Deep Rabbit Hole

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What is funny is that my weekend is not really going to shock anyone who has been reading my blog lately…  but it actually shocks me.  I would have thought that this recent obsession with World of Warcraft would have worked its way out of my system just as soon as I reached my goal.  My Orc Deathknight is 110 and rocking gear enough to bring him to 872 which makes the character my second best geared.  Instead of detaching when I reached my goal, or shifting to a brand new product…  I find myself spending more and more time on him.  Right now its the only the second alt that managed to get a hidden artifact appearance, and the only alt so far that has managed to get a legendary.  I am still shocked at just how fast the catch up mechanics can pull you up in the game.  Functionally if I manage to get a second legendary that will put me in contention for item level with Belghast my main.  I think what has helped is just how fun Unholy feels right now.  It is hard to quantify exactly what I like about it… but in part it is a high survival dps build that I can run around doing stuff with.  Back in the day when I first fell in love with my Death Knight it was thanks to the insane damage/survival combination that blood was.  Unholy sort of brings that same thing to the table with the side benefit of having the artifact weapon summon a mini army of the dead every minute or so.

The only negative however is that right now Blood feels horrible, so I don’t really have a tanking option that I enjoy.  I need to sit down and do some more research because I keep thinking that surely I am just playing it wrong.  It feels insanely squishy, and my ability to regen back health also seems way less than I am used to from blood.  In fact right now my Unholy feels way more stable and survivable than Blood… which should be the be all end all of tanky goodness…  or at least it used to be.  At this moment I have both my Unholy and Blood weapon fully unlocked to Broken Shore levels, and both have a decent assortment of relics in them to buff the item level.  Whatever the case though when I choose to play Blood I find myself barely surviving elites…  whereas with Unholy I can rip through them without seeing my health drop significantly.  If I have any blood players among my readers…  I am wondering what am I missing?  What is the ability that makes them playable as tanks?  Going up through the ranks on my DPS characters I have ended up with a bunch of DK tanks… and they all seemed squishy.  I just assumed it was “pug tank” that was the problem and not the class itself, but I am super hoping I am simply just not prioritizing the right abilities or something like that.  Going to spend some time doing research, because I really would love to have a viable tank option horde side that I actually enjoy playing.  Last expansion my “horde main” was my Tauren Paladin… and Paladin tanking is about as exciting for me as watching paint dry.

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The other thing that I discovered this weekend is an addon thanks to my friend Giulietta.  For awhile now I have already been drifting deep into the Rabbit Hole on Transmog farming trips, but largely in a haphazard and uncoordinated manner.  While hanging out after the raid on Friday, a very sleepy Giu and I got to talking about farming warrior appearance gear and then he shared with me the addon that he has been using.  Functionally m0nAr’s Wardrobe Helper keeps track of everything you have appearance wise from all of the places in the world where you can obtain it.  So for example in the screenshot above I selected Normal mode Scarlet halls… and it shows that I have an Axe that I have not collected the appearance for off of Armsmaster Harlan.  I also noticed this morning that you can pop out a handy mini list to drag somewhere on your screen while you are running the place to keep track of what you are still missing.  While it is not showing it on this screenshot because I have not been farming anything in the Deathknight…  out beside each of the instances it also keeps track of your lockout so you can at a glance see what is and is not open for you to farm.  As a result of this addon I started focusing on the Burning Crusade era instances last night, and I gotta say… seeing the text come across my screen saying I collected a new appearance makes me super happy.  The only problem is… this is a super deep hole that I could be finding myself in… because the addon also gives you completion scores for how much of a given expansion or instance you hav collected.  Giu is already on the road to madness that is trying to hit 100%…  and sadly I am finding myself trailing along behind him willingly.

Lastly… because I decided to start doing this on Monday’s here is this weekends AggroChat podcast.  There may or may not be a part where I cry/sing the first line to the theme for Vernoica Mars.

Topics Discussed:

  • Destiny: Personality Changes in Taken King
  • Stormblood Changes
  • World of Warcraft
  • Deathknight Madness
  • Elder Scrolls Legends
  • Magikarp Jump