Much wootage

Am currently 5/5 for S2 gear, plus the trinket, plus the cape. That totaled is 214 resil - squarely out of the "facemeltable" category as I remember it.

It's a bit tempting to nab the boots, belt, or trinket for +30 or +34 additional resil (the goal being ~250 resil) before I hit 70... but I think I'll just level for a bit for now.

New BGs

So, of course, the moment I hit 61 I got kicked out of old Alteric Valley. This happened at 60 with Arathi Basin and Warsong Gulch, but I don't play those two as much, so it wasn't a big deal. On the plus side, Eye of the Storm is now an option.

So yesterday I hop into Alteric Valley, thinking I'll farm myself some honor, and immediately notice that there's around two dozen games going on in my battlegroup. I also notice that there's a wait time of approximately three seconds, which I suppose could be attributed to lag.

So I enter the battleground, figuring I'll mount up and run around trying to kill stuff for a while, and a third fact makes itself immediately present: I'm the only 61 in a group of 70s. Oh, great. And the mage has more than twice as much health as my pitiful 5k; don't I feel useless. And then I hit O and tab over to Raid and there's only one other guy under level 70 in the entire 40-man raid (a level 65 shaman).

So what did I do? I spent pretty much the entire battlegroup attempting to get next to Drek'thar. Because, and I'm sure this will sound familiar, the alliance got to him in approximately 5.3 seconds, and proceeded to block off the entrance (as well as our bat-people for turnins; I highly doubt they survived, but I was too busy to look). I think I succeeded once, and we won maybe half a minute after that... the entire match was over in five minutes, tops.

I'm... not pleased. Being a low-level in the 60-69 region isn't that bad; you can still actually get stuff done, though it's far more difficult, but the high-level players don't tend to have twice as much health as you, along with (I suspect) at least three times as much armor and offensive stats for comparable classes. Granted, I don't have any resilience at this point, and I'm sure there's more than enough people who actually picked up the level 60 PvP gear (an idea I thought foolish at the time, but now I'm not so sure) and probably have a couple hundred resilience, and getting said resilience could help out somewhat, but...

Facing off level 61-69 players against level 70s just isn't fair.

I've poked around the auction house more than once; I've talked with people who've leveled more than one level 70; the consensus everywhere is that level 70 gear is far, far better than level 69 gear, just as level 58 Outland gear is far, far better than level 60 Azeroth gear. (See also: my recent quest rewards.)

And, of course, once I reach 70, there'll be me with a couple hundred resil facing off against people in S3, S4, and what have you.

Surviving's looking tough...

Bahahahaha!

Well, finally got my laptop back... and proceeded to use it to do jobhunts of various kinds. Managed to grab a couple, which brings my wow time back to something semi-normal. And, lately...

I've successfully obtained my medallion! I had to burn some marks on a cloak, a standard, and a wolf, though. Betting this is the first and last time I'll find myself with too many marks and not enough honor.

Yeah, I got my epic mount training. I figured there was no way I was going to use half the gems I had stored in my bank for jewelcrafting, as I didn't start training jc until level 30-ish, so they sold for a good amount. Found some other things, too, and mined a stack or two of thorium, which brought me up to 600g - enough for the training and another 120g left over.

So what's next? Well, this is the part where I take up a bunch of space planning out my PvP equips.

Obviously, I'm going for the S2 Battlegear set, with Vindicator's and Guardian's stuff mixed in as appropriate. I'm reasonably confident when I say I can get the armor set before I hit 70, which will bump me up to 211 resil (including trinket and cape) and 42 hit rating, verses 142 hit cap for Mortal Strike builds and 395 cap for dual-wielding builds. (Wow, that's not a lot of hit rating. Maybe I should steal a boomkin for early raiding.)

• Head: Merciless Gladiator's Plate Helm - 14,500 honor, 30 AV marks. This may well be my next target - 25 resilience is very good, plus it's got the meta socket for one of those fancy run speed gems.
• Neck: Guardian's Pendant of Triumph, easily. 15,300 honor and 10 EotS marks (those will be easy enough to come by).
• Shoulders: Merciless Gladiator's Plate Shoulders. More S2 set stuff. 11,250 honor, 20 AB marks. Only +20 resil, so last unless I get all 100 AB marks again soon.
• Back: Sergeant's Heavy Cloak - done! Decent amount of stamina, solid amount of resil, and, as I recall, only 7k honor and a few AB marks.
  
