Dooooooooom!
EDIT: Retracted. I hope to get some updates up soon, with a somewhat changed focus. Stay posted (like anyone cares).
If you have, somehow, found your way here I should inform you that you are in the wrong place.
Wherever you were going, this isn’t it.
Whatever you were looking for, it isn’t here.
Unfortunately I have too many projects and too little time. This is one of the things I don’t feel I have time for any more. Sorry.
kthxbye
Initial Thoughts On 3.2
Time to weigh in on the 3.2 patch notes that were recently released. There’s certainly a lot to digest in there, but the topic which seems to have gotton under almost everyone’s skin is the change to Emblems of Conquest for all content, and the new Emblems of Triumph for dungeon dailies.
Euripides over at CriticalQQ covered the attitude thing the best. Basically – you’re not special so quit whining that other people can get similar gear to you.
I also wanted to say this: Just because T8 gear will be available to anyone who can run Heroics does not ruin your raids! Your guild cleared Ulduar 25 Hard Modes and has Algalon on farm because you are good players – not JUST because you have great gear. Ulduar might be full of noobs a month after the patch – but none of them will get much further than Flame Leviathan. Why?
Because gear does not maketh the player.
Your gear enables you to play to your fullest potential, but I’m guessing you’d still be a good player in my gear or worse. A crap player is a crap player – won’t matter if they are wearing T8 or not. It will mean that the good players who are still up and coming will get a chance to shine.
There are already 10,000 people wiping in Naxx every night despite being in full 213 gear – because they think purplz = 733t (And because they can’t spell, but that’s a whole other bias).
Skill > Gear and always will be. If someone is crap despite their gear, don’t play with them again. Problem solved.
My Brute
Fun and fast. Check it out:
Holy Paladin UI
Palithras UI Solo
As promised, I present to you my UI. Commentary and addons after the break.
Upcoming Posts
I still don’t have terribly much time to blog, but I have a small list of things I want to post about.
1. VuhDo: This is the most popular search that leads people here. I will try to do a post explaining how I have mine set up, which leads me to…
2. …a post about my UI. I spend a lot of time trying to get the perfect balance between form and function and I think I have finally got it right.
3. An update on Wolfsorish.
Coming Soon(tm)
In My Absence…
Well it has been quite a while since I updated here (of course, that’s relative – in real time it has been a few weeks, but in blogosphere time it’s an eternity). I try not to blog from work anymore and most of my spare time at home is spent playing WoW or taking care of the family, so there’s not much time for this humble blog. So to the two of you who actually read Cloth & Plate, I’m sorry. You know who you are 
Patch 3.1, eh? Argent Tourney, Ulduar, two talent point refunds (caught more than a few people with their proverbial pants down that one). Lots of stuff going on but, since it has already been covered by far better bloggers than I, I will focus on what I have been doing.
Palithras has been getting a lot of love lately. Our guild has allied with a number of other guilds to help getting raids together. There is a great bunch of folks from Heaven’s Breach that tend to raid 10 mans at a time that suits both me and The Wife, so that has been fun. Plus our home guild has been scheduling 25-man Naxxramas for our weekend which means I have managed to log a few hours in there as well.
Not to mention a quick jaunt into Ulduar for the first boss, where I got to drive a demolisher. Most. Fun. Ever. Here is a small excerpt from the battle:
Raid Leader: OK, so are we clear on the strat?
Palithras: Yeah…but just to clarify something: I get to fling my passenger at the boss?
RL: Yes.
Pal: Literally hurl my passenger from a catapult?
RL: Yes.
Pal: And he’s just going to climb into the catapult voluntarily? No whips or cattle-prods?
RL: Yes.
Pal: And my passenger is a Warlock?
RL: /sigh Yes. In this case. Any other questions?
Pal: So I get to put a Warlock into a catapult, aim him at the side of a giant metal steam-tank and hurl him bodily at the boss…and then someone is going to pick him up and give him back to me so I can do it again?
RL: YES!
Pal: /weep. It’s like all my Christmases have come at once!
Thanks Jaydizzle – you were awesome! You can be my wingman (or catapult ammo) anytime
ERRATA: Jaydizzle is a Warlock, not a Hunter as I had first posted. Mucho apologies, amigo.
All quiet on the home front.
