Argent Tournament Dailies and Priest Specs

I want to work on the Argent Tournament dailies with both Rubeola and Veleni, but I don’t quite feel motivated enough to do all the dailies with both of them every day. And dailies are time consuming enough that if I did try to do them on both toons, I wouldn’t really have any time to do anything else. Like level my priest, for example. So I’ve been alternating between the two. One day I’ll do the dailies on Rubeola and the next day I’ll do them on Veleni. But I’m beginning to think that the better approach would be to concentrate on getting Exalted Champion of the Alliance on one toon, and only then start working on the other toon. And if I’m going to choose a toon to start with, it will probably have to be Veleni. I just have more fun killing stuff with my paladin than I do with my Death Knight. And for some reason I feel like I’m killing stuff faster as a paladin than as a Death Knight. Which is odd, as Rubeola’s gear is better than Veleni’s.

Speaking of my priest, I had thought I would respec from shadow to discipline yesterday when I visited the priest trainer. But I can’t seem to track down a good discipline leveling spec. Maybe because most people level as shadow. I checked out the popular discipline specs at talentchic.com, but they don’t look like leveling specs. For example, I would expect a leveling spec to include Reflective Shield, but that’s not a talent the popular specs take. Most likely because it isn’t useful when raid healing.

For now, I think I’m going to stick to shadow while I continue to research discipline. Which is fine by me, as shadow is actually turning out to be quite a lot of fun to level with.

Ding!

Lyune just dinged 71. I should have taken a screen shot, but I forgot. I have to say, so far, I am digging shadow. I think Lyune as a shadow priest might even be more fun than my warlock. Warlocks are probably more able to handle harder quests. But I feel like with my Warlock (well, affliction, at least), I’m just cycling through my rotation. It really doesn’t matter too much what I’m fighting or how many of them there are, I just stick to the rotation and things die. With the shadow priest, I have to work at it a bit harder and change up what I’m casting when. Otherwise, I’m either going to run out of mana, or things are going to take too long to die.

Goal Update

Just a quick update. I managed to get my priest to level 70. While I question whether I’ll really every be brave enough to attempt to heal with her, I am still determined to level Lyune to 80. Currently I’m leveling as Shadow, but I occasionally toy with the idea of trying Discipline.

Oh yeah, Rubeola is now “Rubeola of Stormwind” and Veleni is now “Veleni of Ironforge”. So I am making some progress with the Argent Tournament while I level my priest.

Goals

In January, Ratshag posted a list of goals for 2009. Ever since then he’s been working his way through the list and I think he’s managed to finish almost all of them. The idea of a list of WoW goals seems so good, I think I’m going to steal it. So here, in no particular order, is my list of goals. I don’t promise to finish any of them, or to finish them in any particular timeframe. But I do promise I’ll be thinking of them while I’m no doubt working on other things.

Level a priest to 80. I’ve been threatening to level a priest and I’ve decided it’s time I did it. What about the shaman? I tried to level him, but I found I missed my guild too much to level on another server. I might level an Alliance shaman after the priest. But I’m not making that a goal. I’m actually making some progress on this goal. I had a level 67 Draenei priest languishing in Nagrand and I’ve now managed to level her to 68, get her a hair cut, and move her to Northrend (Howling Fjord). I’m feeling pretty good about leveling her right now, so I think I might have a pretty good shot at getting her to 80.

Get a flying carpet. I’ve been wanting a flying carpet ever since they were introduced in Wrath of the Lich King. As it happens, Lyune is a tailor and since I’m planning to level her to 80 anyway, I hope to get a flying carpet along the way. Of course, I’m going to need to get Artisan Riding first, but that’s just money.

Heal one instance as a priest. This goal is far less attainable for me than you might think. I’m terrified of PUGs. And my guild is really bad about scheduling regular instance runs. So it’s kinda hit or miss. But I’m hoping I get at least one chance to try healing as a priest.

Become Exalted Argent Champion of the Alliance on at least one toon. Veleni actually has the best shot at this, although I’m going to be working on the AT dailies with Rubeola as well. It’s really just a matter of time, and sticking with the dailies. It’s completely attainable.

Get an albino drake. As I think I’ve said before, Rubeola is my best bet for getting an albino drake. I’m hoping to get one or more of the Argent Tournament mounts for her. And there’s the next goal that should help as well.

