Project Platekini Part Two: “Not Saltstone” Set, or the “Fallen Dreams” Set

“Fallen Dreams” Set

Class: Paladin

H: Not shown | S: Gladiator’s Scaled Shoulders | Cl: Not shown
Ch: Gladiator’s Scaled Chestpiece | Wa: Belt of the Fallen Emperor | L: Cenarion Thicket Legplates
G: Gauntlets of Raw Strength | Wr: Not shown | B: Cataclysmic Gladiator’s Warboots of Alacrity

Shield: Crest of Retribution
1h Sword: Greatsword of Horrid Dreams

Thoughts: If Helen of Troy had the face that launched a thousand ships, then this is the transmog set that launched one alt and a bazillion plans that still haven’t been finished (yet).  I almost called this the “Dat Ash” Set, but I maintain some pretense of dignity.

This is the set my sole blood elf was made for and undeleted for.  I had a moment of brilliance (Ermagerdda would be a GREAT name for a dwarf or an orc), combined with residual feelings of guilt (ERMAGERD ANOTHER BLOOD ELF THEY’RE LIKE 2/3RDS OF THE HORDE WTF), which mixed with the conversation of some friends who like to talk up how awesome warrior is.  So I deleted the blood elf and made Ermagerdda the Orc Warrior, only to realize that this set, as-is, can only be done on a paladin, what with the class-specific gear and all.  Craaaaap.

Lastly:

Blame Blizzard, Not the Mogger
Seriously, I wouldn’t go to some of these places if I didn’t have to.

Project Platekini Part 1: “Dark Embrace” Set

“Dark Embrace” Set

Class: Warrior, Paladin, Death Knight

H: Not shown | S: Pauldrons of Zul’Farrak | Cl: Not shown
Ch: Warrior’s Embrace | Wa: Winterfall Belt | L: Legguards of Stratholme
G: Diemetradon Plate Gloves | Wr: Not shown | B: Crustacean Stompers

Shield: Crest of Retribution
1h Sword: Crystal Sword

Thoughts: While platekini wouldn’t be realistically functional, it occurred to me that I was ignoring a whole area of transmog possibilities by not using any at all.  The matching metal bra/panties/stockings look by itself doesn’t do much for me, as I like a bit more complexity (or floofy accessories, whichever) to my armor these days.  So here’s the first set in Project Platekini, which is an attempt to find ways to make platekini pieces attractive to me by working them into more elaborate transmog sets.

A lot of ideas I had for this just didn’t look as great on someone who happens to be two feet tall and dark green, mostly due to the way the proportions of boots and gloves change.  I really couldn’t envision Niremere wearing these either, given her genesis in the human starting zones (WTF GOLDSHIRE WTB MANA BOMB) and subsequent personality development away from them.  She’s ever the practical type – and you’ll never convince me that anybody would WANT to wear platekini in, say, Northrend.  Putting aside the zombie infestation issue for a moment, can we say, “hello, hypothermia?”

Violaryn, as a blood elf, looks good in most things (so there IS a benefit to weighing five pounds!), and practicality is not part of the picture, since she was born to wear platekini.  She will SUFFER for her fashion, thank you.

p.s., I still maintain that platekini in general is fine, as long as men can wear platekini too … which Blizzard has been sadly delinquent on!  C’mon Blizz, need more skimpy outfits for teh menz.

p.p.s., ever notice how few gnomes and pandas you see in platekini?

p.p.s.s. BIG FEET ARE BEAUTIFUL GOSH DARN IT

“Lovely Cinnamon” Set

“Lovely Cinnamon” Set

“Lovely Cinnamon” Set

Class: Warrior, Paladin

H: Not shown | S: Tyrant’s Epaulets | Cl: Not shown
Ch: Commander’s Armor | Wa: Bloodforged Belt | L: Bloodforged Legplates
G: Bloodscale Gauntlets | Wr: Not shown | B: Bloodscale Sabatons

Shield: Garrett Family Crest
1h Sword: Firebreather

Thoughts: Holiday appropriate and with hair dyed to match!  This outfit is good for relatively low level tanks who are only around the 60s or so, since a lot of awesome plate armor doesn’t open up until the 70s and onward.  Most of it can be found on the AH, save for the sword, which is a dungeon drop.

So I’ve pretty much been tanking like a tank, which is to say I develop “tanking vision” that focuses on mob positioning, whether or not I’ve got All Teh Aggroz and whether or not people are pulling crap.  Things like the chat become secondary, which is why it can be surprising to read things like this:

Wait wat
Welcome to the wild world of blood elves.

