk through the big gate. It makes it easier to kill all the mobs quickly (they spawn immediately), but if you watch some of the dopes walk into the coliseum proper, the gate eventually closes back on you. Rend declares victory, and you have to hearth out.
I remember trying to sneak in via the balcony with a guildie back when we weren't quite level appropriate and waxing a few orcs before deciding to sneak on back out.
If you're not familiar with BRS, there's a good YouTube video that WoWwiki links.
In any event, after two tries on The Beast, that's a good +10 skinning now. The bad is that it's another spot in the bag even though it's a skinning knife; I still need the Gnomish Army Knife for its flint & tender. The good is that it'll live in the leatherworking bag... as will the army knife, it turns out. If that's not a change, I've been a dope for years.
Okay, I took a look through Shifting Perspective's gear list, which nostalgeek suggested last time. It's a good list, though much is from heroic dungeons, which is probably beyond my part-time gatherer status.
There are many things that are easy enough to grab, though. I'm going to cut and paste a hacked version of the Shifting Perspectives list here which includes helm, neck, shoulders, chest, wrists, hands, and belt. I figured that was enough to start.
Much of the commentary is Caraway's (the post's author). I mark mine with -P. I've cut tons, though, so go "RTFA" (where F=Fabulous, I guess) for the rest of the info.
For your helm, the best choice to go for is honestly the Cluster of Stars. .... If you don't have enough to get it quite yet, then I would at least queue up to run normal Halls of Reorigination at least once so you can get the helm from a quest you'll find there.
The quest reward from Uldum (note: This is apparently a really easy quest - P) is going to be the best chest that you can really get until you start heroics or purchase the JP one.
(Note that these are BoE and can be purchased on the Auction House! -P EDIT: WoWhead lists these as BoP and the comments seem to support that. Shifting Perspectives seems to have gotten that wrong. -P)
To be perfectly honest, there isn't much reason to not go for the rep reward gloves, especially considering that you can reach revered merely by completing all of the quests in Hyjal. ...
(The Lightning Lash is apparently about equal to the Wildhammer rep item, with some arguing its gem slot makes it BiS pre-raid. -P)
I'm honestly not even going to bother listing any other belts out there, because nothing compares to this belt at all. ...
Two things jump out. 1.) I should've already gotten the Aessina-Blessed Gloves but I haven't. I've finished HyJal, so I should be revered, it appears (green, above).
2.) Three of these items (and four on the whole list) are based on Wildhammer rep (yellow, above). Guess where I'm farming next?
3.) Okay, three. Wrap of the Fallen City seems easy to get iff you've done Uldum. I started there, but quickly went Highlands. I can't tell how many of these questlines you need to do, but it appears to require a few. I might not be pulling in the Wrap.
I'll admit that I'm miffed that none of this is Leatherworking craftable. /sigh There's some debate on wowhead on if the Chestguard of Nature's Fury is worth a rip or not. The Lightning Lash is apparently about equal to the Wildhammer rep item, with some arguing its gem slot makes it BiS pre-raid.
I'll add some of that and do more research.
One final bit: It looks like you might need a Finkle's Skinner to skin some bosses. It looks like The Beast is soloable now. Here's one guide. I really shoulda gotten this years ago. I'm also going to need some Pristine Hide if I'm going to craft the chestpiece instead of going to Uldum.
With the Razer Naga, I've already added several spells into the PvE rotation, though I haven't done any of the requisite mathes. Solar Beam-ing a spell casting mob, causing them to charge you, followed by a Typhoon, is a fun way to aggravate mobs and keep damage down. But I Googled around a bit to see if anyone has The Right Way to rotate these spells I've now got at my thumb-tip.
This is a compendium of information on raiding as a Balance Druid. It contains everything a beginner needs to achieve basic competence at raid DPS, as well more detailed discussion for people more interested in understanding the theory or more advanced play. The article is supplemented by the attached spreadsheet.
I haven't mathed up Starsurge, but I think it's to your advantage to cast even in the midst of an eclipse, something Jerks seems to agree with, though it's written just ambiguously enough I won't swear to it.
Casting Starfall during Lunar isn't something I'd considered closely enough. Good point.
EDIT: For some reason, I conflated Thorns and Roots, below. Honestly, I've completely forgotten about Thorns. In the Recruit-a-friend, I'm playing with a druid who is Thorning, and I caught the mistake. I should throw it onto the Naga rotation.
I may be underutilizing Thorns, which, since it doesn't set up melee mobs for Wrath-spams any more, has fallen off of my rotation in PvE almost entirely. Jerks suggests it does enough dps to keep it up. From outdoor only to ubiquitous use to nothing, it's been a real pain to keep up with Thorns. I'm also likely underusing Insect Swarm. I only use it and Faerie Fire for long fights in instances, though Jerks would have me believe that I should keep IS and scrap FF almost entirely -- "Faerie Fire: We no longer need to use this unless the raid is missing an Armor debuff." /shrug
Honestly, though, this is the sort of stuff that kills the enjoyment for part-timers like me, yet I'm just math-inclined enough (and efficiency worried) that I keep getting drawn back in. There's probably also a small tinge of worry that a PUG might get upset that I'm not using my skillz The Right Way. I don't know why. I've never been called out for not putting out enough dps.
And, honestly, for PvE, the fights are too short for maxing DPS and Innverate too good at keeping you at max mana for much to matter, afaict. Fire and forget.
In any event, Jerks' is a good guide, and the Naga really does change the way I play.
As any astute/obsessive screenshot studier can tell, after years of 2 is Starfire, 3 is Wrath, 4 is Healing Touch, and 5 is Moonfire, I've finally given in and changed. I've slowly been moving stuff around, adding Starfall, Insect Swarm, and Forces of Nature to the main action bar, and occasionally now swapping Travel Form (great for PvE escapes) with Moonbeam or whatever it is that silences folk. The new Eclipse dynamic plus the addition of Hurricane, Innervate, and Moonbeam to my situational rotation finally required an Action Bar rethink.
The Main action bar now has Starsurge at 2. Though the mouseover doesn't say what the dmg is, it's a lot. I haven't bothered with mathes, but I use Starsurge whenever it hits cooldown. It's my lead pulling shot the way Starfire used to be. Starfire used to be the choice because it had greater range than Wrath and because its slow casting speed didn't matter for the first shot. Now Starsurge's cooldown plus insane damage says it's the new "2".
3 stays Wrath. I wish I could force Eclipse to start off going Lunar, as I still want to smash 3 after 2, but for me, Starsurge seems to always give me 15 towards Lunar the first time through. Perhaps I should swap Starfire and Wrath so that 3 is Starfire, but I also like knowing 3 represents Wrath's speed. Anyhow....
Note: Actually 3 and 5 are macros that proc my spellpower trinkets and then cast Wrath or Starfire. This is an absolute must, folks. Macro-ing trinkets is the easiest dps upgrade there is.
4 is now Moonfire, which throws me off a little. I accidentally hit 5 off and on for a few hours. The muscle memory is scary. But the move down makes it easier to think of [towards] Solar at 5, [towards] Lunar at 3, with both dancing around 4 as it fades.
5 is, duh, Starfire. I hate having three keys spent where I used to have two for the same purposes, but I'm getting used to it. It has pushed me to reconfigure more keys, however (see below).
I'm debating permanently swapping 8 from travel form to moonbeam (?), and have tried it out a few times, as silencing folk looks cool and has its practical side. I just use travel form so often -- running from the bank to AH, eg -- that it's hard to take off of the main bar.
Before now I, admittedly, moused everything else. I had a few more bars set up, like Shift-4 for when I needed to go healz for an extended period of time (see? Healing touch was 4 on my main bar, originally, and Shift-4 is a bar full o' healing), but I've broken down and set up my Num Pad for the left action bar above the main. It's mostly in order of the picture, above. Heals are 4-6 to keep with the 4 theme. 1-3 are aggressive. 0 is to pop Tranquility in a 5-man emergency, which happens more than I'd like. (Anyone notice that they were doing more off-healing right before Cat? I'm thinking lots of Priests were alts.) + is to take a healing pot.