Have Rubeola craft a Mekgineer’s Chopper. Being able to craft the chopper will require dropping mining for engineering, and then leveling engineering to max level. I think I also need to be exalted with the Alliance Vanguard in order to learn the schematic. Fortunately, Rubeola is already 3/4 of the way through revered and I think she might get to exalted by the time she’s finished with the AT dailies.

And there you have it. Some goals. Ok. Instead of goals, maybe they are more of a wish list. I’ll report back if I manage to finish any of them.

Veleni of the Exodar

Over the weekend Veleni finished up enough of the Argent Tournament dailies to become “Veleni of Exodar”. Basically, that requires completing the Valiant’s Challenge while also being exalted with the city your are championing. Once that is accomplished, a set of new dailies opens up in the main Argent pavilion that rewards Champion’s Seals, the true currency of the Argent Tournament. With Veleni I intend to use my Champion’s Seals to purchase an Argent Hippogryph. But at 250 seals, it may take a while.

Once you finish championing one city, you are able to choose another city. The first city you champion has to be your own. But after that, you are free to choose. Veleni is currently championing Ironforge, since she has yet to become exalted with the Dwarves. Doing the Argent Tournament dailies earns rep with the city you are championing. Also, once you become a champion and start doing dailies for the Argent Crusade, you can start earning Champion’s Writs, which you can turn in to cities you have championed for rep.

As insane as it might be, I am also doing the Argent Tournament dailies with Rubeola. She has yet to become “of Stormwind” yet, but I think that’s just one day way. Rubeola is behind in the rep department. I worked a bit over the weekend to get her exalted with Stormwind. But she’s only revered with the other cities. By time she’s finished with the AT, though, I hope to have her exalted with all cities and ready to buy all their mounts.

Crazy Thought

Yes, still working on the PVP currencies post. And by still working, I mean that I haven’t done anything at all. Well, that’s not entirely true. I ran a couple of battlegrounds. You know, for research. Interestingly enough, I’m beginning to think that doing the old BGs for honor may just not be worth it. I need to do a bit more research, but the best strategy may be to stick to Wintergrasp and Strand of the Ancients. But I hope to have more to say on that topic in my PVP currencies post.

Anyway, on to my crazy idea. Basically, I’m thinking that I might drop mining on Rubeola and pick up Engineering. That itself isn’t so crazy, I guess. But my reason for doing it would be to make the helicopter and the motorcycle. I’m not sure I need any of the other things that Engineering can provide, though I haven’t examined all the craftable items in detail.

Rubeola is probably my best bet for getting an Albino Drake. She’s already done the grind for a Netherwing, so that’s six mounts right there. Plus, she has the Black War Bear reward from For the Alliance. She also has one of the PVP mounts. All I’d need to do is get exalted with all of the races and maybe pick up one of the mounts from the Argent Tournament. I might also need to get to exalted with the Kurenai to be able to buy their Talbuks. I’m thinking it wouldn’t take long for Rubeola to work her way to 50 mounts.

Anyway, Engineering just for the motorcycle. Is that a bad idea? I could, of course, just buy it. But I like the idea of being able to make it. And the helicopter can only be ridden by an engineer, so that’s another reason to go engineering.

I haven’t made any decisions yet. Just thinking about it at this point.

Small Update

I’m working on a longer post about PVP currencies, but I thought I’d provide a small update in the meantime.

I’m currently working my way through the Argent Tournament dailies with Veleni. I’ve finished the Aspirant’s Seals phase and have moved on to the Valiant’s Seals phase. Oh, and here’s a safety tip concerning The Grand Melee quest: You can fight all three battles at once as long as each battle is against a Valiant of a different race. I fought one and saw the 1-hour debuff you get and assumed I couldn’t do another fight for an hour. But I just watched a friend do the same quest and even though I told him he could only fight once an hour, he was smart enough to ignore me (doesn’t take a lot of smarts there) and go challenge a Valiant of a different race.

If you are an unholy Death Knight and looking gear up for Naxx, then be sure to check out Me And My Ghoul’s Gearing Your Unholy DK For Naxx. As of this writing, there are two parts up already. I really like that the list covers both DPS and tanking gear. As well as appropriate gems for those items that can take gems. My Death Knight, Rubeola, happens to be unholy, so I am particularly interested in such a list of gear. And I have to admit that I’d not really considered the possibility of tanking with Rubeola. I think I assumed that I would need to spec Frost to tank, but people on twitter assure me that a Death Knight can tank from any tree.

