I'm baaaaack

Okay, wow. The last time I posted here, my guild did Ulduar for the first time ... that has been a while, to say the least.

Character progress

What have I been up to ? Well, you can check the armories of my characters, of course, but the TL;DR version is that my guild is 10/12 in ICC25 and working on Lich King in ICC10, and I've had a chance to give him a poke as well.

Personally I'm a big fan of Icecrown Citadel. The atmosphere is Black Temple-flavored grimness all over again, but with the added touch of ice cold blue/cyan. Setting foot on the Frozen Throne gave me a small loregasm... and fights like Saurfang or Festergut are just great to test our DPS potential since, for melee at least, it's pretty much tank 'n spank.

Guild birthday

Immortalis recently celebrated their 1 year anniversary, and we did it by marching through Stormwind and Ironforge, basejumping off the Purple Parlor, and raiding the Horde faction leaders.

Some screenshots here.

Cataclysm spoilers

As with most blogs, I'll add a spoiler tag somewhere to warn you when I'm about to spoil stuff for you.

Minor glyphs and fun

Pewter from The Mental Shaman asks in her post about Cataclysm professions (spoilers, obviously!) what Minor Glyphs should be about. In my opinion, we have a fun minor glyph (Blurred Speed for temporary waterwalking), a few useful ones (Safe Fall and Vanish) and the rest is mostly useless. Now, if we compare our useful minor glyphs with other classes, we could still think of them as 'more fun' - speeding up when vanishing is a pretty unique way of adding value to that skill, while removing a reagent is more of a convience thing.

Return of the rogue

I am soon returning to the game, and I was posting a reply to Zaltu's To-Do List on what I will do and have to do when I get back, so I figured I might as well post it here too, and add a few things.

Level
Yeah, still 78, so I gotta get those last two levels! Should be cake though, I haven't even seen half of Grizzly Hills, and I have Crystalsong, Zul'Drak, Sholazar, Storm Peaks and Icecrown left. I'll probably respec to Mutilate (despite having just specced Combat because I got Fang of Truth) so my dagger skill is maxed when I hit 80.
Since I'm mostly in Borean Tundra / Howling Fjord blues, I'll probably hit Storm Peaks and Icecrown so I can get some decent quest reward gear.

Get gear crafted
Easy as pie of course, I'll hit the AH for some materials and give them to a friendly guildie. Specificly, I'm looking to get the Eviscerator's set crafted. Some of those pieces I will probably use as fillers before I hit heroics and raids.

I'll also get at least the Trollwoven Shoulders crafted, I think.

PvP
If my memory serves me right, I have only a few marks to go for a shiny Black War Steed, and a few thousand honor points for a Hateful Gladiator's Cloak of Victory (which will again be a nice filler for PvE purposes too).

Instance
Gonna put on my Kirin Tor tabard and go to town in lv 80 instances, for rep and some gear so I don't look like a total idiot when doing heroics or leeching epix in our guild raids.

Fish and cook
As much as I hate fishing, I'll probably have to do it, because buff foods don't make themselves !

Aeltyr feels the ice is slowly melting. Soon, he will be able to break free from his frozen state !

Rogue buffs, Forsaken professions

Short post here, but after reading Jessica's reply on my mail, I have decided to take Skinning and Herbalism on my Forsaken rogue when I revive him from the dead (I deleted him a few months ago). At 80 I will switch to Alchemy. My Death Knight bank alt will be going Inscription and Enchanting, so I can make my own enchants and glyphs.

This also means that I will have Lifeblood and Master of Anatomy at my disposal while leveling. Free crit and heal, hooray !

Also, the blue tracker of MMO-Champion had some insight in what Blizzard may have in store for us:

Hunger for Blood
We think it can be a little annoying to try to keep it up all the time. We have a plan to make it a little more usable and interesting (and buff rogues in PvE at the same time). (Source)

Do you plan to buff the Combat talent tree?
Yes. (Source)

Assassination and rogue DPS in PvE
Assassination is doing too much damage relative to other rogues. Rogues as a whole are still too low in PvE and we have plans to bring them up. (Source)

Aside from a general PvE buff for us, it will be interesting to see how they plan to change Hunger for Blood.

Also, happy lunar festival !

Picture: guildies kiting Omen to AQ and back, last years Lunar Festival.

Banners, Economics, and Ninjas

No, there is absolutely no link between those topics, except that I will put them all in this post, of course.

Banners
Admittedly, even I couldn't watch my screenshot banner, so I took an old screenshot of mine and some rogue pics, and made a little more effort in a header image.

Still, I'm not quite happy with how my character is depicted here. This is an old screenshot, because it is the only decent frontal screenshot. Aeltyr has a red ponytail in-game, and no beard. He's semi-naked in this picture, but there's a perfectly logical explanation for that: it is a shot from a beach party RP event, where he is sided with two Blood Elf babes.

Economics
I've asked Jessica over at WoWconomics for her opinion on a profession combo. When I get back to the game I will be starting my Forsaken rogue, and rolling a Death Knight as his banking alt. Since a lv 60 Death Knight can basicly learn Grand Master profession ranks, I thought it would be an idea to use him as a mule too. But I'm not very good at profession choices like this, so I asked Jessica what she would deem the best four-profession-combo.
Check her site later today for the answer, and check back some other time here for the concrete benefits this will mean for me.

On a non-WoW related note, I have an exam of Marketing Management coming up next week, so I'm in a real life economic mood as well.

Ninjas

Okay, let's face it. Many people roll rogues for that ninja-feeling. Sneaking, assassinating, daggers, ... gotta be a ninja right?
Well, in fact, ninjas used a far larger range of weapons. They frequently used claw-like weapons much like the fist weapons you can find in the game, or a sickle with a weighted chain attached to it, or a simple club even. There's also a 'fun' weapon called a chigiri-gi, a "breastcutter" which is a staff with two spikes around the middle of the staff, and a chain with a claw attached to it. The spikes are used to trap and break swords, and the claw, well .. to rip you apart. Other than that, smaller things like poisoned caltrops, or less stealthy things like bombs (after the Dutch brought gunpowder to Japan), were also amongst the arsenal of things you can kill people with.
I'll do a post on "Are rogues ninjas ?" some other time to compare more similarities and differences between the two. I'll leave you with a shot of myself, so you have at least a visual image of the nutcase behind this blog.

The female ninja in this blog post is Yù Jiāolóng from the movie Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon.