Arena Season 4 Confirmed.

Photo found online. This isn't me, I just loved that he's using the Corrupted Ashbringer.

As confirmed by a blue post via the official forums, Season 4 will start June 24th.

What does this mean?

Outside of horrible looking "Brutal Gladiator" (el oh el) PVP gear, all Season 1 gear will now be buyable from rep vendors much like the the blue gear is now. Season 2 will now be buyable with a mixture of honor and tokens much like Season 1 is now. I don't think the honor cost has been leaked yet but I wonder what they'll do about the weapons and other non-set epics?

This is good news for anyone with an undergeared or newly reached 70 character. The current blue PVP set can be purchased for a little under 150g and, albeit not Kara ready, is a good start. If they keep the price the same, this would also make gearing for offspecs a bit easier.

Mutoh is fully epicced outside of his chest peice which I'd be happy to pick up the S1 Elemental chest and the entire Enhancement set. I wouldn't mind picking Jandrae up some S1 healing pieces for the slots I haven't filled from Kara yet. Adiar is a few levels from 70 and full S1 would be an awesome start. I know it's blasphemous to show up to tank in S1 but it's better than the blues I'd have, I'm sure.

The downfall is that this is just another dumbing down of the game, making it easier for casual players to hang with the big boys that actually dedicate their time and effort to progress in the game. Sure it's S1 and S4 is available but buying epics for very little gold seems a bit cheap. I expect to see countless people showing up for Kara in full S1 isntead of actually TRYING (god forbid) to gear themselves.

I guess I'm torn because it's a good chance to gear up my alts really fast but at the same time I've been playing awhile and hate when things just get handed to people. On the other hand, WOTLK is being advertised with a November release date by EB Games and I think Blizzard is trying to milk it's own teet and give people the chance to experiance all the Burning Crusade has to offer before it's looked over by new players in WOTLK.

Buying S1 epics but still having to attune yourself to do Ony for fun? I don't get it.

Eff Joo, Tidewalker!

Thats about how I felt tonight. We had a few no-shows so the raid started an hour later than scheduled but we still managed to one-shot Lurker, Leotheras and Fathom Lord. We wiped 3 times on Tidewalker and called it a night which dissapointed a few people but with the late start we were already 30 minutes over raid time.

Total Dominance does the Tidewalker fight a lot different then Grand Theft Kodo did. TD uses a Pally tank to bring all of the murloc spawns to Tidewalker so the AoE damages him as well. It works OK until the Pally tank gets the Watery Grave 3 times and a row and wipes the raid.. and the same thing happens every attempt thereafter.

I somehow managed to get Velvet Boots of the Guardian from Lurker on my first night. I think the other 3 people were rolling for offspecs and when they noticed I was rolling they all kindly passed to help me gear up with them. It was very welcoming and something I had never seen in GTK. I definitely feel like a part of TD right now, even though I'm still in recruit status.

4 Out of 6 Aint Bad?

Got the Eagle, Bear, Dragonhawk & Lynx bosses down tonight on my first "official" raid in the new guild. Went well outside of the Dragonhawk boss. We missed the 2nd chest by 2 minutes I think but wiped on the Dragonhawk about 3 times. 2 shotted Halazzi which was nice considering one of our healers was a PuG. Since it wasn't a full guild run we decided to call it after Lynx instead of heading to Malacrass.

The Bear boss dropped the Fury of the Ursine bracers which are a very VERY slight upgrade from the Windhawk bracers I crafted but they're cloth and would ruin my set bonus. I passed on them for a Mage. I did manage to get enough badges to pick up these sexy shoulders (instead of the boots). I didn't notice the amount of spell hit on them before and they were a HUGE upgrade from the crap shoulders from Aran. The boots are a nice upgrade as well but the ones I have at least had crit and MP5 on them as well as damage.. where the shoulders from Aran have the ever-useless spell pen. It doesn't hurt that they're sexy as well!



But man.. I'm so tired T_T. I have to get up in a little over an hour for work.

Also just wanted to give super kudo props to my wife's guild, Endless, for getting Bloodboil to 1% twice. I'm sure they'll down him if they go back on Sunday. Also wanted to congratulate my friends in Grand Theft Kodo for their first downing of Supremus. Although I'm not in the guild anymore, I DO have friends that still raid over there and just wanted to commend THEIR actions.

On a side note, I took Mutoh out of that new Kara guild, respecced BACK to Elemental and put him back in Forsaken for the time being. I need some badges for him so hopefully there is a Kara run sometime this weekend.

New Gear FTW

I wanted to seperate this blog from the previous one since it doesn't really deal with the same issue.

A group of us formed a regular Kara group for our alts that run every Saturday night. I'm taking Jandrae to gear her up after last week was so profitable. This week I ended up with about 18 badges (we skipped Illhoof and Netherspite due to lack of time), the Mantle of the Mind Flayer from Aran & the Ruby Drape of the Mysticant from Prince.

The Mantle is horrible (+spell pen FTL) but it has more spell damage and stats than my current shoulders so I took them. No other casters wanted them so they didn't count as my "roll" for the night. The cape from Prince dropped and +spell hit is win. I used my roll for that and beat the Warlock for it. Wewt!

Hopefully this weekend gives me the offhand from Netherspite and the neck from Moroes. =X