Category Archives: Stop me before I mog again
Don’t make me use this.
To my great surprise today, Jasra got a mace from a world boss that was an actual upgrade (coupled with a decent off-hand) over the staff she’d been carrying, like, forevar.
Unfortunately, the mace mog collection is unburdened by cool looking maces.
So we went with a two-by-four with a nail in it.
Don’t fuck with Discipline priests. I guarantee it’ll hurt.
Feature Fashion Victim
So, there was a lot going on at BlizzCon 2017. I wasn’t one of them, but that’s probably for the best. I’ll have more to say on other topics from that event, but if you’re impatient there are, well, about a zillion other actual blogs (and falling), and an exponentially increasing number of Twitch streams, you tube channels, and vlogs that will be more than happy to blurt out their thoughts, as well.
But one thing that jumped out me was at one of last night’s Q&As. Someone asked the very reasonable question, would Blizz be considering options for clothies other than robes going forward? The answer was something that sat me back on my haunches – “Whenever we find a way for clothies to look awesome wearing pants, we’ll do it.” Or words to that effect.
Well, okay, I’ll admit that they nailed it for healing cloth in Legion.
But there’s nothing wrong with a good pair of sturdy jeans, and warlocks can pull it off without even trying very hard.
As can fire mages.
One assumes that Arcane and Frost can pull it off as well.
Just because I haven’t found an outfit that screams “Disco” and isn’t robe-based yet doesn’t mean it isn’t possible. And I hate to say it, but what I heard in that pull quote from the Q&A was “We haven’t figured out how to make that happen”. Here’s a hint – try to move away from the clown suit esthetic. Imagine your wife / girlfriend / sister wearing it.
Which rules the Mageweave stripper pants out, and I’m good with that.
Ground Hog Day
Been several weeks on the fire mage spec, and so far I am liking it. The new mitigation tools built into the spec make it a lot less likely that I’ll die just for being the center of attention, and the new flame shield is, well hawt.
I have not been pleased with the transmog, though. The Robe of Power is pretty sharp, but better worn in a disco than tramping around in the muck. And while the Mantle of Three Terrors is, in fact, super-appropriate to the spec, it also makes me look like a hunchback. I have a problem with shoulders, all the way back to the second Scourge invasion – those shoulders and that head piece that dropped off the scourge bosses make me look like a bullet, or a torpedo, not a human mage with feelings. Feelings and wants and needs. A mage who …
… er, where was I? Oh, yes! Transmog! Fire mage transmog!
So, I got out my blue jeans from the frost outfit, some black-ish boots (nothing as good as mail wearers can get, but hey), and searched around for some more appropriate upper attire. First off was a nice shirt, the Corsair’s Overshirt, which drops off of of “Captain” Cookie in Deadmines (boy, was he surprised!). And while I absolutely love my Junior Technician 3rd Grade Goggles, the new spec had me looking for something a little more interesting. Fortunately, there’s the Circle of Flame, and it drops from Ambassador Flamelash. This guy, in Blackrock Depths.
He’s not exactly super cooperative.
It’s a low drop rate. We had several engagements. Flamelash went through the five stages of grief.
And finally …
At which point he just chucked all his stuff into the foyer, packed his bags, and went off to The Firelands for a vacation. Which is what he should have done to begin with, right?
That was the last of the shopping trip, however, so now I feel a lot better about myself and my chances of not getting annoying swamp stains all over that white robe’s hem.
It Kinda Grows on Ya
I’m not usually into the later expansions’ gear models, but, like Jasra, I’ve found something in the modern mix that has tickled my fancy a little bit. Namely, the Coif of Unstable Discharge.
Doesn’t show in this image, of course, but the arcing lightning kinda fits in with the whole Beastmaster motif, with Titanstrike and Hati in tow.
Note that the rest of my current transmog is a mess. It’s a cross between my classic blue and the new hotness. I’ll figure something out eventually. It really doesn’t deserve the name “transmog” at the moment.
It’s hard to beat Engineering goggles for style and functionality, but we may have found a winner, though.
Madness … takes its toll (exact change only, please)
[…] our credo: Sic gorgiamus allos subjectatos nunc. ‘We gladly feast on those who would subdue us.” Not just pretty words.
— Morticia Addams
At this time, the upcoming (in Legion) resource for Shadow priests is labelled “Insanity”, which has made role-playing and mogging for my Shadow spec a lot easier.
For the longest time, I’ve had issues locking on to “the fantasy of” my class. Since they, too, seemingly wielded Shadow magic, I often looked to Warlocks as a handle to hold on to, however unrelated in origin they might be (Shadow Priests, for example, predate Warlocks on Azeroth. But they’re a lot easier to get a handle on from an RP perspective.).
But the new resource flipped some switches and caused the class to sprout all sorts of handles. So now, at least mog-wise, I have a bit of a role model.
Basically, I’m going for this.
One of the highlights of Morticia’s outfit is the low-cut slinky dress. To that end, the Warlock Arena Season 11 piece, (by way of Cynwise), would have been perfect. Unfortunately, it can only be purchased by Warlocks, much less worn by or used as mog fodder by. So back to square one.
The good news is that I did find the Thistlefur Robe via MogIt, and it is pretty much everything I want it to be. For the head piece, I’ve elected Circlet of Transcendence, and for my stat stick, Terestian’s Stranglestaff (There’s a similar looking quest reward in Vash’jir, but who has time for that nonsense?). That leaves the shoulder piece.
I was dearly hoping for some sort of raven-feather pauldrons, but to date all I’ve found are Druid (leather) pieces. There are a few spikey variants but I really don’t feel this addresses the Shadow idiom properly. Raven feathers would be ideal, given the one or two raven-oriented spells we have, but something tentacle-y would work as well. Until I find something more appropriate, though, I guess I’ll go with the Pauldrons of Transcendence piece, if for no other reason than it goes with the head piece and we all know Onyxia was a little wobbly in the attic. Her dad certainly was affiliated with the Old Gods, so it’s fitting.