I'm eying the Razer Naga to make this all even easier, moving those num pad selections to the right hand, keeping the movement, esp strafing, easier to reach with the left. I might eventually end up swapping the main action bar to the mouse instead. Can't tell what would be best.
So my only "heady" point here is to say to people who think real-world cash doesn't influence virtual world performance, even beyond the ability to buy the game and expansions, beyond buying net access, and beyond the computer's hardware so that you can see more than 14 fps, we can drill all the way down to a $70 mouse allowing you to access more spells quickly and efficiently. It's a one-dollar one-vote system for everything past Angband, I think.
I've been overwhelmed with emblems, obviously. Today's Googling popped up a post over at Gray Matter from about a week and a half ago, however, that nearly ends the trouble. It's a list of 'kin raiding gear, ranked by what Graylo thinks is the appropriate DPS for each piece.
Now I realize he says...
This list is a tool, not a blue print for how to gear. I’ve never intended these lists to be the definitive guide on how to gear a raiding moonkin.
... and I get it. But I just don't have the time to do this right. Let's cherry pick from the excellent research and posting Graylo and Cowtarus have done to see what direction a part-timer should go with their emblems.
So though he says not to, I'm going to pretend that Graylo's lists are hierarchical BiS lists (BiS, I've learned, meaning "Best in Slot") so that I can save some time. I really don't have the energy to figure out how close to accurate he is. He's done better than I could by miles and miles, and I'm happy enough as is.
I'm taking Graylo's list and only including items that fit one of these "part-timer accessible" categories.
Bought with emblems that you can grab from 5-man dungeons.
Craftables that aren't BoC (ie, items you could find in the AH)
Fall from a 5-man instance, heroic or normal.
Rep rewards (though I think the ICC (Icecrown Citadel) rep is beyond us).
The Kirin Tor will sell it to you for enough gold to buy most of Shattrath.
EoT items are in bold. I'll try to clean up the html at some point.
This is an interesting slot, as Graylo explains that if you can get this to drop, from the top of the list, that you, as a boomkin, shouldn't have too much competition for the piece. Bad in that there's nothing on this list that's from EoT or EoF. The Bejeweled Bracers look like about it, as I think you could swipe a crafted pair from the AH.
There's also limited evidence that you can bag the Bracers for playing Bejeweled, or at could at one point (man, that'd be nice, but I don't see it corroborated anywhere). Note also that the mats for those gloves require 60 EoT themselves! (15 EoT times four Crusader Orbs).
Disclaimer: I urge you to view the trinkets with some level of skepticism. A lot of the trinkets have proc with unknown rates and cooldowns. Additionally, the trinkets that proc mobs to fight for you are hard to evaluate.
Fun to see that I've already got the Blood Boil Lancet. I'm on the list!
Idol
From Graylo:
At this point you should only be thinking about two idols. The [Idol of Lunar Eclipse] is the best and it is purchasable with Emblems of Frost. However, you may be saving your Emblems for your Tier Set or another item. In such a case you should at least have the [Idol of Lunar Fury]. It is purchase able with Emblems of Triumph. Since it is incredibly easy to farm EoTs at the moment, using anything less then the Idol of Lunar Fury is pretty stupid.
Wow. Graylo's list is wonderful. And I'm also able to quit irrationally leaving out slots that I usually ignore, like rings and trinkets. So now I'm not so interested in shoulders and gloves anymore -- those are the only things I could even get enough EoF to grab at the rate I'm going. They're tabled. Although the following back item:
... is probably the first thing to grab with Frost. It's the only cloak on Graylo's list that fits part-timer accessible gear.