Speaking of twitter, if you twitter, you can follow me. I’m @willel on twitter. I warn you, though, I tweet a lot. So if you aren’t interested in lots of tweets, you might not want to follow me.

I think that’s about it for now. I do hope to finish up the PVP currencies post at some point. But it requires research and stuff, so I have to get motivated enough to do the work to finish it.

Of Shamans And Paladins

After getting Rubeola exalted with Argent Dawn, my plan was to get back to playing my Shaman. But a funny thing happened on the way to the forum. Before I got started leveling my Shaman I thought I’d first do Veleni’s Jewelcrafting daily. The daily required my killing Iron Dwarves and I usually like to kill the ones in Storm Peaks. And, of course, if I’m in Storm Peaks, I like to do the daily quest that has a chance of rewarding a Polar Bear mount. And, I noticed that I’d never gotten the shoulder enchant from the Sons of Hodir. And heck, if I’m going to be over near the Sons of Hodir, I might as well do their dailies as well. In fact, I was only one day’s worth of dailies away from getting to be revered, and that would let me buy a slight shoulder upgrade for Veleni’s retribution set.

As you can see, one thing led to another and before I knew it I was playing Veleni. Once I got into the Veleni mindset, I started looking at the rest of her retribution gear and I realized that while it sucked, it was within my power to do something about it. I had already had Rubeola craft Veleni a Titansteel Destroyer, so the weapon was taken care of. But the rest of Veleni’s gear was a mishmash of greens and pieces of the Savage Sarnoite set. The first thing I could do immediately was have Veleni craft herself a Scarlet Signet to replace the random green ring she was wearing. What I really want is the Ring of Scarlet Shadows, but Veleni doesn’t know that recipe yet, so she’s got to do a few more JC dailies before she can learn it and make it.

Next, I noticed that Veleni had enough Wintergrasp marks to buy a few things from the WG vendor. So she picked up Titan-forged Greaves of Triumph and Titan-forged Girdle of Triumph. Yes, those are both PVP items, but they are still big upgrades over what Veleni was wearing before.

Finally, I took Veleni on a quick trip to Icecrown to the Argent Crusade rep vendor to have her pick up a Cloak of Holy Extermination.

I still have a ways to go gearing her up, but Veleni’s gear is quite a bit better after just one day of work. She sits at 2.5k AP and she’s just 0.5% shy of being hit-capped.

And for some strange reason, I’m now excited about playing Veleni again. I even got into regular Nexus to heal. Obviously healing reg. Nexus at 80 is trivial, but it’s been a while since I’ve healed, so it was a good re-introduction.

I’m quite sure I will get back to my shaman at some point. But for now, it looks like I’m going to be working on my paladin.

Baron’s Mount: An Update

Thought I’d give a brief update concerning my quest to obtain Baron Rivendare’s mount. I have managed to become exalted with the Argent Dawn. Believe me, the irony of a Death Knight being exalted with the Argent Dawn is not lost on me. So while I do appreciate that honor, I have yet to obtain the mount. Since I am now exalted, I have a lot less reason to loot as I run Stratholme. I find that if I don’t loot, I am able to run the instance in something like 10 minutes. Unfortunately, even at 10 minutes, it’s just too tedious for me to run it over and over, which is what I need to do if I want to get the mount. So for now, I am going to end my quest for the mount. I may come back and work on it again later, but I think I can probably use my WoW time for better things.

UPDATE: And how many times can I mistype ‘quest’ as ‘guest’? At lest two, apparently.

Pictures

I thought I’d share some of my daughter’s art that we have hanging around the house. I apologize for the poor quality. I just snapped pictures with our point-and-shoot camera.

The first painting is on a board canvas. I think I mentioned she likes to use boards as canvases, but this isn’t on a board (though the next few are). I have to admit that I haven’t a clue where she gets the ideas for her art. This one is a little disturbing.

The next one is also on a board. It’s actually quite a bit taller than what you see here. But this was the best I could do. I believe this may very well be my favorite of her paintings. At least so far.

And I thought I’d show one more board painting. This next one is also one of my favorites. It’s hard to tell in this picture, but my daughter managed to use some of the characteristics of the wood in the painting:

This final painting is on a regular canvas. I like the colors and the subject is interesting.

And now I wonder if my daughter will kill me for posting these.