Anyway, her’s the projected trajectory for the two selves of Jasra at the moment.
The RP-breaking part of WoW in this situation is dual-spec. Jasra the Disco priest inhabits the same body as Jasra the Mad. While many will agree that anyone that volunteers for healer duties is absolutely insane, that doesn’t really work well in this particular RP dichotomy. Well, that’s on me, I suppose, especially when you realize that even being able to swap specs at all is kind of RP-breaking.
So I should probably shut up and go back to grinding Apexis dailies.
Rock out with your Lock out
Grimmtooth Actual’s first best love is Grimmtooth the hunter, no doubt about it, but one could argue that the Hunter is so second-nature at this point that it’s more like a Stay-cation than a true diversion. Grimmtooth’s existence at the moment is all about getting things done, from the scrupulous attention to gardening to the grueling slog of dailies.
Warlock’s what comes out when we want to play. I’m not a raiding main, Jasra is, so I’m free to indulge myself as I see fit. I’m not even level 90 yet. And with Grimm and Jas sucking up all the CPU they can, I rarely get to come out and play, so I make the most of it.
I’ve got myself a good adventuring outfit, for example. Black velvet robes are good for shaking down the locals in Stormwind, displaying a decadant sense of evil that the rubes truly appreciate. But they tend to snag on everything. Denim and forest leathers are a lot more appropriate for stomping around in the wild.
Also, I have horns from time to time. While I like the look, it was hell on hats until I figured out to punch a couple of holes in the right place.
But that does bring me to the part of this expansion that I dislike the most about the Demonology spec. Demonform has gone from a hefty buff to DPS to being a whole second spell rotation to learn. It plays hell with my rhythm, let me tell you.
But outside of that, Big D is a blast. I cut through mobs like a hot knife through butter. I use Hefty Voidwalker to gather them up and just beat them to the ground. Even Grimm can’t AoE that well. I don’t even use most of my rotation because the mobs die too fast.
There’s this green fire thing coming up, I’ve heard, once I hit 90. I have some nice prezzys from Jas to wear when I hit that level, too, so it looks like I’ll end this turn at the wheel on a high note for sure, since I’m 89.25 now.
I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again.
Damn, it’s good to be a Warlock.
Addenum:
Been out front of Stormwind lately?
Yep, been patched right up!
Well, almost. The minimap still shows the glowing embers for the gate towers, though, as you can see, they’re just fine now.
Glad to see my tax money going into something other than blowing panda bears up.
An Act of Mog
When Navi came over to say hi, I was working on my transmog "set", if "set" it be. I had replaced the shoulder pieces, but the rest of my outfit was all Tier-thirteeny. It wasn’t pretty, but I did appreciate having the ability to look to the right and left once again. Those T13 shoulders should really come with mirrors or something.
My snark on the T13 shoulders is indicative of what I think about Hunter armor appearance in general. I don’t even GET the concept of mail-wearing Hunters. Forest leathers are a much more appropriate outfit for us outdoorsy types, but game mechanics (i.e. Mail Specialization) require mail, and you can’t mog mail to look like leather. It might confuse the PvPers ((Onoz!)).
Well, a couple of weeks after Navi’s visit, after much Lore-mastering, I’ve assembled what is almost the final product ((Ignore the staff. I forgot to unholster the thing before snapping. And staves are irrelevant to Hunters after Tuesday.)).
Deadly Bio-optic Killshades are crafted ((Engineering pride, yo!)). Tablet-Bearer’s Pauldrons, Far-a-day Mesh, Fastfuse Gloves, and Bael’dun Chain Leggings all seem to come from a coherent set. I would have loved for this "set" to come in a jade-green theme ((WTB armor dyes.)), as that would seem more natural for Hunters. But the overall theme here is simplicity of design. No fiddly bits, curly-cues, flying buttresses, flashing lights, glaring eyeballs, or other ridiculous crap ((Sorry, Blizz, I know your artists have feelings. But a certain segment of your players can’t get past the complete and utter impracticality, garishness, busy-ness, and plain old ugly that some of the sets out there represent, and Hunter gear especially. We’ll talk when they start making armor they’d be willing to wear on a bus on the way to work. Meanwhile I submit that a recolor of old armor sets is not art, it is what we should be doing with armor dyes, and a potential for payroll reductions, if you ask me.)).
Paxton’s Belt and the Talonrend Stompers contrast the blue-silver theme for a couple of reasons. First of all, belts and boots are generally made of leather. Second of all, even though they’re mail, they look like nice, sensible leather accessories. Third of all, although there are boots that match the armor, I’d run the risk of looking like this:
Um, no thanks.
The final piece is the gun.
The Tribute Gun was my second choice. My first choice was the Flawless Arcanite Rifle, which has a scope as part of the model ((How odd that they’d have two different models otherwise.)). The Arcanite rifle is also an engineering crafted item, but the schematic only drops from one particular mob, and apparently nobody’s seen that drop since they were downgraded about ten levels in Cata.
I asked a kind GM about this – Trelladon, who also offered conciliatory waffles – if it had been dropped from the game, and s/he indicated that there is a bug report in about this very thing, so at the moment there just isn’t any clear idea in Customer Support if the schematic is supposed to drop or not.
Well, once the black market is live, maybe one or the other will drop. But for now, this will have to do.
The main thing that drew me was the feathers. I know it’s silly, but that’s such a Wildhammer-ish thing.
So there you go. My look, going into MoP, unless they come out with something new in MoP that I like the looks of better ((Figure the odds. Oh, look, moar fiddley bits!)).