Holy Flying Ziggernauts, Batman!

First Strike went 5/9 in Black Temple this past Friday, with two of those being new bosses (Teron and Bloodboil). We're going back in to hopefully see the rest of 'em die tonight, but it's pure progression now, so it'll be fun. Even if we see no phat lootz.

But phat lootz we saw! Legionkiller is now ours, with a shiny crit scope slapped on top. This has to be the best looking crossbow in the game, and now it's mine. Bwahaha!

But now, I have Scourge to kill for Argent Dawn rep. I want that tabard and it's acheivement. And besides, it's fun.

/target Xanthelei, /cast Revive

Well, now that our skies are blue once more, it's about time to get back to blogging! I have been busy while I was silent, so I'll start with what's new in the Draenei realms.

Firstly, I have added a new blog to my blogroll (as well as renamed it from "Blogroll"). Big Bear Butt has caught my attention, and even his non-WoW posts are hilarious. And since I'm leveling a resto Druid for PVP myself, it's fitting he's next to be added to my blogroll. I'm still looking for good blogs to read, so if you know of any, feel free to drop a comment and let me know!

Next, we move on to the Armory. Erikka, my Protection Paladin, is finally added, as is Ruinator, aforementioned Druid. I took the liberty of appending their titles, as well as updating Xanth's. This is my current "team" of played alts - more may or may not be added. Not pictured is my little Dwarf banker, Bankofxanth. Why? Because he has no roleplay potential, natch. (And I'm lazy.)

And finally, Gorilladin + Volley = more fun than monkeys in a barrel. Pun totally intended. So who are my pets now? Well, I have Alvar the Ghostsaber (of course!), Wailflash the Gorilladin, Origima the Wind Serpent, and Kaida the Warpstalker. Who's liable to return to the wild? Kaida and Origima, should I find a good reason to. I have one un-bought stable slot that is being saved for Rhino Bowling funtimes.

Ah, but now it's way past 11, the servers are likely up, and I must go have some leveling fun with my friend M. Or he might Charge poor Ruinator and beat him over the head with his shield.

Into the Wild Blue Yonder

Sorry the blog has been a bit quiet lately. Besides the fact that First Strike isn't doing much raiding right now, I've also found out that my satellite internet service, Wild Blue Communications, has a hidden clause that states "You have 12,000 MBs of downloads in any given 30 day period." (It resets to the last 30 days every day.) How much have I used? 12,115. So they've slowed us down to about 30-40% of the normal speed that we pay $70 a month for.

It takes a while just loading my own blog. =(

So, if I haven't been raiding, what have I been doing? I have messed around on the PTR a bit more, and am happy to see they've finally fixed the Beastial Wrath bug. For a few builds, having The Beast Within was a wasted talent point, as every time you used Beastial Wrath it would ONLY apply the pet buff. Your poor Hunter would stand there, watching his big red pet sadly as he himself was denied the joys of being big and red.

But that's fixed! So /cheer! Also fixed is Spirit Bond. It may take a while to register with the server, but it does now affect Mend Pet. I gave my L65 bear full Stamina and Rhino Blood, then had someone hit him a few times to see what MP would tick for. I got about 165 per tick, which isn't bad. Then I popped one of my unspent talent points (I have a habit of only taking the "duh" talents when on the PTR, so I can check various effects and such) into Spirit Bond and took him on the Dailies grind.

At first, I was disappointed, as I couldn't see any difference in the Mend Pet ticks. The tooltip also hadn't changed, so I figured it was a lost point in Spirit Bond and I should report the bug/misleading talent tooltip. About five minutes later, I noticed that MP was indeed ticking for more healing now - and probably had been for some time. So I dropped another point into SB to see if it would increase again, wrote down the new number, and continued on. About 3 mobs later, Mend Pet began giving 215 health per tick - much better at keeping my little bear alive against L70+ mobs!

On Live, I've been going into a collector's frenzy. I already have increased my mini-pet collection from about 5 unique/rare pets to, say, 14. I've listed out all the Horde-only pets, the grind-pets, the rep pets, etc. and do plan on getting all of the ones I can. Why? Because in about 8 days mini-pets will no longer take up bag space! Same with mounts - I've been grinding rep with the major Alliance factions for the racial mounts, and have actually bought all three L30 Stormwind horses. (Yes, I'm a nut, I want them all!)

Hmm. I'm going to need more gold. /plot