Kinless' Chronicles

Gear and the big reset. Then, two wins, three losses, and a neverending story.

Msaker (sounds like Massacre) made Rank 8 yesterday. (And no server downtime for maintenance.) I went to the O-Club and picked up two more pieces of the PvP armor set, the legs and chest pieces. Rank 9 gets me a flag, woot, and Rank 10 gets me the last two pieces of the set, the shoulders and the helm.

About 10% into Rank 8 (from 48% into Rank 7 + 133k honor) so I'm going to concentrate on this. I think about it like this: When you first start raiding Molten Core, you go and wipe a lot. You'll go 2-3 times a week and you'll spend 4-6 hours at a time there. That's if you're in a guild that's learning the place from square one. This isn't guild-hopping to an ueber-guild that'll run you through it. This is working your way up from BRD, LBRS, UBRS, and then into the Core.

Anyway, when do you get your first epic from this effort? 2-3 weeks in. An epic. One. You'll have downed 4 bosses, tops. So your variety of epics won't be large. (You'll have one epic and the Hunters and Rogues will have gotten, magically, their full Tier 1's and their Tier 2 helms from Onyxia. I swear Blizzard loves Hunters and Rogues in MC drop rates.)

It took me a month doing Alterac Valley and I got the Ice Barbed Spear, The Unstoppable Force, the Immoveable Object, the Rank 6 Trinket, Don Julio's Band. All but the Spear are epics, and the Spear, for a level 51 character, incredible. Time invested versus epics gained: not bad.

Kind of the same for the pvp armor set. Do I raid Scholomance, Stratholme, LBRS, and UBRS, over and over, and over and over, and hope to get the set put together? What's that get me? The same armor that the alliance guys wear. The Valor set.

In less time, I think I can put together a complete PvP set. And this is the proper Horde armor set, with cruel spiked pauldrons, spiked helm, and brutish umber and ochre colors.

The Public Test Realms came out yesterday. Patch notes say "Current honor totals have been reset." I.e. 2-3 weeks before going live.

So, from 10% in Rank 8, can I reach Rank 10? I have 2-3 weeks to find out.

So, without too much dilly dallying I jumped into the breach in Alterac Valley. The first two games there were Horde wins. The next three, losses. The last, the 6th game, at 1 a.m. I gave up on it and logged off. That was the most interesting fight to report on.

Don't you hate when Blizzard puts you smack dab into a lost cause? That happens often enough. Or you join late. That was my case here. All the honor to be earned from objectives had been gotten. It was already an hour into the game. Horde held the south, and the Alliance were holding out in Stormpike. The offense sucked. They were fighting on the low road, just feeding the meat grinder. I sat on the high road above and watched. I had two choices: Watch, or suicide with my teammates below. So I watched. At one point the alliance defenders, obviously turtling, were pushing hard back to Stonehearth. That's kind of embarassing for the Horde. And then reports came back from home. Frostwolf Graveyard was taken. I get into the fighting around Stonehearth and watch the map for the activity around FWGY. There were a lot of us there. Half our force, at least. And we didn't get it back. Then the towers, then the relief hut. We had no defense, we had no offense. We summoned Lok, and that was to be our salvation. We followed him up to Stormpike, and then he went in without us. The Alliance held us back while he surged ahead, and died. Back to square one, and they were again, still, fighting on the low road. So some of us did what any brave souls do, we recalled to help Drek. He was alone and beleagured. Yet enough of us, 6-8, showed up that we cleared his keep of the Alliance filth. And we kept them out. FWGY was retaken. And the Alliance kept spawning at the Relief Hut. And we kept Drek safe. Long story short: We retake the Relief Hut, and not long after Drek is rejoined by his wolves, Draka and Drusos, and three of his Warmasters. We had gotten a complete reset. 2 hours into the game. I got about 1100 honor for this fight, including 150 hk's. The south of the map was in Horde hands, Stormpike in Alliance hands. Fires of war everywhere. I logged.