Grimmtooth's Troops

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.

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 PvPers¹.

Well, a couple of weeks after Navi’s visit, after much Lore-mastering, I’ve assembled what is almost the final product².

Deadly Bio-optic Killshades are crafted³. 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 theme⁴, 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 crap⁵.

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 model⁶.  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 better⁷.

1. Onoz! [↩]
2. Ignore the staff. I forgot to unholster the thing before snapping. And staves are irrelevant to Hunters after Tuesday. [↩]
3. Engineering pride, yo! [↩]
4. WTB armor dyes. [↩]
5. 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. [↩]
6. How odd that they’d have two different models otherwise. [↩]
7. Figure the odds. Oh, look, moar fiddley bits! [↩]