Go Mog Myself - Admiral's Hat

I was just reading Poneria's blog post about her taking pictures for her Go Mog Yourself post. On GMY, they have various authors posting about their current transmogrification projects and why they developed them. I've mentioned my little mog set for my PVP set, where I try to look less healie and more melee in bgs. This seems have had a decent effect in that usually I am left alone when defending a flag.

For my raid set, I wanted something completely different. I wanted to be able to plop into a dungeon or raid and know that I wasn't running the wrong set. It was skimming the auction house, that I spotted the Admiral's hat. I immediately bought it up and started working on a matching set.

Thematically, I am looking for:

Admiral's Hat

1. Strikingly different than my PVP set. Gown / dress ok
2. Blue with Gold accents to match the theme of the hat.
3. Regal looking. I looked and there isn't necessarily a set to go with the hat. Not going to wear the Pirate Shirt along with my Navy hat. 

With those basic thematic ideas, I started skimming the auction house and my tailoring patterns to see what I had. These are the visible items that I started off with:

• Head - Admiral's Hat - Tailoring pattern - vendor
• Chest - Royal Gown - Scholomance drop (found on AH)
• Back - Spidersilk Drape - Tailoring pattern, trainable
• Shoulders - Mystical Mantle - U'goro crater drop. I am not in love with these shoulders yet. I've tried a different model, but this one seems to fit the theme better. (see pic). 
• Belt - Serenity Belt - Blackrock drop 
• Hands - Brightcloth Gloves - Tailoring pattern, trainable

I don't worry about my legs, feet or wrists; they are not visible. I had mog'd my off-hand recently so that I wasn't carrying around a skull popcicle. The Shadow Council Orb has  a nice spell effect where a yellow sparkly spins around it. I think the blueish color with yellow glow is a nice effect. 

Overall, I am happy with the total outfit. I wish that it didn't crop off my pony-tail, but that is the hat's fault. It does create a wee bit of a stir when I first drop into a dungeon/raid as people check out the stats on the healer in iLevel 48 gear models. (Yes, I see you all targeting me in my Vudo panel. I'll pop a shield on you, just so you know, I know.)

Satchel of exotic wtf?

The other night I saw the call to arms healer popped. My arena partner just signed off and I was up for a little random adventure. Top it off, they were offering that big sack of promised goodies.

Sadly, the cataclysm heroic dungeon I got was zul'gurub. IMHO, one of the worst dungeons that could pop. I stuck with it until absolutely there was no more people in the party. 90g in repairs and nothing.

So, glutton for punishement, when it pops up again, I hop on. ZG again. Another crowd that has never done the dungeon. First boss, tank dies quickly but I manage for 5 minutes to keep a rogue alive as he kills the boss. "Cool! You two should do 2s arena." Had to laugh. We proceed through the dungeon at a fairly even pace. A few more wipes as people learn the fights.

Finish off the last boss, grab my satchel of goodies!! and then peek inside anticipating wonderous, glorious, treasures. Ok gold... 24gold!! AND 2 HEALING pots. Healer got 2 mythical healing pots. Same potion that any alchemist can make with 1 twilight jasmine. I was really expecting, I dunno, a pet, some cool weapon, maybe a vanity pair of socks. Nope, not even enough gold and goodies to pay for my repairs.

I am really not sure if the call is going to be heard again. I can get 150 valor without the bills.

23 fights and still no rating... :(

My arena team is just starting back up. We've had a tough time meeting up this season. He's East Coast, I am on West. I don't logon most nights til after 9PM, so an early midnight for him. 

We've managed to run 23 fights so far, but still no rating. The issue being, so far we get a lot of random fights. Sometimes it's less geared people, but often it's been better. The other night, we hit a run (6 times) of melee dps ( several dk/pally or pally/rogue). When they focus on me, in cloth, I am a goner and quick. No amount of shields, or druid cc's is going to keep me alive for long.  I remember one fight, just constantly dropping renew, and running to keep dispels off us. My main job was to keep Nine not cc'd down. 

Ninebreaker is really good, I'll have to say. I feel that I am riding along on his coat-tails this season. (Check out his body-builder transmog pvp set).

When we do get in the arena with pally's, I am now supposed to throw more Mass Dispel around. The plan is to clear off some protective buff they have.. He says the pally-angel(?) is a buff.. :)

Hope to catch up with him again later this week and get those last 2 wins. Then at least we'll have a rating and can correctly get placed with similar rated teams.

Getting on My PVP Pants

With the arena season starting up, I wanted an advantage. OK, It's probably not much, considering the addons available to announce your opponents, but anything has to help.