After some thinking, I'm down to a ring or a helm. Here's the comparison. The order shouldn't matter too much; it's the same number of emblems (duh) no matter what I buy first. Since I already have 43, the question is if I'd rather have neither for three days, max, or the ring for those three extra days and the helm later.
Ring gives me 58 Int, 39 Sta, 50 Spi, 50 Haste (1.52%), and 56 Spell Power over what I have now for 35 emblems. The helm gives me 92 Int, 56 Sta, 313 Armor, 13 Crit (0.28%), 72 Hit (2.2%), 31 Spell Power, and 1 Socket over what I have now for 50 EoTs.
I'm tempted to go helm. 92x15 mana is nice, and that's 34x15 more mana than the ring. Extra hit, a little crit, and armor is also nice. Downside is minus 15 spell power and a little haste. Yeah, I think I go helm (though I should've given idols more thought).
What a waste of time. Sheesh. How can this possibly be fun?! ;^)
Well, I"ve run a few more runs, and am up to 43 Emblems of Triumph, with two more pretty easily within reach after a run today. It's pretty much time to buy.
Here's my only question: Without WoWHead, WoW Wiki, or Thottbot, how was I supposed to figure out all the different choices for the emblems? That is, where is the in-game primer on emblems and gear? Because boy, I missed with my first swipe. Now that everyone's getting emblems thrown at them for logging on, it might be useful to include some info on them.
First, there's not just one person selling gear for emblems, there are, count 'em, at least three, and at least two are selling completely different stuff.
And one in Dalaran (the only one I'd found previously): Arcanist Miluria
And then some of these are Horde folk, and some are Alliance. Some items require battleground ratings. Some don't. Some are part of T9 and others are more expensive (and more powerful, if you don't plan to hit tier bonuses).
In any event, the state of things for n00bs like me sux0rz. I really don't have the time to sort through all this crap, and my social guild doesn't have another boomkin to give me their quick recommendation. I mean, heck, after looking through last night, my best bet appears to be to bag a ring or two. My current ring gear stinks too. But then I'll never grab even a 2t9 bonus.
Lets just say that there are options for gear upgrades that are much cheaper than I thought before, and there's no place that I've stumbled over yet that clearly explains the druid options for those who are only planning to earn enough EoTs to grab one or two pieces. /sigh
In other news, I've upgraded a few Cloth purples for Leather, got a Core Hound Pup in the mail, though I'm not sure why, ran Grundak (Heroic), and become Exalted with Sons of Hodir -- first exalted rep for Jal. Time to find another grind for my spare time.
I've been doing enough PUGging recently to be exposed to emblems. At my last post, about a week ago, I had a gear score of around 2970. A day later, it was about a hundred points more (actually, I can piece stuff from my panzer set with my boomkin and get to about 3300, but the hybrid set really isn't good for anything else; it's neither highest melee/dmg mit or highest dps). I haven't done much for my gear since then, but I have been banging out Emblems of Frost and, surprisingly to me, Emblems of Triumph with regularity. I thought once a new emblem came out, everything else was deprecated. Not true. Two emblems (Frost and Triumph, duh) are still active, giving you ins for T9 and T10 gear.
WowWiki has a pretty good graphic describing what's going on. Click the image below to see the original version, contributed by WowWiki user ShandrisForever.
The bottom line is that you can get two Emblems of Frost per day just by running a random heroic. I'm a little torn on ethics here, as I'm often the least geared schmoe in my xserver PUGs. Still, I'm putting out 1st or 2nd place dps per run, with just a little trouble from oom drinking between trash at times. That 1st or 2nd place is with the time outs for drinks, however, so I still don't feel horrible. If you're new to Heroics, don't feel bad. At a GS of 3000, I'm still contributing as a boomkin.
I'm up from 15 to 25 Emblems of Triumph somehow. You get them for running Onyxia, Ulduar bosses, Malygos, and LK heroic bosses, according to the guide linked above. It looks like I've run Drak'Tharon, Culling of Strath, Violet Hold, and Azjol-Nerub on Heroic now and a few more on standard. /shrug Running extra random heroics also bag Triumphs. (We kid because we love, Hasselhoff.)