Sorry I have not posted for a while – work has been pretty frantic in the lead-up to Easter Weekend. Not much happening in Azeroth lately either. Wolfsorish has been slowly dominating Hellfire Peninsula and has now relocated to Zangarmarsh – the humid climate suits him better, I think. Level 63 now and still enjoying Demonology immensely. I love Metamorphosis. Demon Form and Immolation Aura are like a huge red “I WIN” button for me. I have started throwing points back into Affliction now though. The aim is to get a bit of self-sustainability as I level, from Improved Drain Soul and Drain Life. We’ll see how it goes.
I did have a strange thing happen last weekend though, playing on Palithras. We had a guild group of five decently geared level 80 characters. We had a tank, a healer and three good DPS. We could have rocked the house in any Northrend Heroic we wanted to do. But, instead, we stomped through Magister’s Terrace, Steamvaults and Slave Pens. Why? Just because! Yeah, we were aiming to hit up some achievements, but no one, even once, mentioned heading off to do a level 80 instance…
I like that, sometimes, we can have fun on our max level toons without feeling the need to “progress”, or “upgrade”. So thanks to my guildies for an enjoyable afternoon.
That’s old school, yo
I started playing WoW just before the Zul’Aman patch went live so I’ve missed out on a lot of the vanilla endgame. I remember though, just after I started, a friend giving me the Brady Games World of Warcraft Dungeon Guide. I devoured it as I leveled my toons, dreaming of when I would be able to get into a raid and take down Onyxia or Baron Geddon. I drooled over the pics in the back of the armour sets that you could get and all I wanted for Christmas was a set of Judgement Plate.
Of course all of that content is obsolete now and you get better green gear going into Outlands that most of the epic drops in the vanilla raids. So the closest I had ever been to that stuff was a Molten Core raid after I was already 70. It was fun, but there was no sense of achievement.
Yesterday though, the guild got together for a raid on Blackwing Lair. They had been farming Onyxia for a while and had something like 40 Onyxia Scale Cloaks on hand. We hit the place Star Trek style – an attuned Warlock and two others going in first and then summoning the rest of the raid. Down go the bosses and then we hit Nefarion.
While the fights were pathetically easy, we know for a fact that not many guilds on our server have been able to pull it off. This is due to the Shadowflame (I think that’s the name) that can easily wipe even a raid of 80′s. Unless you have your Onyxia Scale Cloak equipped! So a little bit of planning has given us an achievement that still means something on our server.
Mad props to my guild for taking the effort to put that event together. It was all sorts of fun and I’m super glad I got to be a part of it. I won the roll on the head and was able to bask in the adulation of my peers in Orgrimmar. And I picked up the Judgement shoulders too!
A Weekend full of Win
I had quite a bit of fun in Azeroth these last couple of days, which is always nice. Previous post saw Wolfsorish hit 58 and head off to Outlands. Not long after that I hit 60 with him. Now I get to make a choice – hold off til level 61 and buy the Dreadsteed, or do the quest.
It would definitely be cheaper on the ol’ bank balance to do the quest, plus probably infinitely more satisfying in the long run. But can I be bothered? It looks like a lot of work compared to the Paladin equivalent, which I did for Palithras. Plus I’d need to have The Wife run me through Scholomance and Dire Maul. So the time investment is much higher.
It would make more sense, time-wise, to have Palithras farm saronite or titansteel and sell it and then level Wolf to 61. I’ll have to sleep on it, I think. It would be nice to be able to say “Hey, I got my epic mount by working for it”, but when I have pair of level 80′s backing me up, how much work would I actually end up doing?
In other news, the guild’s 25-man Naxxramas raid got delayed by a few hours and I managed to sneak in for 4 bosses. We downed the Arachnid Quarter on first try (collecting “Heroic: Momma Said Knock You Out” along the way), and then headed to Patchwerk. Took three attempts but we got him as well. Unfortunately I had to leave after that /sigh.
No purple love for Palithras from Naxxramas, but I finally managed to hoard enough Emblems to upgrade my shield. Picked up the Protective Barricade of the Light. So all in all it was a good weekend for me. Yay!
Through the Dark Portal
Stayed up late last night and finally dinged Wolfsorish to 58! To Hellfire Peninsula young orc!