Ewww. I bet you if Violaryn happened to be short and green while wearing the same outfit, she would have gotten the cold shoulder instead of … well, the tongue.  I proceeded to ignore the guy until he started to bemoan his loss of skill in the flirting department.  Protip: keep your tongue in your mouth, especially if you’ve just met the girl and she happens to be punching six fel orcs in the face at that moment.

Anyway, the highlight of this holiday is that for two minutes, while Violaryn was transformed into a goblin courier, I got live my dream of being be a goblin paladin.

My Rules for Lowbie LFD Tanking

NO TAMPERING WITH THE MAIL
NOTHING you can open in Strath contains something good. NOTHING.

RULE NUMBER ONE: KEEP ONE AOE SKILL HANDY AT ALL TIMES
Because if it’s there to be pulled, somebody’s probably going to pull it, intentionally or otherwise.  Whatever it is will almost certainly come with friends.

RULE NUMBER TWO: HE CAN’T HELP IT …
If you have a feral druid DPS in the party, he or she is most likely experiencing an identity crisis and will be shapeshifting for most of the dungeon.  As long as he isn’t actually trying to tank while in bear, he’s harmless.

When you see him switch between tree and cat forms in the middle of the fight, be glad all you do is tank crap, and that’s pretty straight forward at this stage of the game since you are a paladerp and all you do is faceroll in your unsurpassable natural (and only) form.  And just disregard the fact that really, only one of the druid forms is useful for his current spec/role.  Dude’s just confused.

RULE NUMBER THREE: … BUT THEY CAN
Huntards and other ranged classes (but mostly huntards, since they’re not AS squishy as mages) like to shoot sheeyit before you get to it.  Save them if you want to, but a little damage would probably do ’em good.  Just sayin’.

Maybe …
Except the druid wiped too, which makes me think that either 1.) he didn’t plan his revenge well, or 2.) he didn’t intend to have us die at all.

RULE NUMBER FOUR: MAKE SURE THE HEALER’S GOT YOUR BACK
Because sometimes, the huntard’s got to die.  Also, a good healer who doesn’t panic can save your ass when everything goes to hell – a.k.a., the room in Scholomance with Professor Slate.  Said healer can also save your ass when the chronically confused catbeartreemanbird gets distracted with all the shapeshifting and pulls crap on accident.

Take It Or Leave It
’cause I’m stayin’.

RULE NUMBER FIVE: STAND YOUR GROUND
If you don’t want to run the dungeon like someone who’s hopped up on six venti expresso machiatto chai latte whatevers, then don’t.  You are the tank.  They can take it or leave it.  (As a side note, I’m at full mana because I’m a level 40-something with a mana pool about thiiiiiis big, so I regen what I use in a second – a.k.a., about the time I finish sassing you for pulling half the stuff in Janice Barov’s room.  Being right on the internet is OBVIOUSLY more important than your schedule.)

After all, if you won’t take the damage and the healer won’t heal it, they’re not likely to get very far.  And if they do, then hey – it’s EXP you didn’t have to work for!

RULE NUMBER SIX: IF YOU WANT TO KICK THEM, WELL, YOU PROBABLY CAN’T
If the annoyance they cause is not worth the EXP, then leave.  You’ll get another party because LOLZTANKQUEUEISAMAZING.  If Deserter status occurs, well, you just saved some brain cells and that’s good for you.

He Touched My HAIR!
THAT’S IT.

RULE NUMBER SEVEN: ACT LIKE YOU KNOW WHAT YOU’RE DOING
Almost nobody knows where to go in Dire Maul, anyway.

RULE NUMBER EIGHT: JUST BECAUSE YOU CAN CLAIM IT WAS AN ACCIDENT DOESN’T MEAN YOU SHOULD
Positioning Instructor Chillheart so that your DPS is at imminent risk of Ice Wall death is considered cruel, even if you do find it enjoyable.

Prima Tankin’ Donna

When I try my hand at healing, I often question my competence and make plenty of ragefaces over the endless parade of derp that is the Dungeon Finder.  Yet I am discovering that the more I paladin tank, the more I turn into an uncontrollable, self-assured, and totally unforgiving honey badger.

Deal With It
That’s just how this works.