So now that I know that my Emblems of Triumph aren't deprecated, and now that I know that I'm racking up Emblems of Triumph pretty danged quickly without really trying, I've tried to take into account what I'm currently wearing and figure out how to best upgrade to T9 and T10 pieces. There are two T10 pieces for 60 Emblems of Frost. If we want to pretend I'll eventually spend mine on anything, I have to target one of those, so I'm looking at shoulder or hands.
Let's also dismiss the mid and heroic levels of tiered gear. These mid and heroic levels of gear, btw, are where the Trophy of the Crusade (etc), a raid reward, comes into play. There seem to be three levels of each tier of gear -- base, mid, and heroic. That is, there are T9 low, T9 mid, and T9 heroic gear sets. Likewise, there are T10 low, T10 mid, and T10 heroic gear sets too. You might also see these called T9, T9.25, and T9.50 (or T10, T25.10, etc) because of their raid requirements. T10 means the lowest level, that require only emblems. T10.25 means you needed the Trophy From a 25 man raid. T10.50 means a heroic trophy is needed.
No matter which level of tier 9 is worn, all pieces count towards the same set bonuses, much like in earlier tiers of gear. Each faction has their own flavor of the items, they are functionally identical, but have different artwork and names.
Item level 245 pieces require 1.5 time as much Emblems of Triumph as the Item level 232 pieces require and they also require, in addition to the emblems, a [Trophy of the Crusade]. [that's T9 mid -Panzer].
Item level 258 pieces are, however, "purchased" with the normal loot tokens. [that's T9 heroic. Emblems are no good there. Enjoy. -Panzer]
I'm going to have a hard enough time collecting emblems for the lowest level of tiered gear. At least if we go pro soon, the WoW Wiki quote, above, says that our lowest level tiered gear will still contribute to set bonuses. I also think that you can upgrade your pieces with trophies (etc) later on, meaning that you're not wasting any time buying them now, though I'm not absolutely sure I have that right. But come on, the next expansion will be out before we get too far into piecing together a set, and then quest rewards will overpower the tiers if they pull another BC (which most say they aren't, but allow me the vent here anyway)!
Bottom line is that if you're a part-timer, I'll pretend you're not planning for raid rewards yet either. So let's go back to looking at T9 and T10 (lowest level of each) shoulder and hand gear, and compare to my current gear.
So here's the comparison. (The danged table scrolls under my blogger template here, even when I use obnoxiously small fonts. Click the previous link to see the whole thing. I'm sure the html issue is some z-value deal in CSS or some such, but I'm not tracking it down now.)
3 Int 257 Armor 44 Crit (0.96%) 44 Hit (1.34%) 16 Spell Power
35 Haste (1.07%)
1 Int 44 Sta 51 Spi 281 Armor 60 Resilience (0.73%) 34 Spell Power 1 Sockets
1 Int 44 Sta 39 Spi 207 Armor 47 Resilience (0.57%) 34 Spell Power 1 Sockets
37 Int 23 Sta 311 Armor 71 Crit (1.55%) 63 Haste (1.92%) 54 Spell Power 1 Sockets
37 Int 23 Sta 232 Armor 71 Crit (1.55%) 63 Hit (1.92%) 54 Spell Power 1 Sockets
TL:DR
Let's not kid ourselves. I just wasted a ton of time. But let's try to gain from the time I wasted and share it amongst ourselves, right? If we're running cross-server pick up groups (xserver PUGs), we're going to get a ton of emblems. If we don't play WoW all that much, we're only going to be able to target a few pieces with those emblems we do collect. What I've somewhat randomly tried to do is select the lowest hanging fruit with respect to armor. For now, I'm ignoring idols, though this same work helps us decide what to do there, too.