• Chest: Merciless Gladiator's Plate Chestpiece - 14,500 honor, 30 AB marks. +24 resil is great - tied for second best in the set - and I'll be sure to dump AB marks here first instead of those shoulders.
• Wrist: Vindicator's Plate Bracers - as I don't think I'll be doing Sunwell Plateau any time soon, that'll be 9199 honor, 20 WSG marks.
• Gloves: Merciless Gladiator's Plate Gauntlets - 10,500 honor, 20 AV marks. Another great set piece, and another one that requires AV marks, making it one I'll get quickly.
• Waist: Guardian's Plate Belt - 17,850 honor, 40 AB marks. Most notable is the +30 resil on this piece - easily worth the expense. Probably first bite after the S2 set - earlier, gladly, if I get full on marks again.
• Legs: Merciless Gladiator's Plate Legguards - 14,500 honor, 30 WSG marks. Baaaah WSG. At least I've got 50 or so marks from there saved up.
• Feet: Vindicator's Plate Greaves - 13,923 honor, 40 EotS marks. Bit pricy on the marks, but another +30 resil piece - easily worth a dozen EotS matches (or even 20).
• Ring: Veteran's Band of Triumph - 9,500 honor, 10 AV marks. This guy was hidden behind the Vindicator's Plate items, where it looked like there was nothing more to offer. A solid +22 resil, and very cheap too - 10k honor honestly isn't that much in the grand scheme of things, and only 10 AV marks? A very economical choice!
• Ring: Vindicator's Band of Triumph - 11,934 honor, 10 AV marks. Very nice stats - although the 22 resil didn't get upgraded from the S1 version - and not much more expensive than the previous ring. Certainly worth the price.
• Trinket: Medallion of the Horde - done! +45 resil, which is probably the best I'll find on a single piece of equipment before I get to arenas, and an excessively handy "use" effect. Well worth the 40,000 honor (though it must be noted that the blue version of the trinket has the same "use" effect and costs only 8,000 honor, but only gives +20 resil).
  
• Trinket: Talisman of the Horde - 22,950 honor, 10 EotS marks. It was either this or one of the Battlemaster's trinkets, but this has +34 resil - second best on this page - as compared to the +80 attack power/+40 crit strike rating. I also figured a flat heal would be better than boosting health and then losing it in 15 seconds, possibly resulting in death. It's not a great heal, but then, it's not that great a health boost (1750, which I wouldn't be happy with losing in the middle of heated combat).
• 2h weapon: Merciless Gladiator's Decapitator - 27,000 honor, 40 AV marks. Powerful weapon, and the S4 version is one of the best axes in the game, as I recall. And orc racials say axe over sword.
• Ranged weapon: Merciless Gladiator's War Edge - 8,000 honor, 10 EotS marks. It's this over the awesome crossbow only because the crossbow's AP boost doesn't apply to melee. That said, the war edge is about three times cheaper than the crossbow.
• Shield: Merciless Gladiator's Shield Wall - 15,000 honor, 20 EotS marks. Easily one of the best shields in the game, I'll take this and let it sit until I get a proper tanking set going (including T4, in all likelyhood).

So... totals for the rest of the stuff I need. That'll be... 198,056 honor (yipes), 70 AB marks, 110 AV marks, 90 EotS marks, and 50 WSG marks. (Pretty sure I counted that right...) As of right now, I have... 78 honor? Yeah, go me. And along with that, 90 AV marks (I predict I'll be buying a certain headpiece soon...), 86 AB marks, and 57 WSG marks. No EotS marks yet, but I'll be hitting 61 soon-ish, and getting the 10 needed for some of the cheaper items won't be too hard, even at just 61.

Oh, gem slots. Uh, for the meta, absolutely nothing beats one of the +8% run speed gems, and the best of those for me is the Swift Skyfire Diamond. For the yellows I guess would be Steady Seaspray Emeralds, and reds would be Sovereign Shadowsong Amethysts. Oh those don't look easy to get... And I need three reds and five yellows. Good thing I went JC...

Well, this'll have to do. I guess I could put in more offensive-oriented gems, as I suppose I'll be using this set to learn Kara, etc, and get T4 prot gear, but I don't think I want to waste any more time and money on the gems than I already will be...

(Ninja edit because I forgot the weapons and shield. Oops.)

Warsong blues

I don't know if it's just my groups, but man, Horde really doesn't seem too great at Warsong Gulch in the 50-59 tier. My team outnumbered the opposition 8-6 earlier today and we lost 3-1. Not entirely sure how that happened, what with us having about six guys level 58+ and they only having four.

Ah well. Four more marks (hopefully less than as many matches) and I'll be done with that place.


Meanwhile, farming honor for my [Medallion of the Horde] is being slower than I'd like. Granted, I'm over halfway there, but man does it get tedious after a while. (As a side note, my HKs show up on armory now. It's pretty neat!)

Also, I bought my mount today. It's pretty awesome, but I'm about 400g (and three levels) away from being able to use it. Hopefully mining in Outland will be as profitable as I'm predicting... and hopefully I'll have finished a level's worth of rest by tomorrow or Wednesday so I can continue Scouragestone farm. Supposing the daily PvP quests aren't Eye of the Storm, I suppose it'd be a bit faster, but still.