I don’t know what it is.  Maybe it’s the endless facerolling, or perhaps it’s the gawgeous hair that none can match.  Instead of being the usual “I think it’s actually over this way, guys” sort of person I am when I’m DPSing, or the “ACK!  SORRY OMG YOU DROPPED LIKE A FLY” panic-prone person when I heal, I give people crap for pulling ahead of me and/or being stupid, and I also collude with the healer to get the unkickable killed.

Sometimes, I wonder WHAT HAVE I BECOME!?  But then most of the time, I just think something like this:

I REGRET NOTHING
Na-da. Zilch. Zero.

THIS PARTY IS NOT A DEMOCRACY!  I am the tank dictator.  It’s my way or the highway, and we don’t have highways in Azeroth.

I’m a Barbie Girl! In a blood elf woooorld!

Is It Just Me
Or is trying to kick people getting a little hard?

“I need another platewearer,” I said.  “One who is ridiculous and revels in it.”  It couldn’t be a DK, due to Blizzard refusing to let you have more than one per server.  It couldn’t be a warrior, because I like Charge and am pretty much bored with everything else.  That left paladerp, and my eternal conundrum of Tauren fingers and no hairdos vs. the “oh God what have I done it’s a blood elf” feelings.

Dreddies mentioned wanting to make a warlock, and he always makes blood elf men since they have superfab hair.  I figured if I was going to do this, now would be the time, right?  I can get a pal to help me endure the mellow, unchanging starting zone music!  Hence, Violaryn came into being after some failed attempts and discussions on how blood elf names need to have a certain amount of self-satisfaction and ridonkulousness. (Dreddies became Resenthic, since he made me come up with a name for his new char too.)  Oh Gawd, what have I done?  It’s a blood elf!

“RAWR” is good for a /roar.
A really strained kinda shouted statement is not.

I don’t know how long Vi will last, so she doesn’t even get a Category lest she fall under the long list of “The Alts Who Didn’t Make It.”  So far, she lives under several restrictions:

1. She is not allowed to emote except under extreme duress, such as a bad hair day, which blood elves never have.  (Otherwise, I fear I will delete her in a fit of annoyance.)
2. She must have the most ridiculous and fabulous hair possible.  Screw realistic!  Forget functional!  (Because that’s what blood elves are for, right?)
3. She cannot be Retribution at any time because I am not interested in attempting to recreate Niremere’s action bars.  (Oh yeah, and she can’t use Niremere’s hairstyle EVER.)
4. When she wipes, she has to play /violin.  (Alas, there is no /viola …)

Because I care SO MUCH (actually, it’s not so much laziness/cheapness as it is a desire for super quick, relatively painless EXP and a total lack of surplus JP), she is wearing the random castoff heirlooms from everybody else.  There’s the agility mail helm and mail legs … the intelligence mail shoulders and chest that were originally for, you know, a shaman … and dat sword with parry from when I had a short lived cowtank.  With this gear setup, she’s clearly destined for healing.  YEAH!

WHICH BRINGS ME TO MY NEXT CONUNDRUMMMM

See, on the one hand, I hate responsibility in game.  The nice thing about being DPS is that you are generally only responsible for your own incompetent self.  On the other, I also care very much about my own personal convenience, so being DPS totally sucks because tanks and healers got the queue GOOD.  Tanks, of course, have the queue the best, so maybe I should tank and claim that all that agility gear is for dodge.  Yeah.  LIKE A BEAR.

I healed one dungeon and then switched to Protection because waiting twenty minutes for a tank who wasn’t even level 20 seemed kinda stupid.  This led to a string of parties where I was never able to successfully kick the huntard (and it was ALWAYS a huntard) who insisted on 1.) pulling, 2.) not turning Growl off, and 3.) leaving his pet dead, which, I guess, was probably for the best anyway.  I don’t remember huntard having such a high learning curve at level 20, but what do I know?

Since I couldn’t kick them, I made friends with the healer and we let them die instead.  Best death witnessed was in Wailing Caverns.  Huntard pulled a boss (Verdan the Everliving), and I didn’t take the aggro because I asked several times quite politely to stop doing that.  Of course, the healer wasn’t healing him either, so he started doing the standard hunter thing of backing the boat up while shooting.  Only thing was, he backed up off the edge of the cliff, took severe fall damage, ran into another mob down at the bottom and died.

JUSTICE.

Addendum: Images That Do Not Relate To Each Other

The Horde vs. The Alliance
I guess I’ll have to get Niremere to 80 to find out.

