A Little Update

Change is still coming, but as February is always a rough month for me, I've been slow about getting there.

I have a life! Somewhere.

After taking a weekend off from the game to binge on a bit of Dragon Age: Origins/Awakenings and Dragon Age II, I went back into the game with renewed energy.  First up, I finished out the first part of Wraithion's legendary questing and am now in the process of collecting 6,000 valor points.  As I doubt I will hit the valor cap each week, it will probably take me a little more than the minimum six weeks to accomplish this part of the quest.  However, this is still progress where there was nothing before.

Other accomplishments include getting my hunter to level 90, which also netted me the Quintessential Quintet achievement and made me question the sanity of trying to keep up with this many alts in Mists of Pandaria, an expansion that is not very alt-friendly.

The day after hitting 90, I spent a bit of time on him tracking down a couple of rare tames that had caught my eye: Hexapos and Portent.  Portent I was thinking would take some time to get the color I wanted (purple), but lo and behold, I lucked out the first time I found him, and only within 10 minutes of telling guildies I was hunting him down.  (I can feel the envy from some of you all the way over here.  To quote the Sha of Anger: "Yes, feed me your rage!"  If it comforts you, know that on my main, I don't have near this much luck.)

Named Bruiser because he's purple, like a bruise.

I named him Flappy.

After the excitement of a taking a newly minted 90 through heroics in mostly greens, I switched back to my main to join some guild members in my first ever challenge mode dungeon.  We managed to get bronze on Scarlet Monastery, and then went on to do...not so well on Scarlet Halls.  However, for being new to this whole challenge mode thing, we did really well and we learned quite a lot about what we'll need to do for next time.

Speaking of my guild, we're still looking for a DPS to round out our raid team.  If you're interested and are Horde-side on Wyrmrest Accord/are willing to transfer to a new home if things work out, check out the website to review the application process.  I'll go ahead and vouch for the guild leaders/raid leaders and say the whole guild is filled with some pretty impressive folks  Also, our Mumble conversations never fail to leave me in stitches, which can be a good or bad thing when we're raiding our running heroics/challenge modes.

Here in a bit, I'm going to start work on a post all about 5.2, which drops today.  As my main is a Warlock, you know I'm going to have quite a bit to talk about after I try things out tonight.

Minor Personal Update (I'm an Over Achiever)

Okay, I admit it, in middle and high school I was one of the nerdy kids who was always on the honor roll.  If there was an academic award, chances are I earned it.  I wasn't exactly Valedictorian (the person who was wound up going to Carnegie Melon so I had some serious competition), but I was still the sort of person other kids loved to hate because teachers loved me and I could ace a test without really trying.

I tell you all this because right now I'm going back through some of the older content and earning some achievements.  This morning, for example, I got my Classic Raider achievement, and once I run the Occulus I'll have my Champion of the Frozen Wastes title.  I'm only missing three dungeons for the Burning Crusade dungeon achievement, and along the way I've knocked a few other little achievements too.  And while all of this has been fairly easy at level 90 with 477 ilevel gear along with full gems and enchants, I've also been feeling rather accomplished and realizing just how much I love my warlock.  She's a power house and I constantly surprise and impress myself with how much I've improved since I took my first tentative steps into raiding only a little over one year ago.

I am not, as of yet, raiding regularly.  I force myself to do Raid Finder on occasion (when I feel I can handle the trolls), and I've got my shaman up to level 90 and am trying to get her geared enough to heal Mogu'shan Vaults, but that's slow going.  I plan to start seriously looking for a regular pug or some other group for my warlock and will save my shaman for my guild as they need healers and, thanks to Vuh'Do, I'm not too shabby at shaman heals.  My main goal for this expansion is to actually get into some heroic raiding on my warlock, but finding a group that's a good fit is going to be tough, especially for someone who's "just" DPS.  My hope is that I can make a great impression and that people will want to keep me around in spite of my bad jokes over Vent/Mumble.

Until then, however, I'm going to content myself with going back and getting ALL THE ACHIEVEMENTS, and if anyone out there wants to start working on some dungeon/raiding achievements from previous expansions (or even the current expansion!), poke me via Twitter @CasualFolami.  (Horde side only for now, but my paladin is almost level 90 and while I don't feel comfortable doing current dungeon/raid content on her, I wouldn't turn down the opportunity to do old school stuff.)