The first lesson is that a single piece of T10 isn't that much better than T9. Bizarre. So throw out T10 for now, though don't spend the Emblems of Frost as Emblems of Triumph (but if you're so inclined, you can find out how to downgrade your Frost emblems for Emblems of Triumph here). Also, the shoulders and hands for T9 (and the two for T10) are about the same within the tiers. That is, it's not like the T9 shoulder stats have it all over the T9 gloves, or vice versa. This means I should check out what's worse with my current gear, the shoulders or hands, and replace situationally.
For me, my gloves should stink -- though, honestly, comparing like this there's isn't nearly the separation between my current blue gloves and current purple shoulders that I expected. Other than armor (and the gloves are cloth, after all), their stats are very close. The shoulders give hit and crit and give up only haste, though, so I'll pretend I know what I'm doing and keep those. So we'll start saving up 25 more Emblems of Triumph (50 total) for the [Furious Gladiator's Kodohide Gloves].
By the time I have 50 Emblems of Triumph, I suppose I'll have a few more Frosts. I'm not sure the [Idol of the Lunar Eclipse] at 30 Frosts is all that much better than 25 Triumphs for [Idol of the Lunar Fury], however. It might be worth planning to hang onto the Frosts indefinitely, with the possibility of getting more definite after I grab my first T9 set piece. Perhaps I'll start shooting for the Triumph Idol and add some T10 shoulders?
Postscript
Anybody else get the feeling that this game is too difficult to figure out? Seriously, and this is going to be the topic of a future post, I could have easily made about $100 contracting (I do database admin and design) in the time it took to research this, much less the time it takes to gather the emblems, etc. It's amazing how much like programming WoW research and gear pursuit is at times.
Oh yeah. Happy New Year. ;^) As Gene says, our favorite holiday remains "Another Day Above Ground Day."
Took a few days off during the week for RL, but played a bit last night. Got 77 right at the moment in the quest line where you unexpectedly go from friendly with the Frenzyheart to Hostile, and vice versa with The Oracles. Laser Chicken's rep list has two items from each faction worth pursuing, but the real benefits seem to be getting the Mercenary of Sholazar achievement and grabbing the Mysterious Eggs which reportedly have a 4-8% chance of turning into a Green Proto-Drake. Which reminds me that I might should have saved my 1000g for Cold Weather Flying rather than spent it on dual-speccing, which I haven't done yet. 77 is the level where flying's back in Northrend.
You can switch back and forth between Frenzyheart and the Oracles, but I'm probably going to rep up just the Oracles so I can start waiting a week for each egg to hatch. And I'm going to have to start saving up for flying too, I suppose. Time to finally grab Auctioneer again and bring the bank character back online.
Let me add that the questline is hella easy. I'm not impressed. Fun, but waaaaaaay too easy.
One quick note: The Frenzyheart/Oracle questline sure ain't PC, is it? You start by whacking gorillas (not that I didn't whack scores in STV for leather), later poke baby gorillas with sticks until the mother shows up ("Run away dumb softknuckle! We gonna poke you more!") -- so that you can kill her!, and then kill Oracles, proverbial sentient beings, for no good reason. You're a "slave" the entire time, and then the Oracles are dumb enough to turn on a dime and friend you after you've been murdering them. Compare this with the werewolf line where the werewolf clan has you, what, go to capture an orc and dismember it, but you're stopped by some girl before you do it. Blizzard seems to be having a good deal of fun with the people who quickly click, "Accept" and click talk bubbles without reading, but they're also putting grinders and completionist through some questionable lines for no good reason.
Not arguing it makes everything okay, but the Frenzyheart text cracked me up a few times.
"Dajik the Wasp Hunter says: I placed most of the spikes. Good amount of pointiness I think. You like?" "Dajik the Wasp Hunter says: Dajik's last learner eaten by sand-thing. We do better this time though!" "Dajik the Wasp Hunter says: You do okay enough with that one. Just okay." "Dajik the Wasp Hunter says: Oh! Dajik has idea! Make chicken sounds and maybe they come to you!" "Dajik the Wasp Hunter says: In case you wonder, wasp sting not feel so good. No need to try."