Despite having done Vashj’ir two times before, this just now occurred to me.  I will have to investigate further.  “By the Chin!” would also be an acceptable Alliance exclamation when being swarmed by Naga.  I also finally realized just what bugs me about Varian Wrynn’s model – they gave the poor guy jowls.

Leveling is Hard
If you do it through the Dungeon Finder …

Thank you for tanking all the darn time, Tab.  You’ve got the instaqueue magic, and you don’t get mad at me when I get a little trigger happy and Mind Flay that mob across the room that you totally haven’t pulled yet.  You pull the monsters off me when I use Mind Sear a little too soon.  You also don’t abandon me to crappy Dungeon Finder parties!  You stand by me even when I queue for ninety million dungeons in a row.

Sometimes I Get Carried Away
ARCANE BLAST WOO

When using Arcane Blast, I insist upon running in circles around the enemy.  It just improves the entire experience!

Thanks, but No Thanks
Isn’t level 4 a little early for this?

Surprisingly, I found myself unwilling to go through the goblin starting zone yet again, so I made Mechbeth the Warlock into a blood elf.  I zoned in and this lowbie paladink zoned in on me, saying, “Follow me.”  I certainly don’t follow strange men without reason, so I had to ask why.  I don’t know if Mechbeth will last long in this form, considering that my last blood elf attempts made it to levels 28, 15 and 11 respectively.  As long as I don’t /silly, /laugh (or type “haha” or “lol” without thinking), or /sob, it might be bearable for a little longer than that … maybe.  I mean, seriously, honey, you went to Undercity for a facial?  /stab /stab /stab

You’re Heightist
Short people power!!

We’re spatially efficient.  We’re compatible with gravity.  We’re also very necessary, for without the short people and the tall people (Tauren), blood elves would be unable to recognize their own perfection for lack of comparison.

You’re Lootist
Gawd, your standards are so lootist.

I know that there is no point to making a point on the Internet (or in an MMORPG).  And yet I still can’t shut up!  I’m such a lootist.

Well, I guess I can’t be totally goblinated.

Because I have too many alts already, I want to try a paladin, too.  I was specifically thinking about remaking Ailabeth, who I haven’t played in a long long time and probably never will play again because I really, really don’t feel like running face first into the (re)learning curve in terms of healing.  She’s level 80.  People are pissy about healing when you’re dinky and have a valid reason for not knowing what the heck you’re doing; I don’t want to deal with how they are sure to be at level 80.

Interestingly, I used to be pretty good at healing as a disc priest (mostly compliments) but sucky as a shaman (I didn’t think I was that much different, but people hated my guts!).  Maybe I’ll be middle of the road as a paladin.  (Or maybe I’ll just smash things.  I’m pretty sure I don’t want to tank things, ’cause people expect you to know where you’re going.)

But if I want to be Horde (and I do, since my guild and support is there), this means Ailabeth can’t be Forsaken.  I also can’t be a Goblin, the race that suits my personality best.  Poor girl is going to have to be either a Tauren or a Blood Elf.  I just don’t know how I’m going to handle being a walking hamburger or a fashion model.  (Blood elves are too pretty.  It feels weird.)  I totally don’t see why I can’t bribe my way into the paladin-ery as a goblin.  What’s that?  You actually have to possess some affinity for the Light?  I like the Light!  I do!  Its practitioners have money!  Oh, you mean I need morals?  I’m sure I can acquire those with enough capital.  You’re lookin’ at me funny.  What’d I say?

I will probably go blood elf, because I can’t imagine Ailabeth going from Forsaken to Tauren.  It’d be awkward, you know?  That, and OMFG I hate Mulgore.   I call it Mulbore, while simultaneously apologizing to any Tauren fan who believes Mulgore is pretty.  When I’m a nooblet who can’t even ride something, I always feel like I am going to be running.  Forever.  That quest giver in the distance is a mirage.

Also, I have to wonder why, oh why, did they build their city at the top of those bluffs?  I would not want to be the seven hundred pound creature tasked with trying to build or fix a rope bridge.

I further advance the theory that Tauren are not as earth-friendly as they seem to be.  Why?  Thunder Bluff is almost entirely built in wood.  Mulgore’s been stripped of trees, except along the edges.  Coincidence?  I think not.

Question: why are there no blind Tauren?  Answer: they all fell off Thunder Bluff.

Fun Fact: When talking about astrological signs, I once caught myself saying, “I’m Tauren.”