I transmogrified my chest piece into a shirt. This has the net effect of making this priest look like a melee class. I am hoping this provides me an additional second or two before those dreaded "healer must die" addons tag me.. ha ha

Over all, I was working towards an outfit of mostly black (or red). Torn between the ruby shades for the head piece, but settled on the archmage headband.

Ex of Ninja

• Ruthless Gladiator's Mooncloth Helm -> Archmage Headpiece
• Ruthless Gladiator's Mooncloth Mantle -> Archmage Mantle
• Vicious Gladiator's Drape of Meditation -> Spiked Chain Cloak 
• Ruthless Gladiator's Mooncloth Robe -> Demonweave Raiment
• Ruthless Gladiator's Cord of Meditation -> Mystic's Belt
• Vicious Gladiator's Mooncloth Pants -> Flame-Ascended Pantaloons (I liked the plates on the legs).
• Ruthless Gladiator's Energy Staff -> Tapered Staff 

12-19-2011

It sort of reminds me of the ninja outfit, except for missing the face mask. Maybe need to run some crypts? Nope, it's leather. and so is this and this. There's a fishing drop in Moonglade that is cloth, but it's blue.

I see on a RP site, that they made a ninja costume out of the Ebon Mask, which is leather, but a similar model, the Shadoweave mask (purple?) is cloth, and a tailoring item, but the pattern has been removed. One person in Guild has the pattern, so I'll check into the mats! :) Or the Outlanders Facewrap (red) which drops in Hellfire Peninsula and Hellfire Ramparts. I like the red as it goes decently with the red top.

Discouraging Valor, Encouraging PVP

4.3 is coming, and so are the currency changes. The biggest change that I see coming down the pipe is the PVP change to conquest points.

In patch 4.3 we’re changing the daily battleground (BG) to reward 100 conquest for a win (up from 25). In addition, every non-rated BG that you win will also give you 50 conquest. There is no limit to how many BGs you can run this way, up to the normal conquest cap [1350].

This means, gearing up a fresh 85, is going to favor PVP. 25 battlegrounds WINS later, and you could be sporting your first piece of iLevel 403 gear. ("Cataclysmic Gladiator" lol.. ) This sounds a lot easier than running   tons of pugs to get valor points, or even raiding end-game content in your greens..

Weekend Wrap-up

This weekend, happily was a great weekend for PVP. I ran around 10 BGs and we won about 8 of them. This brought in a good 1000 honor points, bringing my season total to 18000 (so far). The wins, also bought me 2 new pieces of gear (feet and back). Based on advice from my arena partner, I am buying items that I can enchant, before replacing my PVE gear. (i.e. back before trinket). So far, saved up 1150 conquest points towards the Ruthless belt (belt can be enchanted with a buckle). The remaining 500 conquest should come quickly, just need to win approximately 3 arena fights.

Healer got the most damage done.. 

Speaking of battlegrounds, I absolutely love Strand. Sure, we had a good crew this fight, but it was a fun close fight. When On defense, I started at the blue gate's cannon. Once the alliance had broken through the green gate, I ran up to Yellow and stationed on a cannon there. We slowed them down, but they had the rune in 4 minutes. On attack, I jumped on a demolisher and managed to get all the way to the rune gate before my demo was broken. Unfortunately we didn't have the graveyards, so I almost rez'd  at the beach, gy hop at 2 seconds left. Grab another demo and raced for the rune. Had to break down the red gate. In the last 5 seconds, we grabbed the rune and won.

My demo-driving trick? Easy mouse drive. I hold down both buttons to do the forward movement, then constantly spam 1 and 2 attack buttons. The combined attack of both weapons has the gate down in only a few seconds. Could have had the rune quicker, IF we grabbed graveyards on the way up the hill.

Finally, I am test driving a new Disc priest build. This one get's away from the atonement healing and focuses on straight healing. I still need to get used to using Desperate prayer when I am being attacked, but so far, it seems to easier to heal when being attacked.

PVP and Hallows Eve

Last night was fun! 

1. Maxed out my conquest points for the week. 'de rezz' now has a 729 arena rating, which isn't great, but is improving (last week score was 95). Followed quickly by a grand-slam 5:0 win in Arathi Basin for 25 more conquest. By end of next week, I hope to have my season 10 conquest chest piece replacing my raiding Tier-11 chest. 
2. Ran through 3 Headless Horseman dungeons (after 1AM local), this awarded 2 hallow's eve achieves (horseman and mask) plus picked up the caster ring for epic and cataclysmic epic. Plan to keep running the dungeon until I pickup the healer ring, plus the squashling for the achieves. At least now, if I don't see it by the end, I'll just buy it. 

Off to trick or treat tonight. Need to finish Outlands for the achievements. After Outlands, I should have enough GNERDS for the PVP achievements and then enough Tricky Treats to spill them out.